The Amazing Universe [antikvár]

ForewordIfirst encountered real, professional astronomers when I was a college freshman, a good many years ago. The impression their gathering left with me was that they were enduring men and women, their patient gaze set on the eternities. The famous Princeton theorist, Henry Norris Russell, looked to me then about the age of a cliff; it came as a surprise, when 1 looked up the dates, to figure out he was about my own present age! Never mind the personal point of view of a youth: There was something in the notion, for the realm of the stars was slow to change. The sun evolves in billions of years, double stars rotate round each other in many decades, and even famous comets return only after many years.Astronomy deals still in the eternities, but nowadays it cannot neglect the split-second. Dr. Herbert Friedman is an astronomer of our day; he minds the seconds as well as the centuries. His own observer's art is in rapid change, too; so that he cannot stand still on his proven technique, either. Astronomers used their eyes alone with the aid of lens, prism, and mirror until late Victorian years, when photography entered the science. Ever since then, the photographic plate has dominated our means of looking far away. But its unshared reign has now ended; This very book makes plain in rich photograph and crisp story how much astronomy today depends on radio reception, on novel instruments in rockets, balloons, and satel-lites, even on an unlikely tank of chemicals in a mine far underground, with new methods coming yearly.It is about ten years since Herb Friedman was there on the spot at White Sands for the stopwatch time when the moon should eclipse the center of the Crab Nebula, and perhaps disclose to his rocket-borne X-ray detectors the presence of a suspected neutron star. He was there, his rocket was aloft right on time amazing to us all in an era when the countdown was often marked by long, unexpected, frustrating periods of holding. The next opportunity meant a wait of a decade more like the old days.His experience stands well for today's typical investigator of the universe. We have become newly aware of fast-changing events in the heavens, like the Crab pulsar, a star flashing as fast as the ordinary TV screen, or the quasar 3C 279, which once poured out in 13 days enough energy to keep our whole Milky Way galaxy of stars shining for centuries. Fast-changing ideas, too, mark the last decade, a time when we have seen a whole new universe of unexpected objects clamor for understanding.It is a happy, awesome, headlong time for astronomy, and this essay in clarifying word and striking image takes the reader right into the midst of it. The next novelty is sure to come soon, and our insight, we hope, not too much later.Philip Morrison, Imthute Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology