The book begins: "To the rocket scientist, you are the problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. The book begins: "To the rocket scientist, you are the problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You are unpredictable. You're inconstant. You take weeks to fix."
The remainder of the book is just as good. It deals with the human aspects of spaceflight -- most of them a function of being in a confined space, zero gravity, and outside of you the void. The chapters focus on different issues. One is on going to the bathroom in space, which turns out to be remarkably complicated -- gravity is both how your body knows you need to urinate and also how excrement makes it's way out. Another is one eating in space -- and the problems of crumbs floating around in zero gravity, getting in people's eyes, noses, and fouling up equipment. Other chapters are isolation chambers on earth where people train for space, the Japanese method of psychologically screening potential astronauts (they examine their origami), the careers of famous chimp astronauts, the role of cadavers in crash tests, and training for ultra-high altitude escapes.
The limitation of the book is sometimes it is overly "reported," with extended descriptions of how the author visited such and such facility, who she met, what she found, etc. The author at times seems too taken by her own humor and riffs. Some of the tangents are interesting but there are too many of them for my taste. But these are minor flaws compared to a fascinating book that will forever change the way you see space travel....more
This is a well written, well organized book on the Large Hadron Collider that is now operating at CERN. The five chapter titles pretty much tell you wThis is a well written, well organized book on the Large Hadron Collider that is now operating at CERN. The five chapter titles pretty much tell you what you'll get out of the book: (1) What We Know: The Standard Model; (2) What We Guess: Theories We Want to Test; (3) How We Do It: The Large Hadron Collider; (4) How We See It: The Enormous Detectors; and (5) Where We're Going: The Big Picture, the Universe, and the Future.
It is written by a practicing physicist who writes well and uses lots of diagrams. About half of the book is "new" in that it focuses on the technical and engineering aspects of the LHC and isn't repeated in lots of other popular science books. The other half of the book is a review of the standard model and other theories the LHC is expected to test. These are somewhat terse and not hugely in depth but well presented and focused and directed very much towards the issues that the LHC will be able to explore.
Notably, while the book goes through supersymmetry, preons (the hypothesized particles that make up quarks), various speculations on dark energy, MACHOs, WIMPs, etc., the phrase "string theory" does not appear once in the book itself (it is in one of the quotes in Leon Lederman's excellent preface). Which tells you something about its relationship to experiment....more
A workmanlike biography of a workmanlike figure. This biography focuses on William Herschel and his sister Caroline. Their major accomplishment was thA workmanlike biography of a workmanlike figure. This biography focuses on William Herschel and his sister Caroline. Their major accomplishment was the discovery of Uranus, the first new planet to be discovered since around the time of the Babylonians. Although I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Herschel was neither the first to see it and that even after months of detailed observations he thought it was a small, near-by comet -- and only after others decided it was a planet did he go along. In addition to being a keen observer, Herschel was also a top-notch instrument maker and a theoretician.
It's not entirely obvious that it is the fault of the biographer (Michael Lemonick), but somehow the book is not as interesting as one might have hoped. It spends too much time on Herschel's early life as a court musician, which is not really informative about his future scientific pursuits nor is it a topic that is intrinsically interesting enough to justify spending much time reading. Lemonick is good on the science and context, but somehow that too ends up not being overly exciting or revealing.
But none of these are obvious faults or flaws, just not the highest priority book I would recommend reading....more
Not the book for me and I'm not exactly sure who it is for. I was hoping for a book about astrobiology. I got that. But also got short introduction toNot the book for me and I'm not exactly sure who it is for. I was hoping for a book about astrobiology. I got that. But also got short introduction to just about everything in science, whether or not it was relevant to the topic, from dark matter to evolution to geology to the multiverse. As a result I didn't learn much.
That said, the book is comprehensive and the chapters on the solar system and the search for extra solar planets are reasonably interesting....more
The table of contents was not promising. The book promises the ten "most" beautiful experiments but doesn't have Rutherford discovering the nucleus? BThe table of contents was not promising. The book promises the ten "most" beautiful experiments but doesn't have Rutherford discovering the nucleus? But it does have Galvani chopping up frogs to find out if they transmit electricity.
But as I read, I came to appreciate Johnson's idiosyncratic selections. Rather than reading the Nth treatment of classic experiments, he presents some very interesting and well-told vignettes. Especially of Galvani and the frogs. And Pavlov, who turns out to have loved his dogs.
Still, some of the vignettes, like Harvey Lavosier, were less engaging. And at some point, and this is a comment about the entire science history genre, you just do not want to spend the amount of effort the books requires to try to understand theories of two fluids pumped by the heart, phlogiston, and caloric just to learn how they were discovered to be wrong.
A final thought: someone should write a book on ten experiments that failed -- and discovered something much more important as a result. Michelson and Morley would be in it, not sure the other nine, which is why someone should write it....more
It would be quite pleasant to spend an evening in the company of Segre. Although I enjoyed Faust in Copenhagen more, this conveyed much of the same paIt would be quite pleasant to spend an evening in the company of Segre. Although I enjoyed Faust in Copenhagen more, this conveyed much of the same passion and interest. Exploring the role of temperature in everything from biology to oosmology was an interesting concept. It makes me want to read a book on archaea....more
This is a very good book for somebody, just not for me. It is well written and Hooper conveys enthusiasm. But I was hoping for an up-to-date book thatThis is a very good book for somebody, just not for me. It is well written and Hooper conveys enthusiasm. But I was hoping for an up-to-date book that focused exclusively on dark matter and dark energy. Instead most of this book is devoted to necessarily superficial pop science review of general relativity, quantum mechanics, supersymmetry, string theory, and cosmology. As a result there wasn't much that was new to me. Although I did learn one interesting new fact: Ladbrokes was taking bets on the discovery of the Higgs Boson by 2010, putting the odds at six-to-one. If only there was an Intrade market....more
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