(Part 3) Best astronomy books according to redditors
We found 1,733 Reddit comments discussing the best astronomy books. We ranked the 489 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
I've got a copy of his dissertation in my office. It's about the zodiacal light. (well, about the dust cloud that makes it). You can buy a copy from Amazon if you're either sufficiently interested or a sufficiently hardcore Queen fan.
Hello and welcome! Here are my recommendations for getting those nasty watchtower cobwebs out of your head, in other words, here is what I did to de-indoctrinate myself:
Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.
Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman
Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.
Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne
Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking
Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.
For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..
Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.
I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.
You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--
Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."
It's a bunch of gobbledygook about the generations and the kingdom and all of that. It's all nonsense. In my humble opinion, you need to de-indoctrinate yourself to fully remove these types of fears. Not sure if I've shared this post with you before, but here's what I did personally:
Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.
Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman
Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.
Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne
Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking
Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.
For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..
Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.
Another way to clear out the cobwebs is to read and listen to exiting stories. Here are some resources:
https://leavingjw.org
Here is a post with links to a bunch of podcasts interviewing JWs who've left
Here's another bunch of podcasts about JWs
Here is a great book from Psychotherapist and former JW Bonnie Zieman - Exiting the JW Cult: A Helping Handbook
I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.
You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--
To go further down the rabbit hole, watch this series.
Here's a nice series debunking most creationist "logic".
Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."
During at least the first three minutes after the Big Bang started, the universe was too energetic ("hot") for atoms or even atomic nuclei to exist. Nothing could protect someone from that.
During the nucleosynthesis era, which is theorized to have occurred when the universe was between 3 minutes and 20 minutes old, it was so hot that atomic nuclei were formed via atomic fusion. Temperatures would have been comparable to, but mostly hotter than, the core of a star. Nothing could protect someone from that.
After that, the universe continued to expand and cool. But it was so hot that the cooling took a long time - for the next 300,000 years, the universe consisted of a hot plasma consisting of hydrogen and helium nuclei, along with free electrons. In other words, it was still too hot for atoms to form. This is comparable to the environment in the middle to outer layers of a star. Nothing could protect someone from that.
Another point about this period is that the universe was opaque - light couldn't travel very far without being absorbed. So even if you had some magical technology that would allow an astronaut to survive during this period, they would not be able to see anything other than deadly-bright radiation in all directions, which would have to be heavily filtered by their magical protective bubble to avoid vaporizing them.
After about 380,000 years, things had cooled enough for hydrogen and helium atoms to begin to form. It's only after this point that temperatures and density are at a point where it starts to become conceivable that a human could survive it. The problem now is that there are no stars yet, so nothing to see. This period is known as the "Dark Era" because of that - the universe is full of (relatively) cold, dark atoms of hydrogen and helium, and the only light is the leftover radiation from the earlier period when things were hotter - the same light that today, we can detect as the Cosmic Microwave Background. It wouldn't have been microwaves back then, but it would slowly be fading from a reddish glow into the infrared.
This period lasted for at least 150 million years before gravitational collapse began to form objects like quasars. So if the goal is to see interesting things, that would be the first time there'd be something to observe.
There are many online sources that discuss the history of the early universe, e.g. http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_bigbang_timeline.html
There's also a well-known book by Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg called The First Three Minutes. The physics is a little out of date now, but for an overall understanding of the early universe it's still an excellent book.
Not OP, just helping out with some formatting (and links!) because I like these suggestions.
> 1) The Magic Of Reality - Richard Dawkins
>
> 2) The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
>
> 3)A Brief History Of Time - Stephen Hawking
>
> 4)The Grand Design - Stephen Hawking
>
> 4)Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari (Any Book By Daniel Dennet)
>
> 5)Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker
>
> 6)From Eternity Till Here - Sean Caroll (Highly Recommended)
>
> 7)The Fabric Of Cosmos - Brian Greene (If you have good mathematical understanding try Road To Reality By Roger Penrose)
>
> 8)Just Six Numbers - Martin Reese (Highly Recommended)
There is a fascinating book that deals with this topic and other planetary "coincidences" called A Little Book of Coincidence. The premise is that there are many, many of these phenomena in nature which have no apparent purpose and cannot be explained, but instead of approaching them from a mystical/snake oil fashion, it is explored through geometry and math.
Even though you want the full tensor treatment, I would first go through Ryden and make sure you understand the basics well. This is a great undergraduate standard written at the level for those who know "calculus, linear algebra and classical mechanics" and teaches the undergraduate level basics as well as anything.
After this, the standard modern graduate texts are Modern Cosmology by Dodelson and Physical Foundations of Cosmology by Mukhanov. Both use tensors and the full GR treatment with the former, in my opinion, being an easier text (which I think have some great initial chapters describing GR) but Mukonov going through some very advanced concepts like renormalization in quantum field theory, etc...
In addition to textbooks, Baumann's lecture notes on inflation are very good.
Good luck.
Nicely written!
> wherever we look, we see galaxies moving away from us.
> The further away a galaxy was, the faster it appeared to be going.
