Skip to main content

The Milky Way - Moiya McTier ****

For some reason, our home galaxy has relatively light coverage in popular science, so it was good to read Moiya McTier's book last year (less good to have forgetten about it until now - this is probably due to the aversion mentioned at the end of the review).

After an introductory chapter, we start by looking at early ideas and myths about the sky pattern referred to most often now as the Milky Way, long before it was realised that this was our galaxy. We are then taken through the Milky Way's formation (and along with that information on stars and other components that go together to make up a galaxy) and McTier goes on to do everything from pull apart Star Trek's dodgy navigational coordinates to what remain mysteries to current science. (Unusually for a simplifying popular science book, we do hear a bit about alternatives to dark matter, though McTier does dismiss MOND using arguments that are weaker than those that could be used to dismiss dark matter particles.)

So far, so good. One thing that it is essential to cover is the subtitle. The second word is not 'biography', but 'autobiography'. The book is written from the viewpoint of the Milky Way as if it were a conscious entity. I must applaud this in the sense that it's a different way of looking at astronomy/astrophysics. Any book of this sort benefits from taking a different approach, because mostly it will have been done before. But.

For me, personally, the approach was one where I really had to suppress the cringe reflex. The first chapter begins 'Take a look around you, human. What do you see?.. Everything you've ever seen or touched is part of me. Yes, even you, you vain, filthy animal.' I don't know why, but this does feel ever so slightly condescending for an adult audience. And it's a bit odd - given we are effectively part of the Milky Way in terms of our constituents, why would it call us filthy? But then, on the whole, galaxies don't call people anything.

Anthropomorphising is, of course, an age-old technique. I used to watch a TV show called Tales of the Riverbank when I was four that featured, for instance, a talking guinea pig and loved it. But while I accept the originality of the approach as popular science, I still had to fight down my aversion as an adult. Perhaps the main potential problem in non-fiction is where to draw the line between the fiction of the talking galaxy and the reality of the science. For example, McTier's galaxy is quite boastful. It comments 'I am the greatest galaxy who has ever lived.' But the Milky Way is neither the biggest galaxy nor does it contain the most stars, making this a dubious boast at best.

As long as I had this tendency under control, there was plenty to enjoy here - and that's why I'm giving the book four stars. But I can't ignore it, nor do I think that it will work for every reader. But if you won't be put off by the approach, this is an excellent book on an essential topic.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roger Highfield - Stephen Hawking: genius at work interview

Roger Highfield OBE is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. Roger has visiting professorships at the Department of Chemistry, UCL, and at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of the Medical Research Council and Longitude Committee. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, including two bestsellers. His latest title is Stephen Hawking: genius at work . Why science? There are three answers to this question, depending on context: Apollo; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl; and, finally, Nullius in verba . Growing up I enjoyed the sciencey side of TV programmes like Thunderbirds and The Avengers but became completely besotted when, in short trousers, I gazed up at the moon knowing that two astronauts had paid it a visit. As the Apollo programme unfolded, I became utterly obsessed. Today, more than half a century later, the moon landings are
Post a Comment
Read more

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on
Post a Comment
Read more

Splinters of Infinity - Mark Wolverton ****

Many of us who read popular science regularly will be aware of the 'great debate' between American astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis in 1920 over whether the universe was a single galaxy or many. Less familiar is the clash in the 1930s between American Nobel Prize winners Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton over the nature of cosmic rays. This not a book about the nature of cosmic rays as we now understand them, but rather explores this confrontation between heavyweight scientists. Millikan was the first in the fray, and often wrongly named in the press as discoverer of cosmic rays. He believed that this high energy radiation from above was made up of photons that ionised atoms in the atmosphere. One of the reasons he was determined that they should be photons was that this fitted with his thesis that the universe was in a constant state of creation: these photons, he thought, were produced in the birth of new atoms. This view seems to have been primarily driven by re
Post a Comment
Read more