Secrets of the Universe

by Paul Murdin

  space weather The influence of the solar wind on the terrestrial environment.

  Special Relativity Einstein’s theory of phenomena that are particularly noticeable when something is moving near the speed of light.

  spectroscopy The science of analysing spectra (see spectrum); hence ‘spectroscope’ and ‘spectrograph’, instruments that perform such analyses.

  spectrum The range of wavelengths across which an object emits radiation.

  spiral arm An outward-curving component of a spiral galaxy.

  spiral galaxy (spiral nebula) A galaxy of stars with a pronounced spiral pattern.

  splosh crater A crater on Mars that is surrounded by a lobed pattern, apparently produced by the impact of a meteorite falling on an area of fluidized mud.

  sporadic meteor A meteor that has no correlation with others seen at the same time; compare meteor shower.

  standard candle A star or other luminous phenomenon that has the same brightness in all circumstances and everywhere; used in astronomy to determine the distance to distant star clusters or galaxies.

  star cluster A cluster of stars, formed together at the same time and continuing to exist together.

  static (radio noise) An emission of radio energy across a broad band of frequencies.

  steady-state theory The theory that the Universe has been and always will be the same; see also continuous creation.

  sublimate The process by which a solid, as it warms, becomes directly a gas. Contrast with melt.

  sungrazer A comet that approaches very close to the Sun – in some cases so close that it entirely melts.

  supermassive black hole A black hole formed from the amalgamation of many stars.

  supernova A major stellar explosion that causes a particularly large burst of light and a much brighter than usual nova.

  supernova of Type I A supernova that shows no sign of hydrogen; in particular, a supernova of Type Ia, which is the explosion of a white dwarf.

  supernova of Type II A supernova involving hydrogen: the explosion of a massive star.

  tail In astronomy, the material ejected by a comet and pushed back behind the comet’s nucleus by radiation pressure and other forces emanating from the Sun.

  terrestrial planet A planet, such as the Earth, made of solids and having a solid surface; compare gas-giant planet.

  thermokarst A geological landform produced by the melting of a region of permafrost.

  time dilation An effect of relativity (see special relativity) that causes time to run slowly.

  Titius–Bode Law See Bode’s Law.

  torus A ring shape, like that of a doughnut with a hole in the middle.

  Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) An asteroid or comet that orbits beyond the planet Neptune; see Kuiper belt.

  Tychonic theory The theory, articulated by Tycho Brahe, that the Sun and Moon orbit the Earth, stationary at the centre of the Solar System, and the other planets orbit the Sun.

  unification theory A theory that various sorts of active galactic nuclei (see active galaxy) are all fundamentally the same structure seen from different angles.

  uniformitarianism In geology, the theory that geological formations are created incrementally; the geological equivalent of gradualism, as opposed to catastrophism.

  Universe The entirety of creation; the largest object of scientific investigation, studied through the methods of cosmology.

  vacuum energy See dark energy.

  Van Allen belts Zones of particle radiation (cosmic rays) that encircle the Earth, located in its magnetosphere.

  variable star A star that changes brightness, such as a Cepheid, a nova or a binary star that eclipses.

  weakly interacting massive particle (‘WIMP’) A hypothetical particle, not very interactive with others, that could contribute to the amount of dark matter in the Universe.

  white dwarf A small, hot star that supports itself by the pressure of degenerate matter in its core.

  X-ray binary star A double star, at least one member of which is an X-ray star.

  X-ray star A star that emits X-rays.

  X-rays Energetic radiation, a little less energetic than gamma rays.

  zodiac The constellations that lie along the ecliptic.

  Further Reading

  The following (English-language) books have been selected for the reading list because: they extend the historical stories recounted in this book; they provide rich material at an accessible level to amplify and explain the science of the discoveries that are explained; they are on similar material with high pictorial content; or they are works that are referred to repeatedly in the text and which are accessible to a general reader, at least in part.