I like the way Martin Rees (in his book Just Six Numbers) uses Escher's Cubic Space Division to illustrate parts of this. If the lattice expands, then from any given cube all other cubes will be moving away from it, and faster as further away they are. No cube is special. (It's been a while since I read the book and don't have it in front of me, he explains it much better of course.)
Lawrence Krauss has a slightly different explanation in this video (watch for one minute, but a really great video, watch the whole thing if you have an hour).
Thanks for defending this post. /r/conspiracy is the place for controversial topics and I really think there's nothing wrong with this material.
I'm not sure why everyone is complaining that this post is suggesting that the moon "isn't real"...it's just there are far more mysteries about it than modern science is willing to admit.
For a brief overview of mathematical craziness in our immediate space, I highly recommend A Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System.
Holy cow I wasn't prepared for the material presented there.
There's a time and place for LIBOR and the NSA, but there's a much grander universe out there that's just waiting to be deciphered and marveled at.
i can't really answer your first question, but this picture that i got from this book might help to explain your second question of where the moon might have come from.
I recently read a book called Alone in the Universe by John Gribbin.
He's a astrophysicist. He doesn't claim to be an expert on extraterrestrial life.
The title of his book overstates it. He doesn't think that our planet is completely unique in the Universe, or even in our galaxy.
But he does talk about why we think that life in the Universe (currently) would be based on carbon (due to the unique chemical properties of carbon), and then begins extrapolating out what that means for the chances of finding other intelligent life in the Galaxy.
He talks about studies of extrasolar planetary systems and things that make them different than our solar system. He talks about the implications that binary systems and systems with hot Jupiters would have on life in these other systems. He talks about our location the galaxy and the theoretical Galactic Habitable Zones. He talks about metallcity of our solar system and metalicity of other solar systems we've discovered. He talks about life, and the environment of our planet and solar system before and after the Cambrian Explosion. He talks about evolution and the intelligence of dinosaurs (could an intelligent species have possibly emerged on Earth before sooner if great extinctions in the past didn't happen). He talks about stellar life cycles and their effects on life in their system. He talks about the importance of Earth's moon to life on Earth, and discusses ways that astronomers have looked for signs that other systems around other stars may have developed terrestrial planets with large moons. He talks about the future of our solar system and best case scenarios for how long Earth might be able to sustain life (we probably have fewer days ahead than we have behind us - not as a species necessarily, but as a planet that is hospitable to carbon based life).
He never puts numbers to any of it. He's not literally trying to put a number on how many systems in our galaxy might foster life. It's more an exploration how intelligent life formed on Earth, and how unlikely that event might be to be reproduced in the Galaxy.
It really opened my eyes.
So, no, there aren't any experts on extraterrestrial life, but that doesn't mean that you can't take an honest look at life on Earth and extrapolate some data about where similar life might arise elsewhere. And the overwhelming majority of solar systems probably don't have the long term stability that was required for intelligent life to arise on Earth.
Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?
Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.
Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.
Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):
And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.
Astrophysics is an extremely open ended field, so it's tough to point at one book that covers (even briefly) all topics. However, Melia's High Energy Astrophysics is pretty good for that, although it is really geared for juniors/seniors and beginning grads.
For cosmology, I really liked Dodelson's Modern Cosmology. Despite there being some hairy sections I think it is pretty accessible, and it has problems in it if that is your thing.
How to Find a Habitable Planet
Rare Earth (somebody else already linked to it here)
Origins of Life - an outstanding 24-lecture Teaching Company course. I can't say enough about this... it was great. The audio version is fine and the course is on sale right now ($35 instead of the regular $130). Or Pirate B... er, the library... if $35 would break the bank.
These look pretty good. I have a pair of Celestron 15x70's which are almost identical except for the slight difference in magnification. The BAK4 prisms are the way to go and offer pretty awesome views.
Binos are definitely the way to start off if you're new to astronomy. they help you to learn the night sky before you buy a telescope that has a really small field of view. of course you could buy a computerized GoTo style telescope but that takes all the fun out of learning the constellations.
You can't go wrong with a pair of big binos to start with. I would also recommend buying the book Binocular Highlights by Gary Seronik. It's a great guide to the best bino views for every season!
Happy observing!
Some of my favorites:
Brian Greene -- The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Elegant Universe, and The Hidden Reality. Greene is, to my mind, very similar to Hawking in his ability to take complex subjects and make them understandable for the physics layman.
Hawking -- I see you've read A Brief History of Time, but Hawking has a couple of other books that are great. The Grand Design, The Universe in a Nutshell, and A Briefer History of Time.
Same thing applies to Brian Cox. Here's his Amazon page.
Leonard Susskind -- The Black Hole Wars. Here's the basic idea behind this book. One of the basic tenets of physics is that "information" is never lost. Stephen Hawking delivered a presentation that apparently showed that when matter falls into a black hole, information is lost. This set the physics world on edge. Susskind (and his partner Gerard T'Hooft) set out to prove Hawking wrong. Spoilers: they do so. And in doing so, they apparently proved that what we see as 3 dimensions is probably similar to those 2-D stickers that project a hologram. It's called the Holographic Principle.
Lee Smolin -- The Trouble with Physics. If you read the aforementioned books and/or keep up with physics through pop science sources, you'll probably recognize that string theory is pretty dang popular. Smolin's book is a criticism of string theory. He's also got a book that's on my to-read list called Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.
Joao Magueijo -- Faster Than the Speed of Light. This is another physics book that cuts against the prevailing academic grain. Physics says that the speed of light is a universal speed limit. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Magueijo's book is about his theory that the speed of light is, itself, variable, and it's been different speeds at different times in the universe's history. You may not end up agreeing with Magueijo, but the guy is smart, he's cocky, and he writes well.
This should keep you busy, but I can suggest books in other areas if you want.
Math books:
Algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251516690&sr=8
Calc: http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-4th-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356152827&sr=1-1&keywords=spivak+calculus
Calc: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/048663518X
Linear algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Modern-Introduction-CD-ROM/dp/0534998453/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255703167&sr=8-4
Linear algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Dover-Mathematics-ebook/dp/B00A73IXRC/ref=zg_bs_158739011_2
Beginning physics:
http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp/0465023827
Advanced stuff, if you make it through the beginning books:
E&M: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Electrodynamics-Edition-David-Griffiths/dp/0321856562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653392&sr=8-1&keywords=griffiths+electrodynamics
Mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Dynamics-Particles-Systems-Thornton/dp/0534408966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653415&sr=8-1&keywords=marion+thornton
Quantum: http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Quantum-Mechanics-2nd-Edition/dp/0306447908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653438&sr=8-1&keywords=shankar
Cosmology -- these are both low level and low math, and you can probably handle them now:
http://www.amazon.com/Spacetime-Physics-Edwin-F-Taylor/dp/0716723271
http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Three-Minutes-Universe/dp/0465024378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356155850&sr=8-1&keywords=the+first+three+minutes
I read this book years ago:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Never-Happened-Refutation/dp/067974049X
Which made the claim the big bang was originally a religious theory anyway. I.e. before it the universe and time we're considered infinite, no beginning or end. The big bang gave people a way to reconcile The Bible and science. I have no idea if those facts are true or not though (or the cosmology in that book for that matter). It's an interesting read though, and it's cool to read fringe scientific theories that aren't based on magic.
Your clearly not a physicists, Lawrence Krauss is exactly working on this matter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1471112683
Cosmos by Carl Sagan is a brilliant book, it's the book that really sparked my fascination with astronomy.
Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Simon Winchester, The Map that Changed The World
This clipping is from the 2013 book called "Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future". I found it worth a read, especially as a follow-up to "The case for Mars".
Sure, why not. Given enough time, everything is possible. It is even conceivable that the human species manages to survive a few tens of thousands years longer by putting together our own "solar" systems, once everything else naturally starts dying a heat death.
This sort of speculation is beautifully (and scientifically reasonably) described in one of Paul Davies' books, The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe.
If FD want to adhere to the science, it seems likely that while microscopic life may be ubitquitous on planets wihin habitable zones, macroscopic life like Earth's may be very rare. Common M-class habitable worlds may be tidally locked storm-worlds, rarer O,B,A and F class stars may leave the main sequence before their Cambrian explosions, and the limited number of terrestrial, tectonically active worlds in non-eccentric, continuously habitable orbits around G and K class stars of the right age (4-5.5 B years for macroscopic life on Earth, til our own runaway greenhouse), and that haven't been sterilized by cometary impact or nearby supernova, may severely limit independent origins for macroscopic life. See Rare Earth, How to Find a Habitable Plant, Lucky Planet, and Where is Everybody for further constraints.
Hence most of the macroscopic life found on HZ worlds in human space may be seeded during terraforming operations. Inhabited Earth-like planets may mostly have Earth creatures, borrowed from the 101 wild animals of Zoo Tycoon, but also the domesticated animals humans bring everywhere they settle.
Truly alien macroscopic plant and wildlife may await till peace accords with Thargoids allow us to land on their own thargaformed worlds.
My favorite linear algebra text is Paul Halmos' Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces. As far as textbooks go, it's cheap, and it's written very well. It does expect a certain amount of mathematical maturity (a familiarity with proof techniques).
Gilbert Strang's book, Linear Algebra and Its Applications might be better for someone looking into applied mathematics than Halmos'. He makes frequent references to applications and uses geometric arguments fairly liberally. It is 3 times the price of Halmos' text as well, but I'm sure your university library has a copy or two.
I agree with urish, that learning linear algebra fairly well, especially considering the fields that you're interested in.
Hope this helps.
There is a book that explores this and other strange hypothetically not impossible ways to arrange earth-like planets https://www.amazon.com/What-Earth-Had-Two-Moons/dp/B0085SJYRE
It’s really great and covers so much stuff.
You can get some good views of the gas giants. Assuming you are in the continental U.S., Saturn should be viewable shortly after sunset and Jupiter should be viewable shortly before sunrise. Saturn would probably look better than Jupiter with your binoculars.
