Nonfiction Book Reviews

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I first heard about Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax” by Philip Plait at the local planetarium when my husband and I went to watch a movie called (you guessed it!) “Bad Astronomy.” It was a movie made to show in a planetarium, so as you might imagine, it was not exactly on par with Hollywood blockbusters. But still, it was enjoyable, and I learned a lot from it. It also made me want to read the book.

The premise of Phil Plait’s book, movie, and website (Bad Astronomy at Discover Magazine,) is the fact that there are a lot of flat-out wrong ideas when it comes science, and more especially astronomy.  Plait is working hard to debunk the conspiracy theories that surround things like the moon landing, and to help people realize that there are common myths (like you can only balance an egg on the spring equinox) that are completely untrue.

In short, he’s a skeptic and a debunker of pseudo-science.

Since I enjoy that kind of thing, I really enjoyed the book and the movie.  There were certain things that he covered that I had honestly never thought about.  Take, for example, ships flying around in space.  Watch any famous movie or TV series (like Star Wars or Stargate) and you’ll see ships flying, then slowing down and stopping next to the mother ship (or whatever).  Notice when you watch those scenes that as far as you can see, there is nothing to slow the ship down!

In space, in order for a shuttle to slow down, it has to fire thrusters at the front of the ship in order to produce force that would send them backwards.  Or in the case of them already going forward, a backwards thrust would cause them to slow down and eventually stop.  But in all of the Hollywood movies, the ships simply stop, as if the pilot stepped on the breaks or something.

After Plait pointed this out to me, I have to admit that it’s been bugging me ever since.  If you like sci-fi movies or TV shows, do know that reading this book may take away some of that joy.  Just a head’s up in case this sort of thing would annoy you instead of provoking humor (ha-ha!  This movie is so stupid - it breaks every natural law in the book! kind of humor.)

Some of the other bad science that Plait tackles: UFO’s, naming stars after yourself, the supposed “fake” moon landing, and a whole lot more.  I will say that there was hard-core science in the book in some spots, and since I have a hard time following that sort of thing (science is interesting to me but science doesn’t always make sense to me) I will admit that I skipped some paragraphs.  Anyone who is more of a science geek than me won’t have any problems with it.  For the most part, it was written so that anyone could understand, even the non-science geeks of the world.

And, speaking of science, there are some great science blogs here in the Today.com network that you might want to check out - both Science Fun and Rocket Scientist are well-written and educational blogs in the science field.  Also, I have read and reviewed other astronomy related books here on Nonfiction Lover, like Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe and Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking that you might want to check out if science and astronomy are a passion of yours.

Overall, I give Bad Astronomy 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Whether you’re a science teacher, debunking fiend, or just enjoy astronomy, you’ll love Bad Astronomy.

Havs

Okay, first off, I just wanted to say I have never read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.  I have heard that A Brief History of Time is supposed to be the more technical book out of the two, whereas the The Universe in a Nutshell is geared towards people who are not first and foremost scientists.

It is for that reason that I don’t envision myself ever reading A Brief History of Time, since I hardly understood The Universe in a Nutshell.  Here is an example of a mind-bending point that Hawking makes in Universe:

Yang-Mills theory is an extension of Maxwell theory that describes interactions in two other forces called the weak and strong nuclear forces.  However, ground state fluctuations have a much more serious effect in a quantum theory of gravity.  Again, each wavelength would have a ground state energy.  Since there is no limit to how short the wavelengths of the Maxwell field can be, there are an infinite number of different wavelengths in any region of spacetime and an infinite amount of ground state energy.  Because energy density is, like matter, a source of gravity, this infinite energy density ought to mean there is enough gravitational attraction in the universe to curl spacetime into a single point, which obviously hasn’t happened.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 46.

Obviously.

I should confess: My last science class was in the 10th grade, where I took biology.  I’m not exactly a science expert.  But if I understand right, I’m just the type of person Hawking was trying to target with this book - someone interested in science and wanting to learn more about the deeper principles and ideas being explored, but who doesn’t have a PhD in anything, let alone theoretical physics.  (I didn’t realize until I started adding links to that sentence, how many book reviews I’ve written on here about books on science, as compared to books about art [Art books reviewed: 0.]  You can tell what I am really interested in.)

In Hawking’s defense, these ideas are extraordinarily complicated, and that’s not exactly his fault.  I can’t imagine a harder task than trying to explain quantum physics to your average Joe, and that’s what Hawking was attempting to do.

