Space: The Final Frontier

The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life is a book written for anyone interested in the quest for that knowledge which has changed our way of thinking about the world. Although suitable for the general audience, the book can also be used as an undergraduate text, particularly, as the authors note, by those who recognise the connection between the humanities and the sciences. It is a multinational effort; four of the authors are from Finland, one from Russia, and one from the United States. The book benefits from the wide and diverse world view offered by these authors. In its discussion of the ever changing purview of science, it avoids limiting the story to only one country. For example, two centuries after Newton’s time the Russian mathematician, Konstantin Tsiolkovski (1857–1935), constructed the fundamental theory of astronautics. Forecasting a future in space, he wrote that “The planet is the cradle of intelligence, but you do not live in the cradle forever.”

The book has four major sections: The Widening World View, Physical Laws of Nature, The Universe, and Life in the Universe. Starting with prehistoric astronomy and ending with the modern view of our Solar System, the first section traces the evolution in the world view of the Universe. The second section begins with Isaac Newton, continues with a rare look at celestial mechanics (usually omitted in textbooks), and discusses the nature of light, electricity, and magnetism. Then onward to cover Einstein, curved space, and black holes before dropping back to a discussion of the atom, the nucleus, and the strange world of elementary particles. The third section begins with stars, moves outward to the Milky Way and the universe of galaxies, including active galaxies (such as quasars) and galaxy origins. Not stopping there, it discusses the large-scale structure of the Universe and the Big Bang. The fourth section, perhaps the most sweeping of all the sections, brings in the nature of life, the origin of the Earth and Moon, the emergence and evolution of life on Earth and in our Solar System as well as other stellar systems, and ends with humanity’s role in the Universe.

By threading history, biography, and the physical sciences into the story of the Universe the book offers an excellent view of the evolution of human thinking. Also, by taking this approach, the authors can avoid dropping into complex mathematics to explain scientific concepts. Nonetheless there are some subjects in modern science that are inherently complex. In these cases, the authors make every attempt to describe the subject simply or write descriptions that require attentive reading. Topics on the frontiers of science are included at the ends of some chapters; e.g. many dimensional worlds, dark energy, the strange phenomena of the microworld. For those with a more mathematical bent, there are occasional insets that describe a particular concept in more detail; however, these can be skipped without losing the thread of the story.

Besides its historical biographical approach, the book is a textbook for the current economic times. A typical paperback college text such as Seeds’ Horizons: Exploring the Universe has a plethora of colour illustrations on almost every page with most chapters broken up by separate double-page poster-like inserts. It is an expensive book with a list price of $145. The Evolving Universe has a cost of $80 with the same amount of text along with many grey tone illustrations as well as a nice set of colour pictures in the centre of the book. The difference in cost between the two books is, perhaps, due to the number of colour illustrations, but the use of colour is no longer the advantage it once was, since the internet offers illustrations that can easily surpass those in a book. In addition, by taking advantage of the World Wide Web The Evolving Universe offers an accompanying web resource site that contains multiple choice questions and web addresses on topics covered in the book. Without clutter, The Evolving Universe tells its story smoothly, appropriate for both the general reader and a student exposed to the material for the first time.

Neither an astronomy text, a biology text, a physics text, nor a history text, the book combines them all in a rare look at the evolution of human thinking. I can recommend it not only for its readability, but also for its coverage of the scientific concepts that define our way of thinking about the Universe.

The text ends with a quote from The Four Quarters by T. S. Eliot, quartet 4 – Little Gidding – that exemplifies the purpose of the book:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life: The Search for Our Cosmic Roots. Pekka Teerikorpi, Mauri Valtonen, Kirsi Lehto, Harry Lehto, Gene Byrd, and Arthur Chernin, NY: Springer, 2009. RRP: £49.99.

Dr. Sethanne Howard is an astronomer and a former Chief of the Nautical Almanac Office at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.