Princeton University Press publishes an amazing number and variety of book series. Here, Ingrid Gnerlich, Senior Editor in Physical Sciences describes the rationale behind the series Princeton Frontiers in Physics and the types of books it will encompass.

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The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

– Indira Ghandi

The margins of exploration and discovery – the edges of the unknown – have always been a source of fascination to humankind. The mythical apple of knowledge has persistently tantalized, and nowhere is this truer than within the physical sciences, where curiosity is embraced as the beating heart of the field. The borderlands between curiosity and knowledge – between the question and the answer – are among the most thrilling realms of human experience, a testing ground for human intelligence, creativity, and self-awareness. The first and essential step towards discovery, however, is the formulation of a smart question – a question that illuminates even in the asking.

Every generation of scientists must learn, as early as possible, the skill of asking smart questions. The questions a scientist (or student of science) asks will define his or her career – and may even have the more sweeping effect of redefining the boundaries of modern knowledge and changing the course of human history. When one asks a question – say, “Why does the apple fall from the tree?” – with the intention of answering it scientifically, one must formulate a reasonable explanation for why the fruit behaves as it does. This hypothesis serves as something of a “temporary” answer, and one can have as many hypotheses as one likes. However, this first crack at an answer, as sensible as it may seem, must then withstand a barrage of testing and comparison against observations of the real world. If the real world matches the hypothesis, like two puzzle pieces that fit together, the hypothesis may be elevated in status to be called a theory, which is in turn further probed and tested until it becomes generally accepted (or not) by the scientific community. This point of general acceptance is as close as one can come to reaching truth in the sciences. However, it is perhaps better described not as truth, but rather as a point of enlightenment – a step along a journey of discovery. No scientific theory, even one that is generally accepted, is ever immune to being further refined, corrected, or even proved wrong. This said, a theory can only be sculpted, weakened, or overturned if one has the ammunition of reproducible evidence, acquired through observation and experimentation.

Some observations and experiments can be done using the naked eye. But, some cannot. Enter new technologies, the tools humans use to make the necessary observations to provide evidence in support of hypotheses and theories. One could not observe the distant universe without telescopes, reveal the evolving cosmos in different wavelengths of light without special detectors, expose the workings of the microbial world without microscopes, probe the oceanic depths without submarines, or explore Mars without robotics. Theory, observation, and instrumentation are the three essential tools scientists use to answer the questions they pose. Take one tool away, and the course towards scientific discovery is obstructed.

What are the key questions that are moving the frontiers of the physical sciences forward, and where are we in our search for the answers? Enter the Princeton Frontiers in Physics series – the home for short, sophisticated introductions to the evolving frontiers of the physical sciences. This new series focuses on rapidly developing, sexy areas of research that are of intense, wide interest. Each book will examine a particular, provocative question, which drives research in a hot area of ongoing scientific inquiry in the physical sciences. To some questions, partial answers are known; to others, even more challenging questions are revealed in the process of answering. But in all cases, the questions are the right ones, in that they are moving the boundaries of knowledge forward and revealing truth as part of the process of inquiry. Each carefully chosen author is a luminary and active researcher in the field in question; some are theorists, while some are observers, experimentalists, or instrument-builders. Topics range widely – from the question of how the first stars and galaxies formed, to the nature of dark matter, to the future of quantum information science – but all are housed under the grand umbrella of physics research.

The first title in our new series, How Did the First Stars and Galaxies Form?, focuses on how and when “first light” – the very first stars and galaxies – evolved from out of minute fluctuations in the dark, nearly uniform soup of matter and energy that was the early universe. The author, Abraham Loeb, is professor of astronomy and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at Harvard University. He has worked on a broad range of research areas in astrophysics and cosmology – including the first stars, the epoch of reionization, the formation and evolution of massive black holes, gravitational lensing, and gamma-ray bursts – and he was among the first theorists to trigger current research on the first stars and quasars.

The question of how stars and galaxies first formed is fundamentally important in the fields of cosmology and astrophysics. It is thought that, at the end of the so-called cosmic “dark ages,” the universe was transformed from a smooth, simple state into a clumpy, complex, hierarchical one. Structures in the form of the first stars coalesced around dense “clumps” or “mini-haloes” of dark matter a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, and they completely changed the early universe by seeding it with light and the first heavy elements. [Image 1] Without these stars, and subsequent galaxies, our solar system (and we) would never have evolved. Though astrophysicists have formulated a quite mature and well-accepted theory for how and when the first stars and galaxies formed, and are using efficient, new computational tools to investigate this theoretical framework, we are only beginning to be able to test our theoretical understanding with actual observations of the very distant, early universe. The field is entering a new and exciting period of discovery, in which new observational probes are becoming available, and researchers are pushing at the frontiers of knowledge, uncovering new areas of debate, controversy, research, and discovery as they advance the boundaries of their field – and continue to try to definitively answer the title question of this book.

This title is just the first of many that are forthcoming in this exciting new series. Stay tuned for more intriguing, yet refreshingly pithy books that seek to define the state-of-the-art of modern knowledge – by posing provocative, seemingly simple questions that inspire and guide the frontiers of inquiry.

Some forthcoming titles in Princeton Frontiers in Physics:

• Joshua Bloom (Berkeley), What Are Gamma-Ray Bursts?
• Paul Steinhardt (Princeton), How Did the Universe Begin?
• Peter Fisher (MIT), What Is Dark Matter?
• Charles Bailyn (Yale), What Does a Black Hole Look Like?
• Tony Zee (UCSB), Can the Laws of Physics Be Unified?