New astronomy and space titles reviewed
The Universe: A Biography
Paul Murdin Thames and Hudson £25 HB
Tackling the life story of the entire Universe is a fairly daunting prospect, for the prospective author (and, potentially, for the reader), but Paul Murdin’s marvellous new book pulls it off in style.
With some 13.8 billion years to cover, the book moves along at a brisk pace. After an initial chapter outlining the fundamental evidence that the Universe was born and has evolved over time, the bulk of the book progresses broadly forwards in time while diminishing in scale. From the broad cosmological questions of the early chapters, we move forward to the formation of our Galaxy, the life cycles of stars and the origins of planets before finally coming up to date with the story of Earth. Despite the familiarity of this approach, I was pleased that Murdin still finds room to include entire chapters that cover topics that are often skated over, such as the emergence of structure from the Big Bang and the importance of planetary migrations.
Above all, it’s the wealth of knowledge on display that impresses. A long career at the forefront of astrophysics (including the co-discovery of Cygnus X-1, the object that dragged black holes from the realm of theory into the remit of observational astronomy) provides Murdin with copious experience of the past half century of research, out of which he judiciously picks and chooses his stories, evidence and examples. This results in a refreshing perspective and some unusual lines of evidence that explore roads less travelled in other popular accounts.
While each chapter tackles a specific topic in broadly chronological order, it’s often necessary to follow these threads to a present-day conclusion for the sake of narrative coherence. To help the reader navigate, crossheads at the top of each right-hand page, track the period being discussed as each chapter progresses. It’s a clever innovation, albeit one that takes a little getting used to.
Minimalist illustrations for each chapter opener and a pair of plate sections provide some visual reference, but it’s Murdin’s text that takes centre-stage, and rightly so, as it’s a model of concision and clarity. ★★★★★
Interview with the author Paul Murdin
What do we know radiation of the Big about the birth of the Universe?
We can see the relic Bang itself – the Cosmic Microwave Radiation – and we can handle some of what was made in the Big Bang before that time: material containing hydrogen (such as water). I’d say we are on firm ground talking about the first second of the Universe and afterwards. What happens in that time can be described in terms of well-established physics: gravity, atomic and nuclear physics, thermodynamics etc. Before the first millisecond or so, it becomes increasingly unclear because the relevant physics is particle physics, which is still being developed. Also, some sort of physics underlies the rapid expansion of the Universe: the details are almost unknown, except for generalities like the ‘cosmological constant’. And before inflation, who knows? There is more to do!
Which Solar System bodies most deserve to be explored?
Dried out Mars and smoggy Titan. Saturn’s satellite, Titan, is almost unexplored, but it has a bearing on the important question of how life originated. Mars may be Earth’s future, Titan is Earth’s past.
What are astronomy’s big challenges?
Astronomy has progressed in spurts sparked by new instrumentation, but these are larger and more expensive. The world can now afford a space telescope, a global radio astronomy array, a Mars sample return mission and a gravitational wave antenna, but soon it will have to choose only one new instrument at a time. How will it make that choice?
Supernova
Or Graur MIT Press £13.99 PB
In Supernova, part of an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) book series, Or Graur explores the history and science behind these phenomena. As a researcher in the field, he is well-positioned and covers a lot in what was once a niche subject area, but which now has relevance to a broad swathe of astronomy and cosmology.
It begins with a brief history of supernovae observations, from ancient records to modern telescopes, followed by a bit of background science. We then learn how these phenomena tell us about the history of the Universe, our planet and maybe even life. It finishes with currently unanswered questions and what the future holds for the field of research.
The book is fairly factual and succeeds in meeting the remit of the series to provide ‘foundational knowledge’, though it is hard to find the author’s own voice if you prefer a personal touch. Interspersed through the text are references to endnotes. Most are further reading and those that contain additional bits of information get a bit lost, which is a shame as there’s some useful context included.
There’s no maths, but some of the figures are technical and suit a reader comfortable with graphs. This isn’t a book for beginners: the basics are covered, but sometimes oddly placed (for example, parsecs aren’t defined until Chapter 6), but there is a glossary. It’s a good choice for someone who knows a little about the subject and wants more detail. ★★★
A Little Book About The Big Bang
Tony Rothman Harvard University Press £19.95 HB
Cosmology is said to be the subject where physics and philosophy meet. It asks the really big questions about the origins of our Universe, its composition and evolution and why things are the way we see them today. The answers to these cosmological questions are often hotly disputed, and new theories are being developed and discoveries are being made almost daily. Indeed, to some of those questions pertaining to the birth and evolution of the Universe, the only answer is that we just don’t know… yet.
This book aims to guide both laymen and experts through the latest scientific thinking on the subject. Author Tony Rothman, a former physics teacher at Harvard, Princeton and New York universities, explains complex ideas clearly with useful analogies, some simple diagrams and very little mathematics, but there is no time to relax as he goes at a quick pace.
Each chapter is short but densely packed, so you really need to concentrate. The four forces of nature, relativity, inflation and the expansion of the Universe, dark matter and dark energy, universal crunches and bounces, Planck units, quantum gravity, multiverses and metaphysics are all dealt with in rapid succession.
Frustratingly, but perhaps understandably, as the book is aimed at both novices and seasoned cosmologists, when things get too tough, or where knowledge ends and we enter into areas of speculation, the author breaks off abruptly.
This book may look small in size but, much like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, on the inside it is so much bigger. ★★★★
NASA Missions to Mars
Piers Bizony Motorbooks International £35 HB
“There is life on Mars,” science fiction writer Ray Bradbury once quipped, “and it is us. We are the Martians!” Those words, uttered on the very day that NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft landed on the Red Planet in July 1976, furnished an early reminder that modern ‘life’ on Mars is entirely human-fashioned: robotic orbiters, landers, rovers and probes.
In the book NASA Missions to Mars, journalist Piers Bizony paints a beautiful portrait of this most Earth-like of worlds, capturing it through our past imaginations, our present knowledge and, tantalisingly, how it might become our next planetary home.
With a rousing introduction by A Man on the Moon’s Andrew Chaikin, the book traces humanity’s romance with the Red Planet from Percival Lowell’s ‘canals’ to HG Wells’s monstrous tripods. It also mentions Orson Welles’s notorious radio dramatisation of The War of the Worlds, which caused widespread panic about a Martian invasion when it was broadcast on Halloween night in 1938.
Supported by exquisite images, movie posters and photography, the book leads us through the realms of fantasy and science fiction into the stark realities of the Space Age and considers how each US-led mission has gradually peeled back the Red Planet’s mysterious veneer.
Bizony shows us the Red Planet as it truly is: windswept, dry and inhospitable, yet still harbouring clues of a wetter, life-nurturing past. And though the search for life remains a central tenet of this book, NASA Missions to Mars also has the feel of an unrequited love story. For as Chaikin lyrically waxes in his intro, as a youngster he fell in love with the world next door. As did we all. ★★★★★