OUR HISTORIC QUEST TO CHART THE HORIZONS OF SPACE AND TIME
Suppose you and I still wondered whether all of the pinpoints of light in the night sky are the same distance from us. Suppose none of our contemporaries could tell us whether the Sun orbits the Earth, or vice versa, or even how large the Earth is. Suppose no one had guessed there are mathematical laws underlying the motions of the heavens.
How would . . . how did . . . anyone begin to discover these numbers and these relationships without leaving the Earth? What made anyone even think it was possible to find out “how far,” without going there?
In Measuring the Universe we join our ancestors and contemporary scientists as they tease this information out of a sky full of stars. Some of the questions have turned out to be loaded, and a great deal besides mathematics and astronomy has gone into answering them. Politics, religion, philosophy and personal ambition . . . all have played roles in this drama.
There are poignant personal stories, of people like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Herschel, and Hubble. Today scientists are attempting to determine the distance to objects near the borders of the observable universe, far beyond anything that can be seen with the naked eye in the night sky, and to measure time back to its origin. The numbers are too enormous to comprehend.
Nevertheless, generations of curious people have figured them out, one resourceful step at a time. Progress has owed as much to raw ingenuity as to technology, and frontier inventiveness is still not out of date.
• • • • • • REVIEWS • • • • • •
“Kitty Ferguson brings a lively, infectiously enthusiastic tone and historical perspective to measuring the universe. How are these measurements made? What are the challenges? Why are these issues interesting and fundamental to understanding the universe? These are some of the questions addressed in this very readable and enjoyable book.”
— Wendy Freedman, Carnegie Observatories
“Music, more than any of the other arts, is expressed in numbers – measurements of differences in pitch and time. I’m no scientist, but I know what I like, and I found Measuring the Universe exciting, entertaining, and even enthralling.”
— Peter Schickele, “the discoverer of P.D.Q. Bach”
”Modern bookshelves are filled with stories of cosmic discovery. Occasionally, however, an author comes along who dares to describe how science works, who dares to find its underbelly and remind us that the romance and pleasure of cosmic discoveries lies not necessarily in experimental results but in the journey of measurements that led to them. Such an author is Kitty Ferguson, a musician turned science writer, who is distinguished as one who can explain complex things – from the life and times of cosmic objects like black holes to the life and times of cosmic physicists such as Stephen Hawking.”
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City
“With a lyricism that might be expected of a writer who is also a professional musician, Ferguson takes us on a fascinating voyage through science history.”
— San Jose Mercury News
Ferguson takes readers on a journey through time and thought . . . . Sure to entertain and engage armchair astronomers.”
— Astronomy
“Ferguson turns men of science into men of fascination.”
— Evening Standard
• • • • • • TABLE OF CONTENTS • • • • • •
- TILTING WITH WINDMILLS (1951)
2. A SPHERE WITH A VIEW (400-100 B.C.)
The Intellectual Spoils of War … A Sunlit Well at Syene …
Aristarchus of Samos … Hipparchus of Nicaea
3. HEAVENLY REVOLUTIONS (100-1600 A.D.)
The Ptolemaic Carnival … Nicolaus Copernicus …
Moving the Earth … Undermining the Ptolemaic Universe
4. DRESSING UP THE NAKED EYE (1564-1642)
“Skybound was the mind” … The “Starry Messenger” …
“Eppur Si Muove” … Weighed in the Balance
5. AN ORBIT WITH A VIEW (1630-1900)
The Enormous Advantage of Being in Two Places at Once …
Deciphering Distant Light … The Triumph of Celestial Mechanics …
Reading Between the Lines
6. UPSCALE ARCHITECTURE (1750-1958)
No End in Sight … The Capture of Light …
The Cepheid Yardstick … From Nebulae to Galaxies
7. COMING APART IN ALL DIRECTIONS (1929-1992)
The Long-Delayed Demise of Constancy and Stability …
Beyond the Rainbow … The Big Bang Rakes in the Chips …
Confronting a Gordian Knot
8. DECIPHERING ANCIENT LIGHT (1946-1999)
The Sputnik Legacy … Outside the Milky Way …
The Milky Way … Mapping the Universe … From Here to Infinity
9. THE QUEST FOR OMEGA (1930-1999)
More Than Meets the Eye … A Glitch in Time …
Einstein’s “Blunder” Revisited … A Theory Struggles to Cope
10. LOST HORIZONS
When Time is Space … The Observable Universe Grows Tiny …
A Labyrinth of Universes
11. MAGNIFICENT ENIGMA
12. NOTES, GLOSSARY, INDEX