Will we ever truly understand our cosmic home? This is the story of the technologies that allow us to look up, to learn and to discover our place in the cosmos

‘An electrifying new history of the universe’
HANNAH FRY, author of Rutherford and Fry’s Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything

‘I was enlightened, amazed, and profoundly impressed’
PHILIP PULLMAN, author of His Dark Materials

We are part of an incredible chain of events stretching 13.8 billion years into the past and even further into the future. But what does that future hold? And how do scientists study the entire universe?

The Universe in a Box is Andrew Pontzen’s tribute to simulations – the remarkable computer codes that, over the last century, have allowed us to understand the distant past and far future of the universe. It reframes what we think we know about galaxies, black holes and matter itself. And it reveals the stories of the pioneering scientists who unlocked the mysteries of space, from redshift to improbable dark materials that pass, ghostlike, through solid rock.

Illuminating, provocative and bold, this is the story of our home, the cosmos, through simulations: mini-universes inside computers.