You should also be able to see Andromeda's galaxy around this time of the year. I can't say for certain how much detail you can get out of it but with good light conditions, I'd be willing to bet you'd be able to see the disk.
Star clusters are where binoculars really shine (sometimes even providing better views than telescopes), you might want to take a look at the list of Messier objects to find some good star clusters to look at. Make sure that you take a look at the Seven Sisters this fall, it is definitely my favorite star cluster.
If you are new, you should really invest in a good planisphere such as this one. Just make sure to get one for your correct latitude. You should also get some sort of red light, whether a red LED flashlight, a regular light with a filter, or just a flash light you have lying around with some red cellophane or brake light repair tape on it. There are even books specifically for binocular astronomy that might be a good investment.
Most importantly, have fun and clear skies!
See also: John Gribbin's Alone in the Universe.
It is easy to 'believe' that there is other intelligent life out there with so many stars and now known exo-planets. But the other side of the equation is how precarious and fragile life is, how lucky it must be to make it through so many hostile periods. We know that life thrives once it begins. But beginning, there's the rub.
I personally feel that the strictly scientific view is to withhold judgement until we have more than one single data point. Discoveries about Mars and Europa are both exciting and sobering on this front, in my opinion. For now, my pendulum has swung toward the 'alone in the universe' idea. Does that make me a scientific heretic? Probably.
No need to get so upset.
First, this is calculated with the perihelion. The closest point.
Second, no matter how your ass feels, it still stands that the length of the orbits can be calculated to 99% using these diagrams. It isn't saying 'this is the shape of the orbits', it's saying here's how you can calculate the distance traveled, with extreme accuracy.
And third, the orbits are spirals, as the sun is moving as well.
Here's the source: A little book of coincidence in the solar system
Many theories deal with inflation. They all fall under the umbrella of "inflationary cosmology." I am not a theorist but as far as I understand "big bang inflationary cosmologies" currently receive the most attention. String theory type theories and loop quantum type theories can both incorporate inflationary effects so its certainly not limited to the "classical big bang" model I detailed.
Beyond pages such as this I would say you could get a hold of this book, Modern Cosmology By Scott Dodelson. It is a good overview of modern cosmological models at the high undergraduate level. The math it presents is targeted at physic students in their senior year of undergraduate (my words, not the author) but that doesn't mean a non-physicist can't get anything out of it.
Rosen's Modern Number Theory (hands down) for number theory and Halmos' Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces for linear algebra. There are other texts available for linear algebra but Halmos is a pretty solid option.
Classic and still probably the best book on the subject.
http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Dimensional-Vector-Spaces-P-R-Halmos/dp/0387900934
If you're really curious about this, Steven Weinberg (a nobel laureate in physics) wrote an excellent book for the general public that covers the entire first 3 minutes.
That's a pretty good explanation. Not sure I quite agree with the conclusion though. The very existence of the Universe is pretty unlikely. There are six numbers that shape the existence of this universe, I can't remember what they are but they are mentioned in A Brief History of Time, if I remember correctly (also this book is about them). Once you take the fact that the universe is so unlikely into account, the logic of that argument starts to fall apart.
Gotta read Brian May's A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud
Rocks hard, until it just dusts the competition...
http://www.amazon.com/Survey-Radial-Velocities-Zodiacal-Cloud/dp/0387777059
Probably the most egregious error is the implications of the collision of the Milky Way with the Andromeda galaxy. There will not be a mass slaughter of star systems as implied in the slideshow; for as densely packed with stars as our galaxies may appear to be, there is still a tremendous amount of space between even the closest star systems. Collisions would be extremely rare, though there may be some close calls.
Planets that orbit far from their stars may be perturbed enough to be torn away to drift in the cold dark of space. Something orbiting as close to its star as we do to ours would likely not suffer this fate.
Star formation WOULD get a boost as interstellar gasses collide and collapse, but again, shit's far away, yo.
Drifting to the galactic core may be a bit problematic, because radiation sucks, but being flung into intergalactic space isn't as bad as it sounds. We would still have our Sun, and if our Sun was a bit younger, we'd be fine, except, well... keep reading.
Because of this vast distance between even the closest stars, the Andromeda Galaxy will only have about as much brightness as our current Milky Way, so if somehow we're still on Earth when this happens, if you were in a city or even a normal suburb, you wouldn't see much if anything at all. But that won't happen, because...
... it's perhaps not complete misinformation, but it is glossed over: the effect of the brightening of our sun over time. We are looking at the end of complex multicellular life on land before 250 Mya, which is a depressing thought, since such life only really got going 250 Mya ago.
What we could tolerate will probably end 100 Mya before that, because the more complex you are, the harder you're hit when times get tough. Complex life on Earth thus follows a ballistic arc spanning a half-billion years.
There's a lot more fascinating stuff concerning our eventual end(s), and a great place to start is Phil Plait's entertaining book, Death From The Skies!
