20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
almost, July 20, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Echo of the Big Bang (Hardcover)
Don't be put off by the size and modest production of of this book. This is extrememly well written. There is an honest attempt here to communicate as clearly as possible to the general public. Yes, given the quality of the writing there should have been more diagrams and more money spent in promoting it, but this book is still much better than anything Hawking has written for the general public and certainly much better than Smoot's ...effort on COBE. But it is too short and I wish the author had spent more time on the history of earlier attempts to measure the CMB. I think he was afraid of boring his audience, but I think a little more technical and scientific detail, maybe even a few equations, might have made things clearer. Also towards the end the author introduces ekpyrotic universes without much clarity and he is not very clear on the actual nature of the "acoustic" peaks except to say that they were expected to be seen if the universe was finite and curved...which it apparently is not. Excellent general discussion of the engineering problems involved in actually trying to build something. No book is perfect but if you are interested in the WMAP this is well worth buying. There are several other experiment going up in the future....a European MAP, an infrared background radiation scanner, as well as a series of polarization mappers and gravitational wave detectors. I hope the author stays on this beat because in my opinion he is one of the best science writers for the general public that I have read.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Do you see what I hear?, January 30, 2004
This review is from: Echo of the Big Bang (Hardcover)
Michael Lemonick's 'Echo of the Big Bang' is a very interesting text that weaves some of the recent history and personality of science into one of the more interesting astrophysical discoveries of modern times.
The last chapter of the book is the one that those readers looking for the 'science' will want to read most, for it contains the summary of the findings of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001. The probe collected data for over a year, looking for the signature of the Big Bang - the background radiation in the universe (Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, or CMB) that was variously discovered and misinterpreted until the 1960s. The probe's findings could be summaries in five key numbers:
1) the universe is 13.7 billion years old
2) Ordinary atoms make up 4.4 percent of the universe
3) Dark matter makes up a surprising 23 percent of matter in the universe
4) The Hubble constant (the rate of expansion per distance) is 71 kilometers per second per megaparsec (in other words, the further out, the fast the expansion)
5) Stars began 'turning on' in the universe 200 million years after the start, much earlier than expected
Okay, so these are fairly simple observations. What do they mean and why are they important?
Lemonick's book takes a longer view toward astrophysical cosmology (as opposed to the more philsophical and theological kinds) - this is a relatively new branch of one of the oldest sciences. Astronomy has been important since the earliest days of literate humanity, and possibly even precedes literacy - charting the stars for theological/religious/superstitious reasons as well as practical reasons (seasons, time keeping) have always been important. However, it has only been since the Enlightenment that major attention has been given to analysing the different components of the sky, and while broad-based interest in the constitution of the universe has been present in philosophical an intellectual history, it has only been since the twentieth century that science has taken on the task of explaining the large-scale structure of the universe. This has led to many fascinating turns, many of which have played out in the popular press, like the astronomic struggle between the Steady State theory and the Big Bang theory.
Lemonick recounts the various near-miss discoveries of the CMB radiation, particularly the various Bell Lab accounts, the various mis-diagnoses from observational astronomers around the world, and finally efforts from ground-based and satellite/above-atmosphere observations to lead to the inescapable conclusion that, whatever it was, there was something out there creating fairly general and stable readings on various instrumentation.
The greater part of the text deals with the formation of the latest mission, which led to the discoveries listed above. Detailing the planning, the formation of the team of researchers, the budgetary issues, the set-backs due to changing NASA priorities and fortunes, and the personality quirks and conflicts that inevitably arise in projects, this is a fascinating glimpse of the human side of the scientific enterprise. The formation of how scientists even decide what to look for and how to look for it is interesting in and of itself; sometimes the scientific process doesn't seem so, well, scientific. How could it be, being run by scientists who are first human beings?
Lemonick also shows some of the aftermath of the discoveries (still a bit new at the time of the writing of this text, or of this review) - he references John Horgan's assertion that all the important discoveries of science have been made; I cannot help but think here of similar statements being made at the end of the nineteenth century, when active speculation about closing patent offices existed as 'everything that can be invented already has been'; history has a sense of irony in that it was a patent clerk (Einstein) who would prove this to be an example of classical physic's hubris. But Lemonick explains the emphasis in astronomy is already shifting; more headlines are made from discovering possible planets around neighbouring stars than grand theoretical constructs or larger-scale explanations. Where science really goes next, in the next decade, is a mystery; much more so is the direction for the next century and beyond.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent writing on a fascinating subject, July 4, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Echo of the Big Bang (Hardcover)
The main theme of this book is the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). In the first half of the book, the author discusses early predictions of the existence of CMB, its eventual discovery and interpretation as well as attempts at measuring its structure, in particular, the cosmic background explorer (COBE) mission. The second half of the book concentrates on the microwave anisotropy probe (MAP) project which also attempts to measure the CMB structure but with much greater resolution that COBE. The human aspects of the story are also well covered, clearly indicating that scientists, too, are indeed very human. The science and technology is explained probably as well as can be explained in a book of this size for a general audience; however, I feel that a big plus would have been the inclusion of a few extra diagrams to complement the text by more clearly illustrating how one can come to all the presented conclusions about the universe by simply looking at the MAP results. But despite this minor shortcoming, I feel that the book still deserves 5 stars since it is exciting and well-written, and gives the reader a sense of what it's like to be involved in cutting edge science. It is definitely worth the read - I highly recommend it.
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