Cosmology

Ao longo da história, encontramos grandes pensadores, cientistas e inventores que, num rompante criativo, desafiam nossos paradigmas e nos atiram sem piedade a uma nova realidade, que a princípio pode parecer desconfortável, incompreensível ou até questionável. Mas, afinal, de onde surgem as grandes ideias?

A boundary-breaking astrophysicist reimagines the universe—and our place within it—in this audacious journey through the Nine Realms of the cosmos. The universe gave rise to everything: stars and cells, minds and memories, purpose and pain. But it doesn’t care about us. It follows its own...

The question "what came first?" has shaped human thought since its earliest stirrings, from theological first principles to the search for base reality in simulation theory. This demand for ultimate origins appears so natural that it goes unnoticed, like air supporting breath without announcing itself. But what if this demand contains a hidden error? Boris Kriger's groundbreaking work argues that for certain closed hierarchical structures, the question of primary foundation is not merely unanswered—it is unanswerable.

For half a century, cosmology has relied on two invisible ingredients to explain the universe: dark matter, a substance that has never been detected despite decades of experimental search, and dark energy, a repulsive force whose physical nature remains entirely unknown. Together, they are said to constitute ninety-five percent of the cosmos. The remaining five percent—ordinary atoms, light, everything we have ever touched or measured—is treated as a minor addendum to a universe made mostly of darkness. This textbook presents a different cosmology. It is not speculative.

Why is the fine-structure constant approximately one over one hundred and thirty-seven? Why is the proton exactly 1836 times heavier than the electron? Why is gravity so absurdly weak compared to the other forces? For more than a century, physicists have measured the fundamental constants of nature with exquisite precision—yet no one can explain why they have the values they do. Three answers have been proposed. The constants are brute accidents with no deeper explanation. They will one day be derived from a final theory.