Sleep well. ;)
Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees. It's about how the properties of the universe are perfect for humans to exist in a stable environment - really interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/Just-Six-Numbers-Forces-Universe/dp/0465036724
Well, in his 2010 book, James Kasting (the leading researcher on the habitability of extrasolar planets) explicitly says that he's far more optimistic than the authors of the Rare Earth Hypothesis. Recent discoveries from Kepler have shown that the rare earth hypothesis probably doesn't hold (these are discoveries that the authors of the hypothesis did not know at the time they wrote the book). Even if you must have a star with the sun's lifetime, and a planet of the Earth's mass in the habitable zone (a notion that Kasting disputes - he argues that planets around red dwarfs are not as inhospitable as they seem - the flares are worst on the lowest-mass red dwarfs, but there are still plenty of higher-mass red dwarfs), the Kepler mission has now known that we now know that MANY of these stars will have planets, and that many of these planets have potential to be earthlike.
That being said, intelligent life may still be very rare. There's still a huge step from non-life to life, and from life to intelligent life. Honestly, it's impossible to make a firm conclusion as to whether or not ELEs will help or hinder the evolution of life (evolution works in really unpredictable ways). One thing is this: ELEs tend to be more common early in the solar system's life than later on in the solar system's life (because the asteroid+stray meteorite density was far higher at earlier times).
PS: I've personally talked to both Kasting and one of the authors of the Rare Earth Hypothesis. The authors of the Rare Earth Hypothesis do believe that microbial life in the galaxy is common, but that intelligent life is probably very rare.
I thought astrophysics sounded cool when I was 13, too.
Get her The Last Three Minutes and Stephen Hawking's Black Holes and Other Baby Universes.
And take her to a planetarium.
Well, distances can and should be factored in, 6 months versus 6 days is a big deal.
BUT, Mars is a lot easier for a lot of reasons.
I was a big fan of the writings of Robert Zubrin, his latest book outlining his "Mars Direct" plan just came out last year, you can get an audio-book version for under $3.
http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Direct-Exploration-Special-Tarcher-ebook/dp/B00AMOO98I/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1413239131&sr=8-3&keywords=Robert+Zubrin
Oh man. That's a toughie. This is going to sound weird, but I would love 1,000 stars. Not to own but to just look up one night. No lights from the city or houses. No noises from the neighbors. Just serenity.
After his passing, I added A Brief History of Time to my Kindle wishlist. I should have read it before his passing because it does seem surreal that he's gone. I'm not the smartest man in the world, but a guy can try.
You're most welcome. When I was looking for the links on Amazon, I came across this, which one reviewer says is a rebuttal of several of Rare Earth's points:
How to Find a Habitable Planet
I've added it to my reading list. It definitely is a pleasurable hobby; we live in exciting times with all of the exoplanet discoveries.
You should definitely read What if the Moon Didn't Exist? and What if the Earth Had Two Moons? by Neil F. Comins. I haven't looked for the first one yet and, uh, only got a few chapters into the second book because it got a bit jargon-y in places and I had a lot going on at the time, but it was really interesting. He included a little short story before each chapter about how a famous event in history might have played out in the different world, and he goes into lots of detail about how the different day/night cycles would affect biological clocks and stuff. Very cool! I'll have to actually finish it sometimes.
Lots of books about astronomy and astrophysics for laypeople.
Cosmos
A Brief History of Time
The Elegant Universe
Welcome to the Universe
(I haven't read the last one. Stumbled on it looking up the Amazon links for the others, but it looks pretty cool, to me.)
Take all the math and science courses you can, especially if your high school offers AP physics and calculus.
Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is very good and a bit more up-to-date (it's a book not a TV series), and I speak as someone who has read the book of Cosmos several times.
Brian Green's The Elegant Universe is worth reading, even if you think String Theory is "Not Even Wrong" (Greene is not one of the die-hards).
Paul Halmos Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces.
http://www.amazon.com/What-Earth-Had-Two-Moons/dp/B0085SJYRE
Worth the cash, very cool book.
Death from the skies! is a good place to start.
Alone in the universe
Why won't you move Mr. Bubbles?
I should like Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future by Robert Zubrin
Well, I think one of my favorite books at that age was probably something science fiction related, but these days theres a variety of things from which to pick, I think one of my favorites would be James Burke's "Connections" , another book is of course Sagan's "Cosmos" or these days I might even suggest something like Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable".
Universe: The Definitive Visual Guide
Hawking's A Briefer History of Time is very good http://www.amazon.com/Briefer-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553804367
>Science, which ought to never claim absolute truth or have unchallengeable dogma, is doing precisely this and metaphysical naturalism has become its own religion.
I've never claimed that science is 100% true or is unchallengeable. It is perfectly possible for some one to flip everything on its head, or change it slightly.
>Do we at least have the ability to go to the earliest possible time and see what was there?
We don't have the ability to go and see if George Washington existed either. Are you going to claim he didn't exist? We analyze his possible existence by looking at evidence we have to day.
We do the same in cosmology.
>Testable, repeatable evidence?
Yes.
It is possible you don't have an understanding of the current state of cosmology.
If you have a background this is a very good introduction to cosmology:
>http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Cosmology-Scott-Dodelson/dp/0122191412
Fair enough. Didn't know that this was where you were coming from.
No, I haven't read Barrow. But pretty much any popularization of physics recently seems to make this very point. From Brian Greene to Lee Smolin seems to make this point.
I think we were both missing what the other was saying. I agree with your point on why, apologies for the bluntness. I didn't fully see your Devil's Advocate position until now. So I guess we agree to agree?
Only $87.20!
> The Bible was still legit
Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.
Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman
Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.
Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne
Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking
Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.
Try this book: "What If the Earth Had Two Moons?". It's one of those what-if type books that revolves around how Earthlike planets in non-Earthlike situations would be possible and what life would be like. I actually generally recommend it for scifi stuff - it's very interesting and indepth. You want an Earthlike planet with a thicker crust? Well according to this book, the crust would periodically melt, and life would have evolved to know when the crust is thinning and thus when to run like fuck away from that area of the continent.
As I said, religious people are blind to reason. It seems you have used a different method to totally avoid answering the question.
I live in Scotland, UK and here religion is not as prevalent as some countries (thankfully). However as a younger child I went to a catholic school where I was taught a lot of catholic beliefs, I was however too young to comprehend it. My education there after from age 6 upwards was in a normal state school which is still based on Christian beliefs, church services, hymns at assembly etc.
I was never a believer in any God and took pretty much all of it as fun story's for learning and teaching good and evil. much the same as I feel they can, and do, use Harry Potter books these days.
I have made up my mind in no belief in God. How ever as a rational human being I feel if evidence was provided to me that was undeniable I would change my opinion immediately. to paraphrase Tim Minchin;
>"Then I will change my mind
I'll spin on a fucking dime
I'll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It's a miracle"
However the evidence that is available to you and I is the same and somehow you refuse to take note of it.
>Why do you make that the threshold? Isn't that kind of like asking me to prove the existence of "red" using only evidence of things that are green?
I don't really thinking evidence of a physical, or I will extend to any rational and observable evidence is really a threshold. I trust in numbers which are not a physical thing.
Lawrence M. Krauss has a great book : A Universe from Nothing
Well not all Physicists agree, you're just not hearing about the ones that don't. It has reached popular science though, e.g. Eric Lerner's book The Big Bang Never Happened and managed to get a refuting letter published in New Scientist back in 2004, a copy of which resides here (be warned though - that's a fairly dodgy website which get's linked to by people advocating Creationism, which I have absolutely zero time for - couldn't find a better link ).
I heard about it from one of my Professors, while studying for a BSc in Physics in the UK. And I asked the same question as you. The answer was depressing; Big Bang theory is where the funding is; there's no interest in funding research into alternatives.
To me Big Bang theory will be looked back on by future generations the same way we do when looking back at funny ideas such as the earth being flat or the earth being the center of the Universe - for which Galileo was imprisoned BTW.
"Dad, did they really believe back then that the Universe started with one Big Bang? How funny!"
This book will tell you everything you need to know.
You might also try Habitable Planets for Man. It's old and a bit outdated, but still worth reading and you can download it for free.
L'unico papabile, in inglese, e che non costa una fucilata l'ho trovato su amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cosmos-Cosmic-Evolution-Science-Civilisation/dp/0349107033/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Nei commenti lo incensano, ma quelli da 1 stella dicono che quello venduto è una ristampa fatta male senza le molte immagini che contraddistinguono il libro. Io nel dubbio l'ho preso lo stesso perché se scopro che un libro è raro devo averlo, ma dopo aver letto queste recensioni volevo quasi restituirlo. Dovrebbe arrivare la settimana prossima così vedrò...
You should read the book "The Last Three Minutes" by Paul Davies. It's about all the possible ways that the universe could end. It was published in '97, so some of the science in it will be a bit dated. Still one of my favourite reads, and everyone I've ever lent it to has loved it.
I agree. I started with a telescope but now use 10x50 binos. I find the binos much easier to use for "star-hopping". I find this book to be invaluable: https://www.amazon.ca/Binocular-Highlights-Gary-Seronik/dp/1931559430/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496767125&sr=1-3&keywords=night+sky+binoculars
The majority of the objects the author highlights in his book are viewable from urban areas.
Mars Direct and these calculations both seem to agree that 80 - 85% of the mass of the Mars return vehicle will be propellant, assuming a direct entry into Earth's atmosphere.
I'm also an xt6 owner.
For software, you can't go wrong with Stellarium. It's free, and it lets you choose your location as well as time and date. Very handy.
For reading material, these two books have served me well:
Nightwatch: contains loads of stargazing tips and general astronomy information. Also contains star charts, and detailed charts of select constellations.
Binocular Highlights: I find myself using this one all the time. Its focus is on binocular astronomy, but you can use it with a telescope as it's a sort of "best-of" of the night sky. Each object has a detailed, zoomed-in map and a brief description. Contains star charts for every season, with every object in the book marked on the charts.
For photography, you'll only really be able to take decent pictures of the Moon and the brighter planets. As others have pointed out, you'll need some fancier equipment to take good pictures of deep-sky objects.
