About 13.8 billion years ago the universe was born, with space and time coming into being in the same instant. By the time the universe was 1 second old, the four forces in nature had acquired their present characteristics, elementary particles had obtained their mass, and particles constituting the nuclei of atoms were created. The nuclei of light elements, hydrogen and helium, were formed within the first 10 minutes of the birth of the universe with the first stable atoms coming to existence when the universe was 380,000 years old. Over the next billions of years, the first generation of stars and galaxies formed, planetary systems came into existence, and life on Earth appeared and evolved, resulting today’s plants and animals.

Origins: The Story of the Beginning of Everything is a fascinating tale of the beginning of the universe, the origin of life, the start of civilization, and everything in between. The text explores the nature of space and time, the origin of particles, mass and chemical elements, and the first stars and galaxies. Readers learn about the origin of the planetary systems and Earth, the genesis of life on Earth and the dawning of agriculture, the first cities, civilization, and language.

The book takes readers on a journey to the depth of space and beginning of time, to where stars and galaxies formed and life started, a place and a time no one has ever been. This journey does not exhaust us physically but enriches us intellectually. Through the text, readers can better understand themselves and their position in the world. The book provides a well-organized and comprehensive response to the question of where everything comes from in the most basic and scientific senses. The book is well-suited to courses in astronomy and physics.

Bahram Mobasher earned his Ph.D. in observational cosmology at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom. He performed research as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Leicester and Imperial College London. He was a staff scientist at the European Space Agency and spent seven years as associate astronomer at NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, working on the Hubble Space Telescope. He moved to a faculty position at the University of California Riverside in 2007, where he is now professor of physics and observational astronomy. His research interest is on the formation and evolution of galaxies. For his research, he uses data from ground-based and space-borne observatories. He has played a leading role in performing many galaxy surveys that are extensively used by the astronomical community today. He is the author and co-author on over 250 publications in refereed journals.