Cosm

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Alicia Butterworth is a physicist from U.C. Irvine who's trying to re-create the conditions that existed just before the big bang using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island. Something goes wrong during one of the collider runs, and part of the machine explodes, leaving behind a strange metallic sphere. Butterworth sneaks the object back to Irvine, where she and a colleague determine that what they have on their hands is a window into a miniature universe, or cosm. The cosm is evolving far faster than our own universe, giving Butterworth a ringside seat as the history of creation replays itself. Her theft turns out to be just the start of what, at times, is a boisterous adventure as she becomes ensnared in the intrigue of cloistered academic and scientific circles.


From Library Journal
Avon launches Eos, its new sf/fantasy imprint, with a bang: a physics professor creates a new universe in her laboratory. Benford, himself a physics professor, has also won the United Nations Medal in Literature.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
When Alice's high-energy physics experiment goes awry and explodes, she finds a mysterious object within the debris. It is a reflective orb, which seems relatively innocuous until one of the scientists investigating it is found incinerated. Eventually Alice and her team come to believe that the globe is a cosm: a miniature universe sealed off from our own and evolving at a rapid pace. Although it provides a fantastic opportunity for study, there is no way to tell if the energies contained in the globe will be released. Other forces enter the equation as academic, religious, and political powers vie for control of the orb. It becomes unclear whether the human or cosmic agencies will prove the deadlier. Benford has been a great favorite among readers who enjoy the hard science/techie side of science fiction, and his newest won't disappoint them. The cosms he investigates go beyond the technical and provide a glimpse into the more personal realms of the life and political struggles in research science. -Eric Robbins


From Kirkus Reviews
First of Avon's new f/sf line (see also Danvers, below) relaunched under the Eos imprint: a near-future you-are-there account of physics and physicists from a writer/scientist who knows whereof he speaks (Foundation's Fear, p 102, etc.). In 2005, a University of California (Irvine) physics professor, the black and rather matronly Alicia Butterworth, visits Long Island's Brookhaven labs for a particle-collision experiment. But following a mysterious explosion Alicia finds an inexplicable shiny basketball- sized sphere in the wreckage. Fearful of bureaucratic interference from Brookhaven, she whisks the sphere--it's easily contained by a magnetic field--back to UCI, where she and assistant Zak, grad student Brad, and Caltech theoretician Max Jalon study what proves to be a wormhole, held open by negative-energy density, leading into a new universe--the Cosm--that Alicia has accidentally created! Later, the Cosm produces an unexpected burst of energy, and poor Brad gets fried. In the Cosm, time runs millions of times faster than in our own universe, and the scientists watch fascinated while stars and galaxies evolve. As Brookhaven creates its own much larger Cosm, media clamor and threats from religious fanatics reach a crescendo. Finally, as the government prepares to grab Alicia's Cosm, the wormhole's other end intersects a black hole, and the Cosm explodes. Dead accurate, of course, on science, scientists, blackness and science, and public and media reaction to scientific discoveries. But Benford makes little attempt to grapple with the philosophical issues raised, and his leading lady could use a personality transplant. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club featured alternate selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Analog, Tom Easton
This one's a joy for any fan of hard SF. It's the real thing, and it's a treat.



"Presents the world of a real scientist in a way that is surprisingly rare in Science Fiction."



"Page-turner. . .good news, fans: Gregory Benford still writes the hard stuff."



"Smart, entertaining and unpredictable. . .COSM is a ride worth taking."


Book Description
After an accident in a brilliant young physicist's most ambitious experiment, it appears: a wondrous sphere the size of a basketball, made of nothing known to science. Before long, it will be clear that this object has opened a vista on an entirely different universe, a newborn cosmos whose existence will rock this world and test one woman to the limit: the physicist who has ignited this thrilling adventure.Only the author of the landmark novel Timescape could so plausibly take the reader behind the scenes of major scientific research, so boldly speculate about the consequences of paradigm-shifting discovery, and so vividly capture the intense human drama as the forces of academia, government, theology, and the mass media battle for control of a mysterious new reality. COSM is Gregory Benford at his provocative best, exploring ideas at the frontier of mankind's understanding, and posing profound questions about Creation, human destiny, and the riddle of godhood.


About the Author
Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to sciences. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.


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Alicia Butterworth, a talented young black scientist, is elated to be able to try out her experiment in nuclear physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Things quickly go wrong with the experiment, however. After an explosion occurs, Butterworth finds a mysterious, chrome-colored ball floating in the wreckage. Not knowing what it is but realizing that it's something new to physics, Butterworth violates her agreement with Brookhaven by taking the ball to her own university for examination. There, she and her team of physicists and grad students must simultaneously study the marvelwhich turns out to be a space-time wormholeand fend off Brookhaven's attempts to shut down the project, a variety of religious crazies, environmental know-nothings and, eventually, the federal government. Benford (Sailing Bright Eternity) is himself a physicist of some repute, and his novel depicts cutting-edge science the way it's actually done in the cluttered, fund-starved laboratories of a modern university. His highly believable characters have little in common with the unrealistic scientists of so much SF. They're complex human beings, each with a full array of strengths and weaknesses, each fighting for time to do good work despite the demands of students, university administrators and friends. This may be the most enthralling science-fictional portrayal of how actual science is done since Benford's own Nebula Award-winning 1980 novel, Timescape. It provides a sterling launch for Avon's new SF and fantasy imprint, EOS. BOMC and QPB alternates; author tour. (Jan.) FYI: Benford, who, like Alicia Butterworth, teaches physics at the University of California at Irvine, is a recipient of the United Nations Medal in Literature.


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