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The Restless Universe by Harry L. Shipman (1977)
Preface (excerpt)
The Viking landers have reached the surface of Mars, returning data about
the weather conditions, soil conditions, and possible presence of life on the
red planet. Evidence is rapidly accumulating to prove that black holes,
enigmatic compressed objects that do not let light escape, do exist in the real
world. The construction of several large telescopes has at last provided
extragalactic astronomy with a firm observational foundation, shedding
light on the physics of galaxies and the evolution of the universe.
In the last two decades astronomy has been an explosive discipline, with
new insights emerging ever year. This introductory astronomy text is ad
dressed to the nonscientist, describing recent advances in this field in non
mathematical terms. This book differs from similar ones in its emphasis on
contemporary astronomy-events that readers have probably heard about
from the media, the material they expect to see in an introductory astronomy
course.
The mysteries of starbirth, the violence of stardeath, and extragalactic
astronomy are given as much space as possible. A particular difference
between this text and others is the treatment of planetary science. Thanks to
data returned by space probes, our understanding now extends beyond the
first-look preliminary interpretations and spectacular, awe-inspiring
pictures. This book, not presuming that either the student or the course
instructor has any background in geology, describes tho scientific payoff
from tho recent spectacular decades of planetary research. We are now be
ginning to understand the forces that shape planetary surfaces; remarkable
insights have come from a comparison of similar geological processes at
work on different planets. A simple description of planetary environments
does not do justice to the field of planetary science.
A minimal quantity of mathematics is used in the text itself. although a
few tables, graphs, and boxes demonstrate lhe use of numerical data without
requiring the reader to go through algelbraic manipulations or calculations.
The extensive treatment of the Copernican revolution, found in some texts,
is shortened to make room for the contemporary material. There is still a
thorough qualitative description of the appearance of the night sky without
an extensive treatment of coordinate systems. Lengthy discourses on stellar
properties are shortened to make room for an expanded treatment of stellar
evolution.
Summary (excerpt)
The conventional, optimistic view argues that life is abundant in the uni
verse, that the processes that led to life on our planet have been duplicated
many times on other stars. An analysis of the various factors governing the
abundance of extraterrestrial life offers provisional support to this view,
although there may be some steps toward intelligent beings that seem
simple to us but that in fact require special circumstances that only occur
rarely. But all the right ingredients seem to be there: good suns, habitable
planets, the chemicals that make living systems arise as a natural result of
the workings of the evolution of stars. The actual discovery of life in the uni
verse is within our technological grasp.
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