Skip to main content

Supernova - Or Graur ***

A solid entry in MIT Press's pocket-sized 'essential knowledge' series, introducing supernovas. (The author would not like my use of this plural: he sniffily comments that 'although "supernovas" is sometimes used in popular media, it is seldom used by astronomers'. This is because 'nova' comes from the Latin - which it does - but perhaps it's worth pointing out we are writing in English, not Latin.) A supernova can be one of several different types of collapsing/exploding stars: Or Graur gives us a good deal of detail on current best ideas on the different ways a supernova can form and behave.

Along the way, we are introduced to the history of our noticing supernovas, the role of star remnants in distributing the heavier elements across the universe and how astronomers use supernovas as standard candles to measure great distances (amongst other things). Graur is unusually flexible for an astronomer here, allowing that dark energy is based on distinctly uncertain data (derived from supernova observations), though elsewhere he refers to dark matter with no suggestion that this too has uncertainty about its existence. Unusually for these books there is a glossy colour plate section in the middle, allowing for much clearer images than is normally possible on conventional paper, which was real benefit.

Graur also makes it clear (with relish) that there are plenty of questions left for astronomers and astrophysicists still to answer about these phenomena. Superficially there is nothing very surprising in this book, but there is considerably more up-to-date detail than would usually be presented in a title pitched at the general reader. This has its good side - we find out, for example, about exotic supernova types that will not usually get a mention - but it also has a less useful aspect as there is, if anything, too much detail on each type, meaning that the writing can get more like a bullet-pointed fact sheet than a readable narrative.

There is a real problem, which Graur highlights without realising the consequences in his introduction. He tells us 'For too long, popular culture has focused on a handful of famous, eccentric, or controversial scientists... In reality, there are tens of thousands of scientists spread across the world... To combat this pernicious stereotype, I have sought to highlight the global and collaborative nature of astronomy and refrained from gossiping about the astrophysicists mentioned in this book.' Of course the collaborative aspect is true - but what Graur unfortunately seems to miss is that stories need insights into individual humans - by largely sticking to impersonal facts you also produce uninspiring writing. It's a paradox - we do need to emphasise the wide-ranging collaboration, but also to provide specific stories of real people's individual work if a book is to be accessible.

I read most of this book while in a public space, which highlighted to me the worst thing about the series format. Every few pages, a whole page is black with a short pull quote in large white letters. These don't add anything at all - and the quotes themselves are rarely thrilling (for example 'Today hundreds of astronomers routinely discover thousands of supernovae each year'). I found it quite embarrassing for these things to be visible to those around me, as if I were reading a children's book and rushed past them.

An effective, up-to-date summary for those who want more detail on supernovas than is usually found in a popular science book.

Paperback: 
Bookshop.org

  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...
Post a Comment
Read more