The universe : leading scientists explore the origin, mysteries, and future of the cosmos / edited by John Brockman.

"Original works from the online pages of Edge.org"--Page ix.

"Edge.org presents Brian Greene, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Frank Wilczek, Benoit Mandelbrot, Lisa Randall, and more"--Cover.

"Fourth volume in the Best of Edge series"--Page ix.

"Edge.org was launched in 1996 as the online version of 'The Reality Club' and as a living document on the Web to display the activities of 'The Third Culture' " (www.edge.org/about-us).

Includes bibliographical references.

A golden age of cosmology / Alan Guth -- The cyclic universe / Paul Steinhardt -- The inflationary universe / Alan Guth -- A balloon producing balloons producing balloons / Andrei Linde -- Theories of the brane / Lisa Randall -- The cyclic universe / Neil Turok -- Why does the universe look the way it does? / Sean Carroll -- In the matrix / Martin Rees -- Think about nature / Lee Smolin -- The landscape / Leonard Susskind (with an introduction by John Brockman) -- Smolin vs. Susskind : the anthropic principle / Lee Smolin, Leonard Susskind (with an introduction by John Brockman) -- Science is not about certainty / Carlo Rovelli (with an introduction by Lee Smolin) -- The energy of empty spaces that isn't zero / Lawrence Krauss -- Einstein : an Edge symposium / Brian Greene, Walter Isaacson, Paul Steinhardt (with an introduction by John Brockman) -- Einstein and Poincaré / Peter Galison -- Thinking about the universe on the larger scales / Raphael Bousso (with an introduction by Leonard Sus[s]kind) -- Quantum monkeys / Seth Lloyd -- The Nobel Prize and after / Frank Wilczek -- Who cares about fireflies? / Steven Strogatz (with an introduction by Alan Alda) -- Constructor theory / David Deutsch -- A theory of roughness / Benoit Mandelbrot (with an introduction by John Brockman).

"In the wake of one of the most groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs in modern times, the March 2014 discovery of gravitational ripples from the Big Bang--an apparent confirmation of Alan Guth and Andrei Linde's theory of cosmic inflation--John Brockman of Edge.org has gathered together some of the world's best minds to explain the universe as we currently know it. The contributors--many pioneering theoretical physicists and cosmologists, including Guth and Linde--provide an extraordinary picture of cosmology as it has developed over the past three decades." -- Provided by publisher.