Cosmic Dispatches

by Wilford, John Noble

• ISBN13: 9780393049374
• ISBN10: 039304937X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

John Noble Wilford and the award-winning Times reporters offer an unparalleled guide to astronomy today. The scientists seeking to unravel the mysteries of the universe are among the most imaginative and provocative explorers of our time. Like the geographic explorers of earlier centuries, they venture into uncharted spaces, come upon new worlds, expand the knowable, and challenge thinking about the place of humans in all things. Collected here are the most exciting moments of recent astronomical explorations, presented by the award-winning science reporters of the New York Times. Recent leaps in technology have allowed astronomers to peer deeply into the universe and to bring into focus fascinating and unsuspected phenomena . Cosmic Dispatches conveys in thrilling detail the meaning and significance of what scientists have been learning about our universe. Illustrations throughout.

Author Biography

John Noble Wilford has been a practicing journalist since 1952. He began his career as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and continued as a contributing editor for Time magazine. He has been writing for the New York Times since 1965, serving as a correspondent covering the Apollo Moon project and subsequently serving as director of science news. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for National Reporting. Currently a science reporter for the Times, Wilford has also taught journalism at Princeton and the University of Tennessee.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Informed Wonder	9	(10)
The Big Bang of Dispatches	19	(5)
Let There Be Light	24	(27)
New Vistas Open for Earthbound Astronomers	25	(7)
What Else Lurks Out There?	32	(5)
The New X-ray View of Galaxies	37	(4)
Observatory for Twenty-first Century Takes Shape	41	(6)
Pictures of the Infant Universe	47	(4)
Travels in the Solar System	51	(26)
Apollo and the Moon's Violent Birth	52	(5)
Water on the Moon?	57	(3)
Venus's Face Offers Hints of Cataclysm	60	(4)
The Comet's Gift: Hints of How Earth Came to Life	64	(5)
Magnetic Fields on Distant Moons Hint at Hidden Life	69	(3)
Fire, Water, and, Maybe, Life in Jupiter's Realm	72	(5)
The Once and Future Martians	77	(20)
Clues in Meteorite Seem to Show Signs of Life on Mars Long Ago	78	(4)
On Mars, Life's Getting Tougher (If Not Impossible)	82	(3)
Spacecraft to Land on the Planet of Dreams	85	(3)
The Floods of Mars	88	(3)
A ``Bonus'' from Mars	91	(3)
Highs and Lows of Mars	94	(3)
New Worlds	97	(31)
A Nursery of New Planets	98	(3)
Two Sightings of Planet-Orbiting a Sunlikie Star	101	(2)
More Discoveries of Extrasolar Planets	103	(3)
In a Golden Age of Discovery, Faraway Worlds Beckon	106	(10)
A Disk of Dust Holds a Clue to Birth of Planets	116	(2)
Search for New Planets Yields Confusion	118	(6)
At Long Last, a New Family of Planets	124	(4)
The Birth and Death of Stars	128	(14)
Rare Glimpse of a New Star Aborning	129	(4)
New Look at Apocalypse: Dying Sun Will Boil Seas and Leave Orbiting Cinder	133	(5)
The Spectacular Shudders of Dying Stars	138	(4)
Some Strange and Awesome Things	142	(28)
Space Telescope Confirms Theory of Black Holes	143	(3)
A Black Hole's Awful Table Manners	146	(4)
Enormous Plume of Antimatter Alters View of the Milky Way	150	(3)
Astronomers Detect Explosion Second Only to Big Bang	153	(3)
Astronomers Confirm the Existence of Failed Stars	156	(3)
A New Category of Brown Dwarfs	159	(2)
An Enormous Surge of Stellar Radiation	161	(3)
In Cosmic Blasts, Clues to Black Holes	164	(6)
Mystery of the Missing Mass	170	(28)
Physicists Step Up Exotic Search for the Universe's Missing Mass	171	(6)
Mass Found in Elusive Neutrino	177	(5)
Astronomers Glimpse Galaxies Aborning	182	(5)
The Universe as Telescope	187	(6)
Galaxies' Vastness Surprises Scientists	193	(5)
Cosmology Comes of Age	198	(20)
Sizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest	200	(6)
Profound Insight on How Time Began	206	(3)
In the Glow of Cosmic Discovery, a Physicist Ponders God and Fame	209	(4)
Scientists, Once Starry-Eyed, Get Cleaner View of Universe	213	(5)
A Young or Old Universe?	218	(20)
Universe's Age Poses New Cosmic Puzzle	219	(3)
Einstein's Blunder as Fix for New Crisis	222	(5)
Conflicting Answers for the Age of the Universe	227	(5)
The Importance of the Number 70	232	(3)
A Younger Age, Perhaps?	235	(3)
Fate of the Universe	238	(21)
Wary Astronomers Ponder an Accelerating Universe	239	(4)
In the Light of Dying Stars, Astronomers See Intimations of Cosmic Immortality	243	(9)
``Missing Energy'' of the Universe	252	(3)
At the Other End of ``Big Bang'' may Simply Be a Big Sputter	255	(4)
Looking and Listening for ET	259	(15)
Widening the Hunt for Alien Life	260	(4)
In Search of Star Dust and Clues to Life	264	(4)
Scanning the Heavens for Signs of Life	268	(6)
From the Big Bang to a Theory of Everything	274	(25)
A Primordial Form of Matter	275	(3)
New Findings Help Balance the Cosmological Books	278	(7)
Sailing a Wheelchair to the End of Time	285	(7)
Almost in Awe, Physicists Ponder ``Ultimate'' Theory	292	(7)
Index	299	(16)
About the Authors	315