Just for fun, here are some of my favorite objects:
The Orion Nebula (M42): under the heavily light-polluted skies of my backyard, still fuzzy and nebula-like. Glorious under dark skies, when the dusty arms and finer details become apparent.
Andromeda Galaxy (M31): Looks like a big hazy smudge through the eyepiece. Its companion (M32, I think) is also visible in the same field of view.
Ring Nebula (M57): Even under light-polluted skies, I can pick this one out pretty easily by star-hopping. Looks like a small, blue donut.
Double Cluster: absolutely brilliant collection of stars in a single field of view.
IF the earth was able to survive the sun's transition into a red giant then Supe's would gradually lose his powers as he uses up the yellow sun radiation stored in his cells but is unable to replenish it.
There was a great Elseworlds story that addresses this BUT because it's somewhat of a spoiler I won't mention the title.
Those who don't know what I'm referring to and don't care about spoilers can click here to find out.
EDIT: If anyone is curious as to just what will happen to earth as the sun ages I suggest checking out "Death from the Skies" by Phil Plait a very interesting and fun read.
Fun fact- Dr. Brian May's (Queen guitarist) doctoral thesis was titled "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud."
He analyzed what happens to the dust particles left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
You can get a copy here.
I recommend you read Death from the Skies! by Phil Plat
This is a good layman's guide - as long as you don't mind Lawrence Krauss.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Universe-From-Nothing-Lawrence-Krauss/dp/1471112683
axolotl_peyotl: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link
Thanks for defending this post. /r/conspiracy is the place for controversial topics and I really think there's nothing wrong with this material.
I'm not sure why everyone is complaining that this post is suggesting that the moon "isn't real"...it's just there are far more mysteries about it than modern science is willing to admit.
For a brief overview of mathematical craziness in our immediate space, I highly recommend A Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System.
Holy cow I wasn't prepared for the material presented there.
There's a time and place for LIBOR and the NSA, but there's a much grander universe out there that's just waiting to be deciphered and marveled at.
I use The Universe as my platform.
The Big Bang Never happened by Lerner: http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Never-Happened-Refutation/dp/067974049X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280336183&sr=8-1 . Amazing read backed up by scientific fact and numerous citations to scholarly literature.
Other books that I found really useful, informative, motivating and accessible in high school include Feynman's QED -- a really cool introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics that I read my senior year -- and Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. I think somebody mentioned it already.
Mathematics, the Loss of Certainty is a really good discussion on the history of math. Also quite accessible. I read it my freshman year of college.
More tangential books that I've enjoyed include The Drunkard's Walk and Chances Are. They cover similar ground, though, and I like the latter better.
There's also some pretty good fiction that gives you the flavor of some of the mindbending concepts that can arise from physics. Robert Heinlein's Time for the Stars is a good "juvenile" book that takes a step into the Twin's Paradox. Time dilation pops up in Larry Niven's A World Out of Time as well. For solar system level astrophysics, Niven's The Integral Trees postulates a really cool alternative to planets.
I read most the fiction around the time I was in high school, with the exception of Time for the Stars. Ironically, it's the only one that I can guarantee doesn't have "adult themes." I don't know what sort of restraints your parents put on your reading, though. They're all good books.
The other thing, other than books I mean, you can do is find a mentor or club in your area that could help put you on your way. An astronomy club would be a good idea, but there may also be physics or chemistry styled mentors in your area. They're likely to act out of a local university or research center (I live in Huntsville, Alabama, where Marshall Spaceflight Center is located. I know they have outreach/mentoring programs).
Oh, and I know I'm going on, one last thing that I found really useful and fun was my involvement in summer programs. In my case, the big one was Mississippi Governor's School, a three week summer program. It was an awakening from a social standpoint. (Ten years later, a large proportion of my friends either attended it or I know via some connection to it, still.) And it had an astrophysics class, which was awesome. I know other states have programs like it (assuming you're in the US), and MGS at least is easier to get into than commonly believed. People think a counselor's recommendation is required, but it's not and you get two opportunities to attend, between sophmore and junior and junior and senior years. It's unlikely you're in MS, of course, but other places have similar programs.
Good luck with things and keep us posted. :)
In case you haven't read the book "The Last Three Minutes", you might want to look for it. Great stuff; it's full of the best physics-based guesses about the aging and decaying of the Universe and physical matter. (And thanks for the fun read. I'm looking forward to a nice restful time in 50-60 years, personally...)
> of course, the typical breaking point between islam and atheism…
…or any religious belief and atheism, for that matter…
> …where the sacred is considered imaginary…
Let me mirror that for you: where the imaginary is considered sacred
> …and an absurd creation-from-nothing…
…which is exactly how it might be…
…or like this…
We could get into an argument over (if nothing can come from nothing) how your “creator” then came into being. Oh, she exists forever? Then why not the Universe? However you look at it, saying “the creator created it” doesn’t answer the problem of “creation”, it just shifts it to something else. You don't allow the universe to be uncreated (or created from nothing), but you say your creator is.