I do give him kudos for sprinkling humor throughout the book.  He talks about bets that he’s made with other scientists on obscure scientific theories, added lots of drawings with little green men in them, and then topped it all off with dry humor comments that added spice to the book.  Here’s an example:

It would be possible to detect the radiation from much smaller and hotter black holes, but there don’t seem to be many of them around.  That is a pity.  If one were discovered, I would get a Nobel Prize.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 120.

Oh shucks.  If only there were more black holes in our general vicinity.

I read on Amazon that some people were upset with how much Hawking “dumbed down” the science, and wrote scathing remarks that if you knew anything about science, you could just skip this book because nothing in it would be new.  Apparently, I know less than nothing about science (no surprise there).

In the end, I give The Universe in a Nutshell 4 stars out of 5.  If you’re really into this kind of thing, and have the patience to try to unravel some of the theories that Hawking presents, then by all means, enjoy.  There is a lot of information to digest here, if you have the grits and determination to do it.  I liked learning what I could from it, but I doubt I’ll pick it up again.

Hava

PS If you are a fan of all things science like I am, make sure to check out a blogger in the Today.com network who also happens to be a rocket scientist.  Her blog rocks, and is not only informative, but very funny. Hi Stephanie!

Physics of the Impossible:A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel was written by Michio Kaku, a quantum physicist who co-wrote the string field theory (which I had never heard of before reading the back flap.  Luckily you don’t have to know anything about string field theory before reading, although Kaku does explain it some detail in the conclusion of the book.)

I picked this up on a whim (as I do most of my books) but quickly found myself engrossed in the text.  Kaku categorizes various futuristic ideas such as phasers and force fields into Class I, Class II, and Class III Impossibilities.  Here’s a quick rundown of the categories:

Class I Impossibilities are technologies that are impossible today, but that do not violate the known laws of physics.  They are ideas that might be possible to achieve either in this century or the next.

Class II Impossibilities are technologies are so advanced, either they’re completely impossible, or if they are achievable, it won’t happen for a millennia, or even a million years.

Class III Impossibilities are technologies that violate the known laws of physics, and are therefore impossible.  There are (surprisingly) only two ideas in this category, and Kaku says, “If they do turn out to be possible, they would represent a fundamental shift in our understanding of physics.” This is the sort of understatement that scientists like to engage in.

He starts out with the Class I items, and those actually take up a majority of the book.  It was also the most interesting (and understandable) section of the book.  In Class II items, he starts explaining some pretty wild quantum theories that went right over my head.

Luckily, he doesn’t do this the whole way through, or I would have put the book down long before the end.  I have studied science very little, and quantum physics not at all, so the fact that he only lost me a couple of times speaks volumes of his writing style.

The book flows pretty easily from one Class I impossibility to the next, and you feel that by the end, you’ve learned more about where science is at right now than you could have by sitting through 5 years of college lectures.  It’s a book that I found myself discussing with anyone who would sit still long enough (”Did you know that they are working on an invisibility cloak and have already been able to make minuscule items invisible in the red light spectrum?”  Some days I feel sorry for my coworkers…)

Any huge Star Trek or Star Wars fan would thoroughly enjoy this book, since he mentions different episodes/parts of the movies throughout the book.  Although it’s fun to imagine that things like teleporters exist, it’s even more fun - for me - to find out that scientists are actually working on making them into a reality, and X, Y, and Z are the things they are focusing on.

Also, any science geeks would love this book, since it’s easy enough for a regular person to understand, but definitely not dumbed down so much a science nerd couldn’t enjoy it.  Not to mention that his Notes section at the end of the book was quite extensive.

Having said all that, I loved this book, and I am neither a Star Trek, Star Wars, or science geek.  I enjoyed reading it because I love hearing about the latest and greatest that humanity has come up with, and I simply love to learn.  I felt like I really had learned something when I finished this book, instead of just wasting the last 5 hours of my life.

I give Physics of the Impossible 4.5 out of 5 stars.  There was a bit too much over-my-head information to rate it higher than that, but it was still one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time.

Now I’m going to have to hunt out some of the other books he’s written.  Beyond Einstein and Hyperspace both sound interesting…

Havs

Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe by Robin Kerrod & Carole Stott is a flat-out gorgeous book.  I picked it up because the front cover was eye catching and because my inner child still wants to grow up and be an astronaut.

And I fell in love with it from page one.  I have always been a huge astronomy fan, starting from when I would take long walks with my father out in the desert. We’d look at the different constellations, with him giving me info on each one.

