Far from cheerful, but fascinating.
Geologist Ward and astronomer Brownlee combine disciplines to tell us how the world will end.
On the cosmological time scale, point out the authors of Rare Earth (not reviewed), we are living in a brief, pampered interval during which our planet offers a comfortable environment for living things. The opening chapters concisely survey how geology and astronomy jointly regulate the climate of our world. The rise of complex life was the result of several very fortunate developments: the emergence of land, the establishment of an atmosphere, and in particular the presence of a liquid ocean. Once life arose, it spread to fill the planet and has survived for nearly half a billion years. But the current temperate era is only a respite between ice ages, which bring glaciers sweeping irresistibly down from the poles to cover a large fraction of the planet's land surface. That alone will put human civilization under unprecedented stress—and there's worse to come. In the longer run, Ward and Brownlee predict, the continents will slide together to create one super-continent with interior climate not unlike Death Valley. A runaway greenhouse effect will kill off first the green plants, then almost all animal life. (Simple organisms may survive much longer.) Even that is only a prelude to the ultimate catastrophe, when the sun itself swells to become a red giant, turning the remnants of earth to a cinder. The authors too quickly shift from solid scientific fact to their own extrapolations, and their prose is neither as clear nor as graceful as it might be. Still, anyone who wants to see just how the cards are stacked ought to be reading this.
Far from cheerful, but fascinating.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2003
ISBN: 0-8050-6781-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Dryly humorous and, appropriately, captivating. As creatures who need all the friends they can get, spiders should proclaim...
A fine, pleasantly avuncular compendium of arachnoid lore from Hillyard, a specialist at London's Natural History Museum.
Yes, Hillyard readily admits, he is an arachnophile, and he wants you to be one, too. So he has gathered a fascinating social history, one any web-weaving critter can be proud of: star character in the Navajo creation myth, spinner of fine gossamer, long-distance traveler requiring nothing more than a strand of silk and a gentle wind. But Hillyard is careful to offer a few terrifying facts, wisely buffing the spider's tarnished image just so much. For it is a sad fact of nature that the arachnoid barrel harbors some really rotten apples, creatures with toxic brio enough to kill a horse in a few short hours. But why dwell on the macabre, suggests Hillyard, when there is beauty and talent to admire: Spiders have inspired artists from Shakespeare (he was no friend) to the wizards behind the Nazcan lines; they have served as medicinal cures for fever and ague and, when ingested by the handful, for constipation (who could doubt?). They're appreciated as forecasters of the weather, spinners of fantastic webs, eaters of all those insect pests. Who but a tarantula, hailing from Taranto in Italy, could have spawned the tarantella, that spirited dance thought to spell relief from the hairy fellow's bite? Despite their reputation, Hillyard notes, spiders are delicate things, an ideal indicator of environmental quality. And if you can't love them, then pity them their feeble eyesight, their bad digestion and poor circulation; let your heart go out to the male of the species and his miserable postcopulatory prospects.
Dryly humorous and, appropriately, captivating. As creatures who need all the friends they can get, spiders should proclaim a Hillyard Day.Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-40881-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
This account of the scientific work that has created our modern picture of the origins of the universe was a best-seller in Britain; it deserves to be equally popular here. Chown, the cosmology consultant for New Scientist, begins by showing how scientists concluded that at some time in the distant past the universe, then very tiny, exploded. George Gamow was among the first to explore the consequences of the ``Big Bang,'' especially the fact that the early universe would have had an extremely high temperature. Two of Gamow's research students pointed out (in 1948) that the original explosion would in theory be detectable today as a residual layer of energy throughout the universe. More than 15 years passed before anyone attempted the measurement. Ironically, two teams worked on it within a few miles of each other—one at Princeton, the other at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J. The Bell team, composed of Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, made the key discovery in 1965 and won the Nobel Prize for it. But a subtler measurement remained to be made. Theory implied that the Big Bang radiation would show irregularities—``ripples,'' as they were dubbed—to account for the present structure of the universe, which is far from uniform. In one of the largest scientific team efforts ever assembled, the COBE (COsmic Background Explorer) satellite was created to attempt the measurements, which Chown describes as the most difficult ever made. After rigorous testing, several redesigns, and unprecedented difficulties, COBE was launched. The results were stunning—including a measurement of the cosmic background radiation that matched the theoretical predictions within 0.25 percent. Chown concludes his account with a description of the resulting publicity and wrangling among team members who felt that one team leader, George Smoot (who had described a ``map'' of the ripples as ``like seeing the face of God''), was hogging the spotlight. A lucid account of the key developments in modern cosmology, especially good at capturing the human dimension of scientific work.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-935702-40-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