  Books

  HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY

  Aratus of Soli. Phaenomena. Describes the classical (northern) constellations as largely used today.

  Galileo Galilei. Starry Messenger. Galileo describes the discoveries that he made with his first telescope.

  James Gleick. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin, 1988. A popular account of the history and theory of Chaos.

  Thomas Hockey (ed.). Biographical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers. Springer, 2nd edn 2014. Contains 1,900 entries, one on nearly every historical astronomer of any significance. Available online.

  Michael Hoskin (ed.). The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy. Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1996. Authoritative, well-illustrated and comprehensive, though necessarily a brief treatment of each topic.

  Michael Hoskin. The Herschel Partnership. Science History Publications, 2003. William viewed by Caroline.

  Walter Isaacson. Einstein. Simon & Schuster, 2007. His life and work.

  Stephen Jaki. The Milky Way: an Elusive Road for Science. Science History Publications, 1973. History of theories of the Milky Way.

  Robert Jungk. Brighter than a Thousand Suns. Harvest Books, 1970s. The history of the atomic scientists, including those who discovered nuclear fusion in stars.

  Henry King. History of the Telescope. Griffin, Sky Publishing, 1955. What the title says; comprehensive.

  Constance Lubbock. The Herschel Chronicle. Herschel Society, 2009 (reprint of the 1933 CUP edition). The family history, by William Herschel’s granddaughter.

  Simon Mitton. Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s life in science. Henry Joseph Press, 2005. An illuminating scientific biography of a controversial twentieth-century figure.

  Patrick Moore. The Planet Neptune: An Historical Survey before Voyager. Praxis, 1966. Popular stories and popular science, before the space-age discoveries.

  Joseph Needham. Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3, section 20, ‘The Sciences of the Heavens’. Cambridge University Press, 1959. The first and most comprehensive history of astronomy in China – now showing its age but an essential resource for anyone interested in this topic.

  Isaac Newton. Principia. Not an easy read, but the preface describes Newton’s outlook on science. Andrew Motte’s English translation of 1846 is freely available online.

  Colin Ronan. Galileo. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974. The man and the astronomy.

  Otto Struve and Velta Zebergs. Astronomy of the 20th Century. Macmillan, 1962. The half century in which the astrophysics of the stars and galaxies began, authentic science by a participant.

  Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield. The Fabric of the Heavens. Hutchinson, 1961. Cosmology from Babylonian and Greek classical times to Newton.

  Richard S. Westfall. Never at Rest: A biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge University Press, 1980. The definitive biography; a big read.

  GENERAL ASTRONOMY

  Daniel Fischer and Hilmar Duerbeck. Hubble Revisited. Copernicus Springer, 1998. Pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the science.

  Stephen P. Maran. Astronomy for Dummies. Wiley, 1999. Astronomy at a basic level, clear and comprehensive.

  Jacqueline Mitton. Cambridge Illustrated Dictionary of Astronomy. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Accessible, complete and comprehensive. If the term
is not in the glossary of the present book, it is likely to be in this one.

  Paul Murdin and Margaret Penston (eds). The Firefly (Canopus) Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. Firefly (Canopus), 2003. Condensed version of The Encyclopaedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics, suitable for the more general reader.

  Paul Murdin (ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Nature Macmillan, 2001. Comprehensive at professional level, accessible. Contains definitions, short biographies and historical articles. Available online.

  COSMOLOGY

  Peter Coles. Cosmology. Oxford University Press, 2001. A very short introduction, by a well-known cosmology teacher.

  Martin Rees. Before the Beginning. Simon & Schuster, 1988. Why the universe is like it is, by one of the world’s leading astronomers.

  Martin Rees. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe. Phoenix, 2000. Other reasons why the universe is like it is.

  Joseph Silk. A Short History of the Universe. Scientific American Library, 1997. Introduction to cosmology for the general reader by a renowned cosmologist.

  Simon Singh. The Big Bang. Fourth Estate, 2004. Accessible history and science of cosmology by a mathematician known for his popular-science writing.