So it’s not surprising that I’d be interested in a book about the Hubble telescope.  What is surprising is how much I learned from the book, and how much I enjoyed reading it.  Some of the pictures taken by Hubble are jaw dropping.  Spread over two pages, they are colorful, gorgeous snapshots of deep space.

The pictures are the best part of this book, but that’s not to say that the text isn’t interesting.  The book was loaded with everything from black holes to pulsar stars, and the history behind each discovery.  I felt as if I had taken an in-depth astronomy class by time I finished reading the book.  Even better, it wasn’t dry, boring facts, just thoroughly engrossing reading.

I was really excited to find a site online that allowed me to download a picture from the inside of the book.  Now granted, this picture isn’t one of the larger ones, and it isn’t as colorful as some of the other pictures, and it’ll definitely lose something in translation (from the book to the website to my computer to my website to your computer - whew!!) but at least it gives you an idea of what the book offers.

Isn’t that a cool picture?  One of the things that I was excited to find out is that none of the pictures in the book were “touched up” to provide brighter or more eye-catching colors.  All of the pictures were published exactly how the galaxies look in outer space.  I had no idea our universe was so colorful!

So whether you’re a homeschooling mom who wants to do a section on space, or just someone with even a mild interest in astronomy and the universe, you really need to pick this one up!  I honestly cannot think of a single thing to change about it.  I enjoyed the book from beginning to end.

A rare 5 out of 5 stars for Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe.  Kudos to Robin Kerrod and Carole Stott for a job well done.

Havs

There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Anthony Flew was definitely written by a philosopher.  I guess I was expecting too much, I don’t know, but this book was a struggle for me to read the first time around (I’d originally read it several months ago, and then decided to reread it yesterday so I could write a review on here.)  Not surprisingly, it made more sense the second time around.  I’ve never been a big fan of “deep mysteries” where you ask philosophical questions that don’t actually have an answer.  That’s too nebulous for me.  I think philosophy and I don’t get along for the same reason that I’m not a big fan of poetry - I like concrete facts and things that I can categorize in my mind, or at least understand, lol.

Here’s a quotation from the book that left me scratching my head:

“Perhaps the most important and wide-ranging of these insights was that we must become constantly and crisply conscious of how all philosophy (insofar as philosophy is a conceptual inquiry) must be concerned with correct verbal usage.  We can have no access to concepts except through study of linguistic usage, and hence, the use of those words through which these concepts are expressed.” Page 38, There is a God

If you enjoyed that (or even understood that!) you should definitely check out the Journeyman Philosopher here at Today - I think you’d enjoy that site.

For me, that didn’t make much sense. I struggled through the middle of the book (the beginning was written in plain English, and the end wasn’t too bad either - it was the middle where he started explaining his philosophical beliefs that just completely lost me.)  I was almost to the point of giving up when it started to get good again: He started to explain the things that made him change his point of view on atheism, and he did it using language I could understand.

One of the most interesting parts was on page 75 - 78, where he talks about the work done by Gerry Schroeder to disprove the “monkey typing” explanation.  We’ve all heard it: Lock a group of monkeys in a cage and give them computers, and if they banged on the keyboards long enough, they’d eventually be able to produce a sonnet by Shakespeare.  The analogy is often used to explain how it is that this world, galaxy, and universe in all its complexities, could be produced by random chance.  I won’t go into the refutation by Gerry Schroeder because this post is getting too long, but definitely check the book out if you’ve ever thought that this sounded like a reasonable explanation, because Schroeder does an excellent job of tearing that idea apart using simple mathematics.  (Of course disproving an analogy does not disprove the random chance theory, but I did find it interesting that Mr Schroeder was able to disprove it so convincingly.)

In case anyone was wondering, Mr Flew did not become a theist because he attended a revival and “found Jesus.”  Far from it.  He doesn’t believe that there’s life after death, nor does he believe the Christian religion is true (although he does say that if you were to believe that revelation really does happen, Christianity has got the best explanation for it out of all of the religions).  He believes basically that there was some sort of intelligent being who created the universe, galaxy, and world, and then just left it to its own devices, never to bother with any of it again.  This is roughly the same theory that Albert Einstein had.

There’s something in here for everyone: I think the book will by turns offend and then please people, depending on their own ideas of how the universe came into being.   It is a great book to read if you’ve been thinking and wondering about the origins of man and universe - just skip over the boring parts if you get bogged down.  I promise I won’t tattle on you.

4 stars out of 5.  Too many dry spots to rate it higher than that.

Havs