Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System (Paperback)

by Ivars Peterson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Peterson ( The Mathematical Tourist ) is well-suited to wean the general reader away from one of everyday science's most comforting and tenacious illusions--namely, that the solar system operates on a giant stable clockwork system. As this historical treatment demonstrates, some 300 years before the development of the computer, mathematical astronomers offered theories in line with today's current chaos and dynamic systems theories. Even in astronomy's earliest days, perturbations of some planetary bodies defied Newton's mechanics; centuries of interaction between astronomical theory and observation have demanded that serious stargazers take account of complexity and chaotic phenomena. In Peterson's long view, this is a mathematically meaty story. The few (and insufficient) basic calculus formulas included are presented in sidebars; many of the illustrations depict historical models or manuscripts. Readers grounded in number theory will most fully appreciate the progression of the astronomical issues covered here.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This is a history of human efforts to understand the mechanics of the solar system, reaching from classical Greece to the present. By the time of Isaac Newton, there was reason to hope that the stability of the solar system could be proven and that its mechanics could be reduced to the precision of clockwork. However, it gradually became clear that the basic equations could not be solved with absolute precision; we are still not assured that the orbits of the Earth and the other planets are stable. Further, there is a fundamental indeterminancy in solar system mechanics that cannot be avoided. Peterson, a science journalist, has told his story in a lively and very readable fashion. Necessarily, he has included a modest amount of technical detail, but the volume should be fully intelligible to lay readers with a bit of background in the physical sciences. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
- Jack W. Weigel, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: W.H. Freeman & Company (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716727242
• ISBN-13: 978-0716727248
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #424,548 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, January 8, 2003

By	Professor Joseph L. McCauley "Joseph L. McCauley" (Austria+Texas) - See all my reviews

I read this book several years ago and write now from memory. I enjoyed it immensely. It provides a history of the discovery of chaos in Hamiltonian mechanics by Poincare', and includes the more recent extremely interesting work on chaos in the solar system by Sussman and Wisdom, including the construction of their special computer constructed to simulate solar orbits without accumulating floating point errors. The background is that we still, today, do not understand the 3-body problem in classical mechanics, except that Poincare' taught us that the orbits may be either chaotic or regular. Newton frustrated himself working on the problem (sun-earth-moon) and finally gave up.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful combination of history and science, February 4, 2001

By	Helmer Aslaksen (Singapore) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I first saw the title of this book, I thought "Oh, no, not another chaotic chaos book". There are tons of popular math, physics and astronomy books out there that maybe are useful for people who don't know any math, but who are totally confusing to people who know a bit about the topics. Why? Because the authors themselves are totally confused.

But fortunately there's a small handful of scientists who can write. Ivars Peterson is one of them, and I when I saw that he was the author, I knew right away that this was just the thing I needed for the 5 hours airport stopover that was ahead of me!

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exploring the outer reaches of chaos, March 16, 2000

By	Charles Ashbacher "([e-mail])" (Marion, Iowa United States([e-mail])) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

To those with an understanding of the history of astronomy, the title of this book is inherently contradictory. Chaos is a recent term used to describe systems where slight alterations lead very quickly to unpredictability. And yet, every beginning astronomy student is told that slight differences in the observed and predicted orbits of Uranus led to the discovery of Neptune in the location predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Furthermore, space probes have been launched that flew within the cosmic equivalent of a bacterial eyelash of the outer planets after years of travel. Some day, when you have nothing to do, look up the distances traveled by those probes, the point of closest approach, and compute the percentage error. Finally, all of the geological evidence indicates that the orbits of the planets have been stable for billions of years. So, what does the title mean?
In fact, not much, except perhaps a rethinking of what events one can consider to be chaotic. When only the non-Plutonian planets are considered, the only conclusion is that the solar system may be chaotic in the long term. In this case, this means over billions of years. One must be essentially immortal to consider such events chaotic. If one's expectations are significantly lowered to include slight unpredictability due to the complexity of the system, then one can "argue" that there is chaos. But again, the term is normally used to describe systems with large, not miniscule, deviations resulting from miniscule deviations. Pluto is the planetary exception. It is small, appears to be almost totally made of ice and its orbit is unusual. The asteroids and comets, flyspecks all, are easily perturbed and while their behavior is chaotic, it seems trivial to call the solar system chaotic based on that.
Given these initial conditions, the author does a good job in presenting the material. The quality of the writing is what one has come to expect from Peterson. Many recent discoveries are presented that point out that the solar system may not be as stable as it appears. Explanations are textual, not mathematical in nature.
While the term chaos is being overextended here, it is not flagrantly so, forcing a rethinking of what it actually means. And that is a nontrivial point. Is a system that is unpredictable over billions of years really chaotic? Can a system be considered chaotic if some very tiny pieces exhibit chaotic behavior? Are there unknown forces that serve to dampen out the chaotic tendencies of the major planets? Those questions are considered here.
If you like mathematics or physics or astronomy you will like this book. If you enjoy any two, then you will love it. An aficionado of all three will find their mind floating among the heavenly orbs.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.