The Goldilocks Enigma

Paul Davies' The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? gets to the heart of what makes the universe tick ­- and what makes our place in it so special.

It's not too hot, it's not too cold, and its forces act together in a way that's just right: why does the universe seem so perfectly tailor-made for life to exist?

Paul Davies, one of the world's most acclaimed science writers, shows how everything from the humble carbon atom to the speed of light and the laws of physics themselves interact. He asks: is there a theory of everything within our grasp? If there was a big bang, what happened before it? Is there on universe or many? Could we exist within an endless time loop?

'This is popular science as home to the really big questions'

  Independent Books of the Year

'Beautifully judged'

  Guardian

'Britain's most eminent cosmologist ... Davies is effortlessly at home in the scale of the impossibly large, hundreds of billions of miles'

  Observer

'He leads the reader gently by the hand through the basics of what we are sure we understand about space, time and the universe'

  John Gribbin

'Paul Davies is undoubtedly one of the most important modern scientific authors ... his most significant contribution to date'

  Patrick Moore

Paul Davies is Director of the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, both at Arizona State University. An internationally-acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, Davies is the author of some twenty award-winning books, including The Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? and The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning.