Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe: And Our Place Within It

by Andrew Newsam

Overview

An awe-inspiring guide to the Cosmos – and to how we exist within it. 

The universe is a beautiful, awe-inspiring place - from glowing nebulae to the sweeping majesty of the Milky Way, from complex cloud patterns on Jupiter to the rippling curtains of aurorae. But many of us struggle to grasp the complex ideas and science behind it all, or to see how it relates to our everyday lives. In Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe, Professor Andrew Newsam draws on his vast expertise to show us what's going on beyond the limits of our planet, from our solar system to distant galaxies - and what this tells us about our own place in this vast expanse. Will our explorations of our neighboring planets reveal life or a new place to settle? What happens inside black holes? Is dark matter real? Would a solar flare have a devastating effect on our planet? Could we do anything to prevent being wiped out by an approaching asteroid? What can observations of stars reveal about our origins - and our future? A brilliantly vivid and enlightening guide to the incredible phenomena of outer space - and to ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783966493
Publisher:	Elliott & Thompson
Publication date:	01/01/2023
Edition description:	Second edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Andrew Newsam is a Professor of Astronomy Education and Engagement at Liverpool John Moores University. After studying cosmology at Glasgow University, and working as an observational astronomer at the University of Southampton, he joined LJMU in 1998 to help set up the educational arm of the Liverpool Telescope, which later became the National Schools' Observatory, one of the largest astronomy education projects in the world. As well as astronomical research and education he is a keen science communicator, giving talks to many thousands of schoolchildren, amateur astronomers, and the general public.

Read an Excerpt

LOOKING OUT FROM EARTH It is a cold, clear, moonless night eight millennia ago. There are no lights – no fires nearby, not even a distant glow on the horizon from the long-set Sun – and above you stretches the astonishing night sky: the twinkling points of stars, the mysterious pearly glow of the Milky Way, the brief streak and flash of a shooting star glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. What are you thinking as you look up?
      From our modern standpoint it is perhaps hard to imagine. We have replaced much ignorance with knowledge – we understand the vast distances of space, the complexity of the objects that fill it and have even begun to examine the blackness between the stars. But what we have not lost, I think, is the awe.
      Scientists are often accused of ‘taking the beauty out of nature’, but I cannot agree. No matter how much I learn about the universe, no matter how far advanced telescopes let me explore beyond the limitations of my eyes, I never cease to be amazed by the astonishing beauty, intricacy and scope of the universe. As Keats said, beauty is truth, not ignorance, and the more truth we find, the more we will appreciate the beauty.
      Indeed, that beauty is one of the richest joys of being an astronomer. Sometimes the objects we see in the sky are themselves astonishingly artistic – from glowing nebulae to the sweeping majesty of the Milky Way itself, from complex cloud patterns on Jupiter to the rippling curtains of aurorae. But there is also the beauty that comes from discovery itself. I have spent many nights at telescopes, tired, often cold and usually with a headache from the effects of altitude, but it is always worth it for those moments when I see something new. On one occasion it was a patch of the sky that had never been observed in such detail before and which contained thousands of previously unknown galaxies.*     
      Another time it was a simple, unexpected kink in the trace from a spectrograph. But the feeling is always the same – a wonderful, tight, warm sensation that you are on the edge of finding out something new and adding a tiny new grain to the mountain of ‘truth’.
      And the more truth we find out about the skies, the more we can understand our own planet and our place in the universe. This has not been easy; astronomy stands slightly outside the other sciences. During the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment – while what we now call physics, chemistry and biology were making rapid leaps as increasingly sophisticated experiments were devised – astronomical research still came down to a simple question: can we explain what we see when we look up at the sky at night?
      The distinction here is important. The vast majority of science is driven by experimentation. Theories and hypotheses are proposed, predictions made and experiments created to test those predictions. From the results, the theory can be refined and further tests proposed, better experiments devised and so on. Unfortunately, this approach does not really work for astronomy. Standard methods of experimentation are not usually possible – a chemist can use a Bunsen burner to heat some chemicals, but astronomers cannot do the same to the Sun to see what will happen.* Astronomy, therefore, is not so much experimental as it is about seeing, observing – about looking up.
      So how have we progressed from our ‘primitive’ observations of the night sky – peopled with gods, monsters and heroes – to our modern understanding?
 

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Introduction vii
1. Looking out from Earth 1
2. The Sun as a star 31
3. The Solar System 47
4. Stars 99
5. Galaxies 127
6. The Big Bang 165
Appendix: Facts and figures 191
Index 199

Editorial Reviews

"Unpatronizing, direct and comprehensible." —BBC Sky at Night Magazine

From the Publisher