THURSDAY'S UNIVERSE: A Report from the Frontier on the Origin, Nature, and Destiny of the Universe

by Marcia Bartusiak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 1986

Bartusiak (with a physics degree in the background) takes the reader on a trip spanning time and space: the historical record of mankind's musings about the firmament, brought up to the current state of cosmic consciousness. The journey begins with star gestation and birth, now perceived (through radio telescopes) to occur largely within massive, nearly opaque clouds dotting the spiral arms of galaxies and not in smaller bits of visible fluff and dust. ""A Twilight's Last Gleaming"" takes stars through maturity and death, sometimes as spectacular super-novae, more often as white dwarfs which may cannibalize a sister star to generate nova bursts. Occasionally, ""The Ultimate Stellar Corpse"" is a black hole, one of which may exist at the center of the Milky Way. ""Wrapped in an Engima"" describes current black-hole detection methods, such as the use of ""the mushroom patch""--the nickname for a 27-antennae network that stretches for miles, outside Socorro, New Mexico. This discussion leads to a review of current investigations into the nature of galaxies, their edges, and the spaces between. ""The Cosmic Marathon"" continues the galaxy saga, from the first evidence that there were island universes on to Hubble's discovery that galaxies are galloping away from each other faster and faster the farther out in space they are. Moreover, galaxies continue to surprise by their astonishing varieties of shape, size, and energy, including the still mysterious quasars. These ""Galactic Dynamos"" may actually be the disturbed centers of ""ordinary"" galaxies. Efforts to draw three-dimensional maps of the universe are described in ""Celestial Tapestry,"" with the memorable image that the universe may be ""as frothy. . .as the ample head of a newly poured glass of beer."" Bartusiak demonstrates a competence and graceful style that make this one of the more enjoyable armchair astronomy chronicles.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION