Customer Reviews

The Day We Found the Universe

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the best review of how the universe was discovered in the first half of the 20th century; I haven't enjoyed a book like this since I read "The Red Limit" by Ferris back when I was just aspiring to become an astronomer. This book corrects the common misconception that Hubble, Hale and Einstein were the only players in a very convoluted story with many dead ends and false leads. I espically liked that V. M. Slipher, Heber Curtis and in particular Milton Humason (since I could identify with someone who spent uncountable hours in the observing room of a large telescope gathering data for astronomers), finally got at least some of the credit for what was clearly an international effort to reveal the true nature of the universe. A big thumbs up! Perhaps in the future Ms. Bartusiak will write about how humanity discovered the true nature, distances, and lives of the stars. joe caruso

It must be challenging for an author who is writing on scientific and technical matters to strike an ideal balance that will both captivate the scientific types as well as fascinate the general readers. As difficult as this may be, this author has succeeded admirably. Focusing mainly on that scientifically heady period from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, she relates the story of how astronomers (and some physicists) discovered the immensity of the universe. In addition to clearly explaining the important scientific challenges and breakthroughs, the author does a fabulous job on the all-important human element. Here we meet the cast of characters with all of their virtues and shortcomings. Of course, their mutual interrelations also make for interesting reading - most of these being very positive while some much less so. The writing style is clear, friendly, widely accessible and quite gripping. Although science buffs (especially astronomy buffs) will likely consider this book a real treat, any interested general reader can also thoroughly enjoy it thanks to the author's very limited use of jargon and her clear explanations for any unfamiliar terms.

I am an astronomy hobbyist with little math or science background. Through excellent podcasts such as Astronomy Cast and Professor Richard Pogue's lectures at Ohio State University I have gained a lot of factual and theoretical knowledge over the past couple of years (but the more I learn the more ignorant I feel). With this background gained, I was able to appreciate, learn from, and enjoy "The Day We found the Universe" while getting a fresh perspective of the history of astronomy. The most interesting part of the book for me was the discovery of the nature of variable stars such as the Cepheids. These stars turned out to be what author Marcia Bartusiak describes as the "Rosetta stone" in understanding the universe. The most striking stream of this book is that the discovery of multiple galaxies in a huge expanding universe was the result of at least two centuries of astronomical exploration rather than a light turned on by Edwin Hubble. While by no means denigrating the achievement of Hubble, Bartusiak proves that the greatest accomplishment of 20th century astronomy was a joint effort as many scientists built a foundation of small steps for Hubble to lay the final bricks. "The Day We Found the Universe fills a wonderful niche for hobbyists such as me. It is far from dumbed down, but steers clear of bogging down with too many technical details and mathematical formulas while teaching a lot and inspiring me with a hunger to deepen my understanding of the nature of universe.

This is an extremely interesting and unusually well-written book. It is a carefully researched, but very entertainingly presented, history of early astrophysics. The author describes most of the astronomers and astrophysicists of the late 19th and early 20th century. She presents arguments, calculations and/or observations they made that led to the discovery that many of the "fuzzy" objects seen in a dark sky are huge galaxies that lie outside of our Milky Way galaxy. The author writes with great style and with lots of detail about the individuals as well as their discoveries and arguments with each other. As a scientist, I was struck most of all by the huge amount of time someone like Hubble spent establishing that these other galaxies exist, how large they are and that the universe is expanding. We all remember the "Billions and Billions" phrases from early TV, but usually have no clue how many people spent their professional lives establishing these facts and dealing with those who had trouble accepting them.