  George Smoot and Keay Davidson. Wrinkles in Time. Little, Brown & Co., 1993. First-person account of the discovery of the fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background.

  STARS, NEBULAE, GALAXIES

  James Kaler. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Stars. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

  Robert P. Kirshner. The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos. Princeton Science Library, 2004. Supernovae and cosmology by someone intimately involved in the science.

  Sun Kwok. Cosmic Butterflies. Cambridge University Press, 2001. The colourful mysteries of planetary nebulae explained by an astrophysicist.

  Brian May, Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. Bang! Carlton, 2006. Modern astronomy by two astronomers and an astronomer turned rock legend (in the band Queen) turned astronomer again.

  Fulvio Melia. The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy. Princeton University Press, 2003. Our not-so-supermassive black hole.

  Paul Murdin and Lesley Murdin. Supernovae. Cambridge University Press, 1985. The science, the history, the place in literature of supernovae.

  Paul Murdin. End in Fire. Cambridge University Press, 1990. Supernova 1987A.

  Govert Schilling. Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy. Belknap Press, 2017. Buckle up for a breathtaking ride through the science.

  THE SUN AND THE TERRESTRIAL MAGNETOSPHERE

  Robert H. Eather. Majestic Lights. American Geophysical Union, 1979. The aurora in science, history and the arts.

  Kenneth Lang (ed.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Sun. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Comprehensive and well-illustrated account of the science.

  Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak and Ken Willcox. Totality. Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 2008. Everything about solar eclipses.

  PLANETS

  David M. Harland. Water and the Search for Life on Mars. Springer Praxis, 2004. Mars exploration.

  David M. Harland. Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions. Springer Praxis, 1999. What happened, and what science was brought back.

  Kenneth Lang, The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System. Cambridge University Press, 2003. The Solar System in the space era.

  Kristin Leutwyler. Moons of Jupiter. W. W. Norton, 2003. Stunning pictures, informative text.

  Dana Mackenzie. The Big Splat. Wiley, 2003. How our moon came to be.

  Paul Murdin. Full Meridian of Glory. Springer Copernicus, 2009. The size and shape of the Earth.

  Paul Murdin. Rock Legends. Springer, 2016. Asteroids.

  COMETS AND METEORS

  Kathleen Mark. Meteorite Craters. University of Arizona Press, 1987. History of terrestrial craters.

  O. Richard Norton. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Comprehensive and well-illustrated account of the science.

  Roberta Olsen. Fire and Ice. Walker & Co., 1985. A history of comets in art.

  Nancy Southgate. A Grand Obsession: Daniel Moreau Barringer and his Crater. Barringer Crater Co., 2002.

  Donald Yeomans. Comets. Wiley, 1991. A chronological history of observation, science, myth and folklore.

  RADIO AND X-RAY ASTRONOMY, PULSARS, BLACK HOLES

  David H. Clark. The Quest for SS433. Viking, 1995. First-hand account of a scientific discovery in radio, optical and X-ray astronomy.

  Kitty Ferguson. Prisons of Light. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Black holes in stars and galaxies.

  Geoff McNamara. Clocks in the Sky. Springer Praxis, 2008. The story of pulsars.

  W. T. Sullivan III. The Early Years of Radio Astronomy. Cambridge University Press, 1984. Reflections fifty years after Jansky’s discovery by the founders of radio astronomy.

  W. Tucker and Riccardo Giacconi. The X-ray Universe. Harvard University Press, 1983. Inside the start of X-ray astronomy.

  Gerrit L. Verschuur. The Invisible Universe Revealed. Springer, 1987. The story of radio astronomy, by a radio astronomer.

  EXOPLANETS AND EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

  Barrie Jones. Life in the Solar System and Beyond. Springer Praxis, 2004.

  Michel Mayor and Pierre-Yves Frei. New Worlds in the Cosmos: The Discovery of Exoplanets. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Direct-from-the-scientist account of the discovery of the first exoplanets, spoilt by a rather poor translation.