> …rational…
And you think believing in an unexplained, unproven, unrevealed sky fairy is rational?
> …and everything that ensues from it including pornography morally justified.
I never said everything is justified. I said: Let’s use our own brains, our own intellect, to decide what is moral or immoral. We’re certainly better equipped to do this than some stone age tribe, let alone a probably non-existent, entirely unproven entity who is supposed to have created us.
> have your way, we have ours.
Indeed.
I had, thank you. Same to you.
>Is humanity at peak prosperity? Yes, probably so. Why? Because it’s already the direction we were headed in.
I think is important to establish why we were headed in. Is because we discover ways to make our real, natural life better. Not because we discover ways to improve our spiritual life. Even though we tried with thousand of Gods and religions.
​
>It’s not like we’ve been walking in circles for the last ten thousand years.
We actually kind of were going in circles:
"Copernicus (1473-1543)1,2, Kepler (1571-1630), Galileo (1564-1642)3,4,5, Newton (1643-1727)6 and Laplace (1749-1827)7 all fought battles against the Church when they published scientific papers that enraged the Church by writing that the Earth might orbit the sun, rather than the idea that it sat at a central position in the Universe. These and other scientists suffered torture, imprisonment, forced recantations and death at the hands of Christians5,8. The source of the Church's confidence was the Bible.
.....
"2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away. [...]
In the 6th century B.C., in Ionia, a new concept developed, one of the great ideas of the human species. The universe is knowable, the ancient Ionians argued, because it exhibits an internal order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be uncovered. [...] This ordered and admirable character of the universe was called Cosmos. [...]
Between 600 and 400 B.C., this great revolution in human thought began. [...] The leading figures in this revolution were men with Greek names, largely unfamiliar to us today, the truest pioneers in the development of our civilization and our humanity.”
"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)37
***
When did the Catholic Church officially accepted the fact of a moving Earth? Can you believe it was 1992
The idea is Christianity proposes and imposes a system in which reality works because of supernatural forces. Which has been proven wrong so so many times when it tried to defend it.
So I can say that Christianity is false because it's claims has been proven false in all its history. The sun doesn't burn because of supernatural forces, volcanos, thunders, earthquakes, floods, desises, disasters are not the wrath of Gods. From here I have big doubts about claims about soul, haven, angels, demons, etc.
Wikipedia is your friend. You CAN teach yourself stuff about any of the above. In highschool I decided to pursue playing guitar. Never got very good at it, but I decided to record myself playing anyway. I ended up liking making music with the computer more than practicing, so I did that for a while. Came out with an album with a friend and got some attention at school from it, pretty cool. Then I needed a website for our band, of course, so I learned how to do that by downloading dreamweaver and Flash. I ended up liking Flash the best, and now years later, I've programmed a good number of Flash games and made money from them. None of this stuff happened because of school. It was all because I followed what I wanted to do. (oh, and don't feel bad about pirating software for learning purposes, especially at your age. But also look into educational versions).
Not to say I didn't learn anything good in highschool. I learned a lot from my senior English class because the teacher obviously liked what he did, was good at teaching (taught at Notre Dame half the time, at the high school half the time) and challenged us. Learning how to write a good paper is so important. Oh and I use some basic trigonometry in programming the Flash games. No calculus stuff though.
Ok, my final comment, since you seem to love learning, are two of the coolest books I've read.
I wouldn't call myself an atheist, and in a test like this, I'd probably be included in those that "believe in God." But for me, I'd have to say that the number one reason I "believe" in something is because I am continually astounded by the innumerable intricacies of our society, world, and universe. So many things that interconnect and influence each other that one tweak would send our existence overboard. The book Just Six Numbers elaborates this point pretty well. Now, I'm definitely not a believer in a Christian god, or any other organized religion, but I find myself wanting to believe....well, in something.
We Are Not Alone: Why We Have Already Found Extraterrestrial Life
http://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Not-Alone-Extraterrestrial/dp/1851687882/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375648593&sr=8-4&keywords=we+are+not+alone
Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique
http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Universe-Why-Planet-Unique/dp/1118147979/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375648602&sr=8-2&keywords=we+are+alone
Good read
Sure, I know you're not looking for a debate so I won't drag you into one.
But from my experience a lot of people who claim to have been an atheist who suddenly found religion weren't really atheists to begin with, but instead were just "apatheists"--they didn't think much about it or cared.
The way you totally dismissed the big bang is telling. There are graduate-level courses and massive textbooks out there that break down the fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a second-by-second recount of what happened immediately after the big bang. You can't discount all that research and theory as "zero evidence" unless you've really never engaged in it before.
https://youtu.be/9jKzBOMf4bo?t=714
https://www.amazon.com/First-Three-Minutes-Modern-Universe/dp/0465024378
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Anyway, it's usually other people who drag these apatheists into the faith, and they stay there because of the community and sense of belonging that they lacked before. I get that. It has nothing to do with the real world or science or evidence, it's just community.
Or maybe there's an unexplainable moment that was deeply emotional, like a religious experience.
I was just curious if your story differed at all from that. It's a topic that's very interesting to me.