Edward W. Kolb

In the first section of Blind Watchers of the Sky, Edward W. "Rocky" Kolb retells the familiar story of the development of the heliocentric theory of the solar system from Tycho Brahe's discovery of a new star in 1572 (shattering the concept of the unchanging firmament), which turned out to be a super nova; through the proposed sun centered theory of Copernicus, contrasting it with Ptolemy's earth centered view; through Kepler's demonstration that the planetary orbits were eliptical (though only very slightly) rather than circular; through Galileo's clever and fervent defense of Copernicus and articulation of the concepts of acceleration and inertia; and finally through Newton's magesterial formulation of the laws of dynamics and their application to the planets as well as things on earth. Kolb's writing is sprightly and entertaining (suggesting, for example that Galileo demonstrated that bodies of different sizes and weights fall at the same speed by dropping graduate students of different sizes from the leaning tower of Pisa).

In the second section, Kolb tells the story of how William and John Herschel theorized that nebulae were actually other gallaxies, greatly expanding our view of the size of the universe.

In the third section, he shows how Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the nebulae were receeding at great speeds, providing support for the theories of the expanding universe and ultimately the big bang. Kolb also shows how difficult it is to measure distance in space, and how dependent the measure of large distances is on the accuracy of our measurements of the earth's radius and the distance to the moon and to the sun. In helping to understand the big bang, he repeats the mantra, "the universe is NOT expanding INTO space; rather, space itself is expanding."

A prevailing theme in the story is the difficulty of seeing evidence of phenomena that the searcher is not looking for. Wilson and Penzias, for example, had no idea of the concept of background noise from the big bang when they first heard background noise in their huge radio antenna; and Kepler was trying to discover why there were exactly six planets when he formulated his three laws after years of pouring through and analyzing Tycho's data. Another important theme is the dependence of astronomy on terrestial physics to provide a model with which to view new information.

A delightful trip, well written.

(JAB)

Addition by JAF:

Loved it! It's funny, it's *way* easier to understand than most books on cosmology and physics, and it's very informative. The excerpts from Galileo's "Dialogo" on whether God follows nature, or nature follows God, are priceless, and still quite relevant. Kolb ends the book with the top ten list of questions most frequently asked about the universe, and refers you back to the parts in the book in which he tries to tackle them (or at least tells you what we do and do not yet know about the answers). Highly recommended!… (mer)