Popular cosmologist Martin Rees of Cambridge University traces the essential features of the physical cosmos to six numbers imprinted in the Big Bang, and argues that if a single one were untuned, there would be no stars and no life.

Bolstered by unassailable science and delivered in eloquent style, Our Final Hour's provocative argument that humanity has a mere 5050 chance of surviving the next century has struck a chord with readers, reviewers, and opinion-makers everywhere. Rees's vision of our immediate future is both a work of stunning scientific originality and a humanistic clarion call on behalf of the future of life.

This volume presents an unique and accessible synthesis of modern cosmology. In recent years, observational cosmology has made remarkable advances, bringing into sharper focus a new set of fundamental questions that Martin Rees addresses in this book. Why is the universe expanding the way it is? What were the 'seeds' that caused galaxies, clusters and superclusters to form? What is the nature of 'dark matter'? What happened in the very early universe? The latest exciting advances and theories are discussed, while maintaining a clear distinction between aspects that now have a firm empirical...