"The most detailed projection yet of what will happen to the universe as it expands toward infinity, " said The Washington Post when news of the authors' research into cosmic evolution broke in 1997. With major stories in USA Today and on the front page of The New York Times, followed by their cover article "The Future of the Universe" in the August 1998 issue of Sky & Telescope, Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin have made the future of the universe a topic as cutting-edge as it is fascinating.<P>Viewing the universe as a 15-billion-year-old youth with a projected lifetime that seems endless, The Five Ages of the Universe narrates the biography of the cosmos from the first gasp of inflation right after the Big Bang and the birth of stars, to the fading of all light. The book vividly describes the death of our own sun, tremendous fiery supernova explosions, dramatic collisions of galaxies, the evaporation of black holes, and the possibility for life when there are no planets, stars, or black holes left. The result is an awesome cosmic drama -- a brilliant work of popular science that is to astronomy what Stephen Hawking's great bestseller A