parallax of, 130–131
spacecraft mission to, 370–371
transit of, 131, 132, 133, 135
Vinci, Leonardo da, 59, 67n, 381
Virtual particles, 351–352, 353
Weak nuclear force, 293, 294, 295, 296, 298
electromagnetism and, 315, 316–318, 326, 337, 345
quantum chromodynamics and, 312, 313
Weinberg, Steven, 313–314, 317–318, 321, 326, 331–332, 333, 334, 336
Wheeler, John Archibald, 346, 364, 365
White dwarf stars, 267, 268, 269
Wigner, Eugene, 273, 307, 308
Wilkinson, David, 391
Wilson, Robert, 213, 320, 322
WMAP, 391
W particles, 317, 318, 321–322, 326, 337, 345, 352–353, 356
Wren, Christopher, 112, 113
Wright, Thomas, 145–146, 147
X rays, 248, 293, 297
Yang, Chen Ning, 302, 309–310, 311, 312–313
Yang-Mills gauge field theory, 309–313
string theory and, 330
Zenith telescope, 137
Z particles, 317, 318, 321–322, 326, 337, 345, 352–353, 356
About the Author
TIMOTHY FERRIS, called “perhaps the best popular-science writer in the English language today” by the Christian Science Monitor and “the best science writer of his generation” by the Washington Post, is the bestselling author of Seeing in the Dark, The Whole Shebang, and The Red Limit, among other books. He has taught in five disciplines at four universities and is emeritus professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Books by Timothy Ferris
The Red Limit
Galaxies
SpaceSbots
The Practice of Journalism
(with Bruce Porter)
Coming of Age in the Milky Way
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1988 by William Morrow.
COMING OF AGE IN THE MILKY WAY. Copyright © 1988 by Timothy Ferris. Preface and Addendum to the Perennial edition copyright © 2003 by Timothy Ferris.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
First Anchor Books edition published 1989.
First Perennial edition published 2003.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-053595-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
09 RRD 10 9 8 7
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