The international bestselling authors "reach for the stars and lasso the moon in Universal," an awe-inspiring journey of scientific exploration (Vanity Fair).Includes fifty-five black-&-white and forty-five full-color pages featuring photographs, diagrams, maps, tables, and graphs.We dare to imagine a time before the Big Bang, when the entire universe was compressed into a space smaller than an atom. And now, as Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw show, we can do more than imagine: we can understand.Universal takes us on an epic journey of scientific exploration. It reveals how we can all come to grips with some of the most fundamental questions about our Earth, Sun, and solar system—and the star-filled galaxies beyond. How big is our solar system? How quickly is space expanding? How big is the universe? What is it made of? Some of these questions can be answered on the basis of observations you can make in your own backyard. Other answers draw on the astonishing information now being gathered by teams of astronomers operating at the frontiers of the known universe.At the heart of all this lies the scientific method. Science reveals a deeper beauty and connects us to each other, to our world, and to our universe. Science reaches out into the unknown. As Universal demonstrates, if we dare to imagine, we can do the same."[An] accessible, lucid, and entertaining introduction to cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology. Revealing how scientists explore the universe, the authors celebrate the scientific method as much as the scientific discoveries they address." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)