I mostly enjoyed it--some minor quibbles (and I'm not a theoretical astrophysicist, or I may have had more): there was an evident error at some point (it was one of those easy to do ones, like leaving out the word "not"), it's about 2/3 of the way through before we get to before the Big Bang, the title's a bit of a misnomer because much of the (later part of the) book supposes there is no Big Bang--but on the plus side I (mostly) followed the science and found it very entertaining as well ... it's pretty much the ideal tone for administering complicated scientific ideas.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve! ( )

A friend of mine many eons ago said "all we have left to do is cross the T's and dot the I's". I was skeptical then and now I just laugh. He liked to look through a telescope and he believed what he thought he saw. There has been a theory put forward, describing the moment of and just after the big bang, when not only was matter flung outwards from the explosion, but the basic geometric substance of "space" was also stretched and may even have been CREATED at that point. It's like 2 grapes in a bowl of jello - stretch the jello and those grapes move apart. Imagine if there is still some "ripple" and distortion of space - a light source moving away from us at a slowly reducing rate (as measured by change in red shift) could still appear to be accelerating, if that area of space was also subject to that sort of "ripple".

However I don't think of space as a substance “per se”. Ontologically speaking, prior to the so called big bang everything was joined together as a single being. If after the big bang that everything is separated into pieces, those pieces would be separated by non-being. It requires philosophical gymnastics to stretch non-being the way Clegg's book attempts to do.

Theoretical physics still has a long, long way to go. Books like these do too.

Let's pretend I'm this book's author. I'll start with a bold statement and I'll make it up as I go along:

We are missing something fundamental. The Universe is Quaternion, 1 real and three vectors. The MOND is W = [c,V][,P]= [-vp,cP]= [-mGM/r, cP]. Newton's Gravity law is the real energy -mGM/r; the vector energy is cP, the so-called Dark Energy ! All velocities ave a real component c, the speed of light, and the vector velocity V, e.g. v=(GM/r)^.5 .

There is no Dark matter. The Dark Matter effect is due to the cP, the Dark Energy.
The over gravity rotation is due to electromagnetism. cP=eEr=ecBr=ecuI
this reduces to mV=euI and V=(e/m)uI= 176G1.25E-6 I =220km/sI/A so V=220km/s at I=1Amp. This mechanism is driven by electromagnetism. Suns are rotating at Gravity rates' however suns are positively charged. thus the rotating charges create a B-field perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy. The interstellar space is filled with electrons flowing into the galaxy and e[c,V][,B]=[ ,ecB + eVxB]. This cause a motor effect like your Homopolar motor that measures watts in your home meter. The inflow of electrons into the galaxy cause a force eVxB in the rotation faster than the gravity rotation and it causes a force perpendicular to the galaxy, F=ecB. This force creates jets in the center of the so-called Black Hole.

There is more to say. I have a post on the showing the Universe is not expanding. Hubble's Constant Ho=c/R=c/cT=1/T where R=150GPm and T=500MGs=15.844 Gyears.

The correct answer is MOND, and W = [-mGM/r, cP] a Quaternion Energy. QED.

There. I just made a lot of stuff up. Can you tell me where I went wrong? ( )

The Big Bang plus Inflation, colliding branes, holographic principles ... they are all here and given equal time. Really emphasized how much we DON'T know about the creation of the universe. Materialists like to pretend it is well understood, but it is a BIG MYSTERY.