A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery [Hardcover]

Ann K. Finkbeiner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2010

LATE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, what had been a fevered pace of discovery in astronomy for many years had slowed. The Hubble Space Telescope continued to produce an astonishing array of images, but the study of the universe was still fractured into domains: measuring the universe’s expansion rate, the evolution of galaxies in the early universe, the life and death of stars, the search for extrasolar planets, the quest to understand the nature of the elusive dark matter. So little was understood, still, about so many of the most fundamental questions, foremost among them: What was the overall structure of the universe? Why had stars formed into galaxies, and galaxies into massive clusters?

What was needed, thought visionary astronomer Jim Gunn, recently awarded the National Medal of Science, was a massive survey of the sky, a kind of new map of the universe that would be so rich in detail and cover such a wide swath of space, be so grand and bold, that it would allow astronomers to see the big picture in a whole new way. So was born the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a remarkable undertaking bringing together hundreds of astronomers and launching a new era of supercharged astronomical discovery, an era of “e-science” that has taken astronomy from the lonely mountaintop observatory to the touch of your fingertips.

Critically acclaimed science writer Ann Finkbeiner tells the inside story of the Sloan and how it is revolutionizing astronomy. The Sloan stitched together images of deep space taken over the course of five years, providing a remarkably detailed, three-dimensional map of a vast territory of the universe, all digitized and downloadable for easy searching on a personal computer, and available not only to professional astronomers but to the public as well.

Bringing together for the first time images of many millions of galaxies—including the massive structure known as the Sloan Great Wall of galaxies, never seen before—the Sloan is allowing astronomers and armchair enthusiasts alike to watch the universe grow up, providing so many discoveries at such a fast pace that, as one astronomer said, it’s like drinking out of a fire hose. They are watching galaxies forming and galaxies merging with other galaxies, seeing streams of stars swirling out from galaxies, and forming a new understanding of how the smooth soup of matter that emerged from the Big Bang evolved into the universe as we know it.

Ann Finkbeiner brings the excitement and the extraordinary potential of this new era of astronomy vividly to life and allows all readers to understand how they, too, can become part of the discovery process. A Grand and Bold Thing is vital reading for all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this accessible and insightful book, science journalist Finkbeiner reveals the story behind today's most exciting astronomical research program: the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a massive technological undertaking whose results have allowed everyone, from astronomers to high school students, to create and work with "the most complete map of the universe ever." The SDSS began with astronomer Jim Gunn. Disillusioned by his work in the early days of the troubleplagued Hubble Space Telescope, Gunn dreamed of a "million-galaxy survey" that would be done "simply and cheaply, without bureaucratic delays." Along the route from ideal to reality, Gunn and the rest of the "Sloanies" encountered many obstacles, from obtaining funding and technical troubles to personality conflicts and the hassle of organizing groups at multiple universities and labs. By the time the survey began in 1998, the data--trillions of bytes--poured in, all available now via public Web sites like Google Sky and WikiSky. Finkbeiner (The Jasons) adroitly captures the major personalities as well as the science that drew them together. This delightful book reveals just how much SDSS has changed how astronomers work, and how they--and we--see the universe.
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Review

“[F]ascinating [and] disturbing…Finkbeiner’s book…carries a message for those who fear we are entering an anti-science age, in which right-wing politicians, religious fundamentalists, Luddites and postmodernists challenge science’s authority…Indeed, because of its immense potential for altering our lives for good or ill, science needs critics like Finkbeiner now more than ever.” —The New York Times

“Never heard of the Jasons? These crack US scientists with top-secret clearance have advised the Pentagon since 1960 on some of its toughest problems. Finkbeiner's unusual access makes for a true story that reads like a Tom Clancy novel.” - Wired

"[A] glimpse into the minds of the scientists who have taken on the job of advising the government of the world's most powerful nation…Finkbeiner allows the Jasons to speak for themselves; she often preserves their revelations in direct quotes from her interviews, and these are what make the book worth reading.” —Discover

“[A]n important investigation into the relationship between science and government; between “studying ultimate reality” and “shooting down missiles;” between the rules of logic and the vagaries of human nature. At heart, The Jasons is a meditation on morality.” —Seed

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 17, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416552162
• ISBN-13: 978-1416552161
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #952,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and very accessible, August 19, 2010

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This review is from: A Grand and Bold Thing (Kindle Edition)

I was expecting this book to be more about the discoveries made by the SDSS, but it was really the story of the project itself - from idea to reality. I wasn't disappointed, though - it was VERY interesting, and written in an extremely approachable and accessible tone, not at all stuffy or hard to follow. Most of the research for this book was based on interviews with the original members of the SDSS project, and there's a very friendly sense of familiarity throughout the book - all the lead scientists are referred to by their first names, and direct quotes are sprinkled through each chapter. It gives you a real sense of knowing the people and being right there with them while they tried to get the project off the ground. After I finished, I checked out the SDSS website [...] to see some of the pictures. I think astronomy pictures are very interesting, and it was mind-boggling to look at the pictures on the site and actually understand what lay behind them.

Highly recommended for just about anyone!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The grand and bold thing is what we want to do.", August 22, 2010

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K. M. "literary devotee" (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery (Hardcover)

What is that grand and bold thing? " 'A Complete Survey of the Galaxies' " using a camera grid system with an unprecedented number of pixels for resolution to capture pictures in five different colors and determine redshift. Actually, the entire sky was not to be surveyed, but rather 25% of the northern sky. The project's 3.5 meter telescope was built and put into service at Apache Point in New Mexico. That, together with a 2.5 meter telescope mirror, permitted the observatory to eventually produce an avalanche of data (200 gigabytes of data a night). And that data, with the assistance of dedicated software, was funneled to various partner universities, the astronomical community at large and to the public on the Internet's SkyServer. Although a number of names were proposed for this grand undertaking, the final nod went to "Sloan Digital Sky Survey" (SDSS) in honor of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which supplied part of the $25 million-plus financing.

