Twenty Worlds: The Extraordinary Story of Planets Around Other Stars

by Niall Deacon

Overview

Thirty years ago, the only planets we knew were the ones orbiting our own sun; we now know of thousands of other worlds orbiting distant stars. In this book, astronomer Niall Deacon journeys to twenty of these globes: from giant, blisteringly hot planets orbiting close to their parent stars to planets that float through the cold wilderness of space alone, and from dead stars shredding asteroids to worlds made of diamond—and even planets that may be similar to the Earth. Deacon also takes in the latest exoplanet discoveries and explains how astronomers have come to learn so much about these strange and distant worlds. Twenty Worlds tells a sweeping story, of real planets around other stars, and it will fascinate a universe of fans of popular science and astronomy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789143386
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Series:	Universe
Edition description:	New edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Niall Deacon is an astronomy researcher and writer and lives in Heidelberg, Germany. His research focuses on failed stars called brown dwarfs and giant planets orbiting other stars.

Table of Contents

Preface 7

Introduction: An Ordered Family Portrait 9

Alien Worlds

1 A World beyond Expectation 18

2 A World Obscuring 26

3 A Tempestuous World 34

4 A Glimmer of Atmosphere 40

5 A World in Reverse 47

Towards Earth

6 A Flash from Darkness 56

7 A World You Can't Set Your Watch By 64

8 A Contrasting Sibling 73

9 A World Like Ours? 82

Birth

10 An Unseen Embryo 92

11 A World through the Blur 99

12 An Ember Spat from a Fire 108

13 A Lonely Planet 116

14 A Dreich World? 124

Life

15 A Cursed World 132

16 A World that's Just Right? 141

17 A World Bombarded 149

Death

18 A Dark Cloak of Death 158

19 A World Torn Asunder 163

20 A Diamond Born from Death 171

Epilogue: Yet More Worlds 180

Appendix: The Twenty Worlds 186

References 191

Acknowledgements 203

Photo Acknowledgements 204

Index 205

Editorial Reviews

"This is a truly entertaining and informative book, but the reason I’m giving it the full five stars has as much to do with the refreshing novelty of the author’s style as anything else. There’s novelty in the subject-matter too—the wide variety of recently discovered exoplanets orbiting other stars. . . . He’s a professional astronomer too, though you wouldn’t guess that from his writing style, which is as straightforward and lucid as science writing gets."

PopularScience.co.uk

"Twenty Worlds describes planets beyond our solar system. Though long imagined in science fiction novels and films, these 'exoplanets' have only been discovered since the 1990s. Author Deacon, an expert on this topic affiliated at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, writes in a conversational manner that is far different from the stiff exposition of a science textbook. Yet he conveys as much about how astronomers deduce the physical and chemical properties of exoplanets as he does about the planets themselves. While thousands of exoplanets are now known, Deacon's text comprises only twenty short chapters, each devoted to a single planet, or to a solar system of planets orbiting around their own sun. These are not necessarily the most interesting or unusual planets, but each one is exploited to introduce one method or another by which researchers have deduced the nature of objects of its type, such as their size, mass, and orbit, or whether they are rocky, gaseous, atmosphere-bearing, aqueous, possibly habitable, or even perhaps composed of diamond. The reader who sets out to enjoy a popular account may end up with a serious understanding . . . of these alien worlds. Recommended."

Choice

"This is the perfect book to introduce exoplanet science. . . . But Twenty Worlds is not really for those who want to find out more about any one of the planets covered. Rather it reveals what each of them represents to the field in general. Its real value is in the analogies that Deacon uses to clarify difficult and complex exoplanetary scientific methods to the reader. Nowhere will you find a more descriptive book to understand the processes used to learn about the existence of these worlds. Five stars."

BBC Sky at Night Magazine

This is an attractive, well-produced book providing much information about new and exciting discoveries being achieved by good old-fashioned astronomical methods, albeit highly sophisticated. It is refreshingly free from the dilemmas existing in other areas of cosmology—wave/particle duality, string theory, multiverses, et cetera—and I recommend it as well worth reading by any interested layman (who doesn’t feel too strongly about Pluto).

Observatory Magazine

"With thousands of exoplanets currently known, it must be a daunting task to choose twenty of them to highlight. Yet, that is exactly what Deacon sets out to do. The book, rather than presenting a cornucopia of bizarre exoplanets (and there are many of them out there), uses a curated sample of twenty exoplanets to tell a story about how these systems are detected, studied and what they can tell us about the birth, evolution and even death of planets, as well as their interaction with their host stars. The sheer diversity of the exoplanets detected poses a fascinating challenge to planet-formation theorists and exoplanet observers alike."

Nature Astronomy

"With Deacon's book we not only see that there are a multitude of worlds out there, but the variety and conditions in which they were born are as strange as we could hope to imagine. They all have individual characteristics, some similar to our own family, others bizarrely different. His choice of worlds, I feel, has been carefully done, to show the known variety in the family of discovered planets. . . . Deacon's style of writing is easy to follow and keeps the reader interested throughout. . . . The book was very enjoyable to read and the 200 pages kept the reader wanting more, I genuinely felt I was both entertained and informed."

Physics Education

"A wonderfully enjoyable tour of twenty diverse worlds that orbit distant stars. Deacon uses simple ideas from science to show us how each world has its own personality—its own story. Twenty Worlds is an accessible introduction to some of the most exciting discoveries in astronomy."

Michael E. Summers

"This is a truly entertaining and informative book, but the reason I’m giving it the full five stars has as much to do with the refreshing novelty of the author’s style as anything else. There’s novelty in the subject-matter too—the wide variety of recently discovered exoplanets orbiting other stars. . . . He’s a professional astronomer too, though you wouldn’t guess that from his writing style, which is as straightforward and lucid as science writing gets."

Popular Science (UK)