Einstein's Greatest Blunder?

by Donald Goldsmith

Book Overview

The Big Bang: A Big Bust? The cosmos seems to be in crisis, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see it. How, for instance, can the universe be full of stars far older than itself? How could space have once expanded faster than the speed of light? How can most of the matter in the universe be missing? And what kind of truly weird matter could possibly account for ninety percent of the universe's total mass?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674242416
• ISBN13: 9780674242418
• Release Date: August 1995
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Understanding the stars

This book is all about the stars, where they came from, how they got there, and how long they'll be there plus the methods scientists (astronomers) figured these things out. For anyone with a science-geared brain, this book is great. I'm currently taking physics at my high school, this book really helped me to understand the concepts and formulas in a "behind the scenes" way. The language used by the author is occasionally hard to understand but it's a book you have to read slowly in order to understand it all. The concepts that involve things from later discussed topics have references to the chapter they can be found in. It's a really in-depth and well-written book for anyone with an interest in astronomy or science in general. Some of the concepts discussed are the age of stars which can be determined according to their surface temperature and luminosity, the doppler effect which explains the motion of stars and planets due to the fact that wavelengths shorten when an observer or source moves toward the other and lengthen in the opposite way, the kind of star or star group and what the characteristics of each are, and the nature of gravity in space according to several astronomers and scientists like Newton, Einstein, Galileo, etc. The book also includes many pictures and diagrams to help the average reader understand the specific topics of each chapter.