A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery traces the development of SDSS from astronomer Jim Gunn's early (1987) thoughts about how to use an array of linked CCDs (charge-coupled device) to build a camera that would allow a telescopic view of 120 arc minutes (greatly expanded from the viewing abilities of the time) and employ very enhanced image resolution. In 1988, he and several other astronomers began networking for collaboration and funding among their colleagues. In time, the University of Chicago, Princeton, the Fermilab, and numerous other institutions worked together over the 1990's to get SDSS up and running. Instead of the projected two or three year schedule though, many setbacks of both a technical and managerial nature postponed actual operation until 2000. But then it produced the scientific riches of which its creators had dreamed. In 2006, a new phase, SDSS-II began and is scheduled to continue until 2014.

Ann Finkbeiner's lucid and detailed history of SDSS includes technical detail and in-depth insights into the members of the team that made the project possible. Beginning in 2007, she conducted interviews with over 70 of the individuals involved in the work, and the book deftly ties their stories and their opinions into the bigger picture. We learn why there were bottlenecks in the project flow. We learn about setbacks such as cracked mirrors and pipeline software that was written by different people and didn't fit together. We learn about the CCD camera Jim Gunn built and how carefully it needed to be installed and then monitored. We learn about how, once the data did flow, thousands of amateur astronomers helped categorize the documented galaxies, comparing their photos to a set of eleven types.

If you read and were fascinated by Anil Ananthaswamy's recent The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, or previous volumes such as Mapping the Next Millenium: The Discovery of New Geographies, by Stephen S. Hall, A GRAND AND BOLD THING should go on your reading list. Even if you aren't generally a reader of popular science titles, you might become hooked by reading this accessible one. Finkbeiner possesses a gift for explaining the scientific and technical so that we can all appreciate the grand and bold thing that has been accomplished.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Introduction to the New Astronomy, December 3, 2010

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R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery (Hardcover)

The cartoon view of an astronomer at work, with an eye tightly bound to an eyepiece which is attached to a huge tubular telescope pointed at the stars, is a caricature carryover from past times. Sure, there are plenty of amateur astronomers who enjoy looking through their telescopes that way, and even make discoveries thereby. But most professional academic astronomers aren't looking through their scopes that way. They are looking at computer screens (not the photographic plates that preceded such screens), if they are looking at any telescope output at all. A professional astronomer these days might not even go near a telescope, and it is increasingly unlikely that such an astronomer would work in isolation. Some astronomers would be managers of teams of other astronomers. Some would specialize in writing code that analyzes astronomical data. So astronomy is changing because of the tools available to it, and a surprising array of tools has been used to make the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the subject of a fine science book _A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering in a New Era of Discovery_ (Free Press) by Ann Finkbeiner. Finkbeiner, a science reporter who teaches science writing, knows her astronomy and cosmology, and presents a comprehensive view of this particular new way of doing astronomy. Even better, she has interviewed the people involved, and has shown how the project, and science in general, is a human effort by dedicated and flawed individuals ambitious to make names for themselves but also to make humans a little more knowledgeable.

Central to the story is the originator of the idea of the survey, Jim Gunn, who in 1987 came up with the idea of a new type of telescope, a device that would use charge-coupled devices (CCDs) which take tiny bits of light and turn them into digital information. A vast array of such devices would be attached to a modest-sized telescope (a mirror of 2.5 meters). It would not be just a new gadget, it would have a new goal: the camera would take images of huge swaths of the sky, and software would identify and classify thousands of stars, galaxies, and quasars. Gunn, who had helped make the telescope for the Hubble, spent six years in the basement of Princeton's astronomy hall building the 700-pound camera. An impressive technological feat in itself, it was not as revolutionary as the applications of information technology into which its data was fed. Astrocoders, astronomers who specialize in writing computer programs to analyze astronomical data, had to develop entirely new programs for the data from Sloan. There have been a huge number of scientific papers written about the data, with two-thirds of them being written by non-Sloanie astronomers who get the information online. Sloan has produced a remarkable democratization of science. Not only do astronomers without their own telescopes get to use the data, but curious lay people can, too, and can really do science. This is best shown by the Galaxy Zoo program, which has involved hundreds of thousands of citizen scientists. For all their power and data, computers are not so good at identifying galaxy shapes as spiral or elliptical. Humans are very good at such identifications. The Sloanies put their million galaxies on the internet, asked for people to click on one galaxy after another to designate the shape, and the first day after the request the servers melted down from too many volunteers. The problem proved solvable, and not only are the Zooites helping with designations, they are finding new things, like unexpected round green galaxies that are now known as Green Pea galaxies.

Finkbeiner's book is a lovely tribute to a spectacularly successful scientific project, one which has truly changed the way astronomy can be done. The Sloan project was complicated and huge and required astronomers who had previously been loners to play on a big team. There were turf battles and conflicts along the way which are described here, but as one astronomer said, "Most of these people did not have the slightest concept of how to work together. But everybody behaved well enough, long enough, that it succeeded." It's the sort of lesson on display in many of these pages, making this book of science a special pleasure to read for its optimism.