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ASTRONOMER Chris Impey isn鈥檛 quite sure whether he鈥檇 bet more than the tip of his little finger on the big bang theory being right. He reckons his whole forearm would be a lot to put up for a bet on science, with all its uncertainties. Losing the tip of his pinkie seems about right: he would at least be able to wear the disfigurement as an astronomer鈥檚 badge of honour, a mark of his trust in the four independent strands of evidence that support our best theory of how the universe began.

Having dispensed with How it Ends in his impressive last book, Impey has now turned his attention to the start of everything. It is no less of a treat; somehow he renders the universe tangible to the human brain, never forgetting to relate cosmic concepts to our everyday scales of experience. Riffing on the vastness of the solar system, he points out how long it takes signals to travel to Mars and back, and how that affects the speed at which NASA engineers can move their robot explorers across the Red Planet鈥檚 surface. 鈥淚n a Mars day, the rovers would barely cross your living room,鈥� he says, neatly conveying the grinding tedium that is inseparable from the extraordinary achievements of our space programmes.

Impey is in a class of his own when it comes to guiding the reader through the infinite reaches of the universe. He is a masterly exponent of comparison and metaphor; the galaxies, he says, are butterflies caught mid-flight, 鈥渁rranged on black felt all around us, ready for our inspection鈥�.

He wears his insider鈥檚 knowledge lightly and is generous towards those who approach the universe and existence from a religious viewpoint. He sometimes travels to Tibet to teach cosmology to Buddhist monks. And he counts the Jesuit priest-astronomers who make annual pilgrimages to Arizona in order to use a telescope in the Pinale帽o mountains as 鈥渧alued friends and colleagues鈥� 鈥� though he admits he hasn鈥檛 yet worked out whether it is OK to wear swimming trunks while watching them celebrate mass.

That鈥檚 not the only unknown this Arizona-based astronomer faces, though. Replete with dark matter and dark energy, the universe is 鈥渕ocking us with its secrets鈥�. We are, he says, 鈥渁 young species, and our science is also immature鈥�. Impey is fine with astronomers not yet having all the answers, and many are painted here as flawed characters acting as strangely as humans often do.

Impey comes across as very human himself: this is not just a book about the history of the cosmos, it is a compelling insight into what it is to be an astronomer grappling with the fundamental questions of existence.