cosmochronology

"The twentieth century gave us two great theories of physics. The general theory of relativity describes the behavior of very large things, and quantum theory the behavior of very small things. In this...book, John Gribbin...presents his own version of the Holy Grail of physics, the search that has been going on for decades to find a unified "Theory of Everything" that combines these ideas into one mathematical package, a single equation that could be printed on a T-shirt, containing the answer to life, the Universe, and everything. With his...mixture of science, history, and biography, Gribbin shows how--despite skepticism among many physicists--these two...theories are very compatible, and point to a deep truth about the nature of our existence"--Amazon.com.

Examines the history of scientists' attempts to determine the age of the universe, and discusses how they arrived at the consensus that the universe if between thirteen and sixteen billion years old.