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The Stars of Heaven [Hardcover]

Clifford A. Pickover (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)


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Book Description

0195148746 978-0195148749 December 20, 2001
Do a little armchair space travel, rub elbows with alien life forms, and stretch your mind to the furthest corners of our uncharted universe. With this astonishing guide book, The Stars of Heaven, you need not be an astronomer to explore the mysteries of stars and their profound meaning for human existence.
Stars have fascinated humankind since the dawn of history and have allowed us to transcend ordinary lives in our literature, art, and religions. In fact, humans have always looked to the stars as a source of inspiration and transcendence that lifts us beyond the boundaries of ordinary intuition. In the tradition of One Two Three... Infinity, Pickover tackles a range of topics from stellar evolution to the fundamental and awe-inspiring reasons why the universe permits life to flourish. Where did we come from? What is the universe's ultimate fate? Pickover alternates sections that explain the mysteries of the cosmos with sections that dramatize mind-expanding concepts through a fictional dialog between futuristic humans and their alien peers who embark on a journey beyond the reader's wildest imagination. This highly accessible and entertaining approach turns an intimidating subject into a scientific game open to all dreamers.
Told in Clifford Pickover's inimitable blend of fascinating state-of-the-art science and whimsical science fiction, and packed with numerous diagrams and illustrations, The Stars of Heaven unfolds a world of paradox and mystery, one that will intrigue anyone who has ever pondered the night sky with wonder.

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The indefatigable Pickover presents an introduction to the evolution and behavior of "a veritable zoo of strange stars," from our sun, a run-of-the-mill main sequence yellow "dwarf," to supergiants larger than the orbit of Jupiter to pulsars, neutron stars, black holes, and lesser-known bizarre stellar products. In a blend of science and science fiction, he utilizes a pair of quirky space travelers to present concepts and relevant formulas. Bob, a futuristic human, is curator of an intergalactic art museum. His diamond-bodied scolex companion, Mr. Plex, can survive the harshness of space and will perform any experiment Bob asks him to. This educational device has its fun moments, but some serious readers may find it a bit much. Beyond that, there's plenty here to contemplate, since without exploding stars, there would be no "seagull cries, computer chips, trilobites, Beethovens, or the tears of a little girl." Pickover is one of popular science's most prolific and animated writers as well as a multitalented inventor, puzzlemaker, and graphic artist. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"An ambitions overview of astronomy.... Pickover gives us the vision of a palpable universe, marching forward to somewhere."--Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 20, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195148746
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195148749
  • Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,566,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

From my publisher:

Clifford A. Pickover received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is the author of over 30 books on such topics as computers and creativity, art, mathematics, black holes, religion, human behavior and intelligence, time travel, alien life, and science fiction.

Pickover is a prolific inventor with dozens of patents, is the associate editor for several journals, the author of colorful puzzle calendars, and puzzle contributor to magazines geared to children and adults.

WIRED magazine writes, "Bucky Fuller thought big, Arthur C. Clarke thinks big, but Cliff Pickover outdoes them both." According to The Los Angeles Times, "Pickover has published nearly a book a year in which he stretches the limits of computers, art and thought."
The Christian Science Monitor writes, "Pickover inspires a new generation of da Vincis to build unknown flying machines and create new Mona Lisas." Pickover's computer graphics have been featured on the cover of many popular magazines and on TV shows.

His web site, Pickover.Com, has received millions of visits. His Blog RealityCarnival.Com is one of his most popular sites.

 

Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A far-out journey, November 8, 2001
This review is from: The Stars of Heaven (Hardcover)
This book is a great introduction to stars in science, art, and religion. The illustrations help the reader to understand complicated concepts. My favorite parts of the book deal with the anthropic principle. These sections address the question: Was the universe designed? I also liked the sections on the evolution of multiple universes. Even though the book has sections on art (e.g. Van Gogh) and religion (e.g. stars in the Bible), the book could certainly be used as a hard-core stellar astronomy textbook because it covers everything you would want to know about all the variety of stars in outer space (evolution, nucleosythesis, stellar anatomy, spectral classes, black holes, etc.) Science-fiction buffs will enjoy the very strange and very interesting tale about an oddball set of characters who journey to the end of the universe to make investigations. A cool book.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars On The Stars Of Heaven, By Clifford A. Pickover, November 15, 2001
By 
"wellyn@webtv.net" (Carmel, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Stars of Heaven (Hardcover)
If there is ever a time more than any other that we need astronomy, it is now. Because astronomy -- from backyard stargazing on up -- reminds us there's much beyond terror looming over our heads. And, now more than ever, we need writers up to the task of convincing us of this. Not just competent writers, mind you; from these you'll get the venerable, well-annotated but otherwise dehydrated boilerplate itemizing the hits and misses of Astronomy 101's usual suspects: ancient Greeks, Moorish scholars, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lowell (for comic relief) and finally some pro-forma paeans to Einstein, Hubble, Hawking and (with an asterisk) Sagan.Now, while all this is fairly serviceable stuff, it conveys nothing of what we layfolk dearly want from science: our own personal place in it. We want to connect -- to log on to eternity. And that's where Clifford Pickover steps in. His new book, The Stars of Heaven, ostensibly concentrates on stellar astronomy -- the lives and deaths of stars. But anyone who has ever read his previous books will expect -- and receive -- far more. Pickover's expansive field of view reveals the nature and mysteries of stars in their broadest, deepest possible context -- from the edge of the observable universe and beyond to the restless shadows of human consciousness. Astrophysics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, art -- all of these seamlessly enrich Pickover's answer to our seemingly simple "wish upon a star." But don't get me wrong here; The Stars of Heaven is no ponderous block of academic marble. Pickover delivers the goods like a friend, happy you've asked him to stop over for a chat about some of his favorite ideas. He's an avid sci-fi fan, and he delights in actively engaging his readers, so in this book (as in various others of his) he creates for us a space adventure all his own, complete with wacky characters, funny asides and lightspeed plot-twists but all to make his main points memorable -- and meaningful. Sometimes, to crystallize a point, Pickover includes a simple equation or two, but these are painless and few; in fact, they serve as handy landmarks should you wish to backtrack and refresh. But always this is a personal journey for the author -- a chance to reveal why he delights in heavenly mysteries, scientific and otherwise. You'll especially get a sense of this in the "non-fiction" section of each chapter, where he distills and develops themes introduced in the sci-fi segment. And this may be the most valuable element of the whole book: a glimpse into not only the mysteries of science but also the scientist -- why he does what he does, how his discoveries and unanswered questions square with his own aspirations and beliefs -- and why he'd like to share all this with you. Indeed, this is what we need, now more than ever, if we are to live beyond fear of the unknown.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The star of heaven is you., November 19, 2001
This review is from: The Stars of Heaven (Hardcover)
The stars of heaven - where would we be without them? Actually nowhere; we as humans would not exist without them. As carbon based lifeforms we owe our very existence to the stars since they are the source of this carbon, and what a close call it is that this carbon is formed at all. Were the number 7.6549 (the resonant energy state of carbon in MeV) just a few percent different, the stars would not produce this carbon, and the rich biochemistry that make us human would not be possible. So, if you ever wondered where you came from, Pickover has the answer in these glorious pages. A journey to the stars would be wonderful, but the journey of the stars to us is even more wonderful. Pickover tells the amazing story of where we came from for those who wonder at that amazing question.

Dennis W. Gordon

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
The year is 2100, and Bob is chief curator of an intergalactic art museum. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
golden abdomen, blue stragglers, violet grass, helium flash, brown dwarfs, helium fusion, stellar spectrum, red dwarfs, stellar parallax, helium core, carbon core
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Milky Way, New York, Hubble Space Telescope, Diffuse Ones, Big Dipper, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Fred Hoyle, Last Tango, Proxima Centauri, Canis Major, Freeman Dyson, Harvard College Observatory, Johann Balmer, Orion Nebula, Southern Hemisphere, United States, Ursa Major, Holy Scripture, Hubert Reeves, Magellanic Clouds, Stephen Hawking, The Stars of Heaven Bob
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