  Michael Perryman. The Exoplanet Handbook. Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 2018.

  Elizabeth Tasker. The Planet Factory: Exoplanets and the Search for a Second Earth. Bloomsbury Sigma, 2017. The story.

  Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. Rare Earth. Springer Copernicus Books, 2000. Why complex life is uncommon in the universe.

  Journals

  A number of journals provide material of the same sort as the books above, and their back issues are worth browsing. Their websites offer a certain amount of free material, but it is a lucky dip.

  Astronomy. A popular US-based astronomy journal (monthly).

  Astronomy and Geophysics. The journal of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society (bimonthly).Astronomy Now. A popular UK-based astronomy journal (monthly).

  Journal for Astronomical History and Heritage. Australian-based (3 issues per year), authoritative.

  Journal for the History of Astronomy. UK-based (4 issues per year), authoritative.

  Mercury. The magazine of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (4 issues per year, digital only).

  New Scientist. UK-based magazine covering the whole of science at an accessible level (weekly).

  Scientific American. US-based magazine for the whole of science in which professional scientists write in well-edited articles about front-line research at an accessible level (monthly).

  Sky and Telescope. US-based magazine for astronomy enthusiasts, with a high editorial standard (monthly). News, sky-watching, science, history.

  Websites

  The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS). http://adswww.harvard.edu

  One of the most valuable sources of astronomical research literature, very little known outside the professional community, although freely available. Not only does it contain bibliographic entries on virtually the entirety of astronomy, in many cases the full original articles are accessible. There are extensive volumes of older material, and everything is text-searchable. Most of the entries are professional research articles, but there are also obituaries, review articles and other more accessible material.

  Nobel Prize

  http://nobelprize.org/

  The site contains extensive material including citations and autobiographies of Nobel Prize winners.

  Kavli prize

  http://www.kavliprize.no/

  The Kavli Prize has been established to cover fields outside the Nobel Prize and includes astrophysics. Th
e site contains citations and biographies, but the Prize is newly established and the number of recipients is relatively small.

  Astronomiae Historiae

  http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/astoria.html

  Website for the history of astronomy, showing its age but still useful. The site includes a comprehensive list of journals that publish the history of astronomy.

  Hubble Space Telescope

  http://hubblesite.org/. Highlights from the Hubble Space Telescope. There is an archive of press releases, and a gallery of pictures, including the spectacular Hubble Heritage collection, as well as sections on the telescope, astronomy and the HST’s telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope.

  NASA Science programmes

  https://science.nasa.gov/

  A portal to all the science missions run now or in the past by NASA.

  ESA Science programmes

  http://sci.esa.int/home/

  A portal to ESA’s science missions, past or present.

  European Southern Observatory

  http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/pressmedia/index.html

  Scientific discoveries made with ESO’s telescopes.

  National Radio Astronomy Observatory

  http://www.nrao.edu/index.php/learn

  The world of radio astronomy.

  Wikipedia

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomy

  Astronomy is one of the higher-quality sections of Wikipedia, an amazing resource that can be freely edited by anyone, and is thus kept up to date by enthusiasts.

  Astronomy Picture of the Day

  http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

  Virtually an astronomy course through spectacular pictures, one a day since 1995.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Robin Rees for his involvement with our recent book projects, including an extensive dialogue and picture research for this one; it is fun to work with him, as I have done for half a lifetime. Robin and I are especially grateful to Peter Hingley for his advice and assistance in researching images for the book. I would also like to thank the team at Thames & Hudson, a demanding, talented and hardworking group of people, including Ian Jacobs, Flora Spiegel, Gareth Walker, Avni Patel, Jo Walton and Philip Collyer; it has been a rewarding education to work with them, and the book is much better because of their participation. Finally, I would like to thank the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University Library and Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, and the Royal Astronomical Society for their support, especially from the libraries, while I worked on this book and other projects for the last several years.