The late 1800s and early 1900s were definitely a time of change in many areas, as everyone knows, including the field of astronomy. This book points out a number of amazing things that those of us living 80-100 years after the events of this book maybe don't think about. First of all, it wasn't that long ago that scientists didn't even know some basic things like the age and size of the universe, the existence of other galaxies and the origins of the cosmos. While there wasn't necessarily one day when it all came into focus, the events described in this book led to answers falling into places once Edwin Hubble published some of his findings, thus the title is interestingly appropriate in a number of ways. Second, when we think about events so long ago, they tend to blend together and we tend to focus on one or two landmark publications or facts, but as this book points out, some of the answers were only arrived at after years and decades of consideration by astronomers based on painstaking observations and calculations. It's not like Hubble looked into a telescope one day and saw something that instantly changed everything, even though he did discover something one day that eventually led to a resolution of many of the questions of his day. Most of the astronomers described in this book spent hours upon hours in cold domes photographing distant objects many times over the course of days, months and years. This book is not necessarily that different from many popular books on science in that it covers the history of discoveries by mixing the actual science with biographical material on the scientists. This book is special in that the mix is just right. The author doesn't go overboard with either the mundane details of the astronomers' personal lives or the complexities of the science. The book is somewhat dense, especially at the beginning and at times it's hard to keep track of who was working where at what time, but in the end it all comes together in a nice tapestry. One recurring theme in the book is how popular perceptions over time have tended to forget some of the key figures that did groundbreaking research and that some of these people could easily have taken the glory if a few other factors had turned out differently. The author even seems to suggest that the idea of a large universe made up of many galaxies could have been settled earlier perhaps if a few people had done things somewhat differently. As I read this book, I could easily visualize life as an astronomer in the early 1900s with the excitement of new telescopes and new areas for discovery coming on-line all the time. What's really nice about this book is that even though the main story ends with develpments in the 1930s and 1940s, the author finishes up by summarizing what happend to the various characters and institutions after that. Many of the places and telescopes instrumental in making these discoveries are still in operation and can be visited by anyone today. This is the kind of book that could inspire someone to become an astronomer. The characters in the story range from a guy with an 8th grade education who became one of Hubble's close associates, and women who were brought into some cataloging and calculating projects at a time when women had less opportunities on up to famous characters like Hubble and Einstein.

Well written. Ms Bartusiak organized the advances made by leading astronomers into very readable passages and rendered an overall view of how astronomers arrived at todays knowledge of our universe.
It is non-technical and very well suited to non-scientific readers who are interested in astronomy.
Highly recommended. Paul of Freedom, NH

This is one of the best intellectual histories ever written. The author covers the process by which astronomers discovered the scale of the universe. The personalities are vividly portrayed as are the scientific issues. Read this book.

We are led through an intimate wonderland of familiar faces representing the greatest thinkers of the cosmos. Pulling on the loose threads of early players, Bartusiak has created a platform from which we can see the farthest reaches of what we can observe, justifying what she researched while balancing precariously on the shoulders of giants. She leads us to believe that during each stage of discovery, the pioneers could not possibly have seen the larger picture. Only theorists who looked beyond their imagination could perceive that the grandest of schemes was even grander than even the giants knew.

Many people think that the greatest discoveries came from a magnificent awe, a sudden revelation that something magic pervaded the night sky. That's not how it came to be. It was the work of countless unknowns, charting and logging data for years and looking at the sky nightly. The culmination of the greatest investigators of the twentieth century directed us to think that the universe was grander than we could ever imagine. Viewing through the new 100-inch Lick Observatory telescope in the early part of the century, our first glimpse at Andromeda was vague and fuzzy, only hinting at what it might be. Observers in those days referred to galaxies as nebulae not knowing what else to call them. Other exotic real estate such as quasars, neutron stars, and black holes were not in the picture at all.

By 1995, when the space telescope named after the late Edwin Hubble, placated the theoretical physicists and haunted others, it began to validate theories by dazzling discoveries and awakening a fresh view of proposals made three-quarters of a century ago. The enormous scale of the universe could not have been imagined in the early days. It would be a full revelation to discover hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The Day We Found the Universe is a long one. It is a day that encompasses the twentieth century.

The author has uncovered the magnitude of the enormity of the universe by summoning these great minds together in a single volume and identifying them as leaders of the movement confirming we have indeed found the universe.

Readable, informative, and entertaining. One of the best books I've read revealing the
history of astronomy & astronomers over the past couple hundred years.

Highly recommended.

I can only add to the reviews already written that for me this book added to and put it all in order and told where, when, who of the great astronomical discoveries that I have read about in other books. Very well done.