Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Delightful and informative, in a style reminiscent of Richard Rhodes. Katz combines history with physical insight to make the unfolding story of gamma ray bursts read like a novel. He shows forefront astrophysics being done by humans, in an illuminating way that only a true expert and insider could." --Richard A. Muller, Professor of Physics at Berkeley, author of Ice Ages and their Astronomical Origins
"A wonderful book for the intellectually curious of all ages: from high school to high table. Katz takes us through the history and the mystery of the biggest bangs of all, the gamma-ray bursts. He also manages to explain the essence of some of the other major puzzles in modern astronomy. All of this Katz accomplishes with a style that is simple and easy to read. Because he has such a mastery of the technical aspects of the subject, Katz is able to distill the main points of the argument into non-mathematical prose that is fun and informative. I would recommend this book high
Product Description
For over a quarter of a century, gamma-ray bursts were the outstanding mystery in astronomy. No one knew where they were or how they worked. The Biggest Bangs tells how the mystery was unraveled, from the discovery of gamma-ray bursts by a Cold War satellite system monitoring the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the localization of bursts in distant galaxies and the observation of surprisingly bright flashes of light from the bursts themselves. The Biggest Bangs is for laymen with an interest in science, physicists and astronomers interested in subjects in those fields not their specialty, students in non-technical astonomy courses, and as supplemental reading for courses in the history of science.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
On December 7, 1941, the "date which will live in infamy," a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sank much of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, shocked Americans from their naive isolationism, and carved a permanent mark in the national character: never again would the United States permit itself to be caught by surprise. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
On December 7, 1941, the "date which will live in infamy," a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sank much of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, shocked Americans from their naive isolationism, and carved a permanent mark in the national character: never again would the United States permit itself to be caught by surprise. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Written too Soon?
12 May 2003
Format:Hardcover
In the late 1960s the U.S. military discovered gamma-ray bursts: intense bursts of radiation coming from random points in the sky. Over the next thirty years these bursts remained one of the most mysterious astrophysical phenomena. Very little was known about them. This changed in 1997 when Paul Vreeswijk discovered an optical flash at the location of one gamma-ray burst. This discovery made it possible to determine that gamma-ray bursts are at cosmological distances and involve energies that are usually only seen in exploding stars. Jonathan Katz gives the history of gamma-ray bursts and provides a clear explaination of how astronomers have come to understand what they are and how they work. Unfortunately most of the book is devoted to what happened before 1997. Only four of the seventeen chapters cover the time after the discovery of the optical flashes. This is unfortunate because it has been since 1997 that science has been able to understand gamma-ray bursts. The book would have been much better if it had treated the two eras equally instead of concentrating on the early history of the field. The book also suffers from a slighly biased view of who contributed what to our understanding of gamma-ray bursts. The field is competetive, and rival researchers often refuse to give credit where credit is due. It is unfortunate that Katz chooses to continue this trend in a popular work. Gamma-ray bursts are a hot topic in astronomy, and the story of their discovery is worth telling. However, "The Biggest Bangs" is not that story.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
I didn't know I was interested in astronomy!
13 April 2002
Format:Hardcover
The cover illustration grabbed me in my local bookstore. So I opened it, and started reading. By the time I put it down, I was late for dinner (and my wife was very unhappy). This account of gamma-ray bursts (weird explosions in the distant universe, discovered by a satellite meant to be sure the Soviets weren't cheating on the test ban treaty) reads like a detective novel, with false leads, colorful characters and feuds like the Hatfields and McCoys. After being misled by erroneous data and going down several blind alleys the astronomers think they have figured bursts out---a collapsing star spits out matter at nearly the speed of light, and it emits gamma-rays, visible light (enough to fry the Earth if one happens close by, but fortunately this is very unlikely) and radio waves. They still aren't sure if supernovas (exploding stars) make gamma-ray bursts or not. I didn't realize there was so much bickering in science (what about the pursuit of pure knowledge?), but it's an exciting story.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
If Carl Sagan had written about gamma-ray bursts, it might
9 May 2002
Format:Hardcover
have been this book. Of course, he didn't, leaving all of us who loved Cosmos wishing he'd had time to tell us lots more. The Biggest Bangs is in Sagan's style, with history and personalities mixed in with a clear explanation of the science. In places it is hilarious (look for the bit about the alligators). Gamma-ray bursts were discovered by accident and took a long time to understand. They turn out to be very distant and incredibly powerful, but they are also very rare, completely unpredictable and don't last long, which makes them hard to study (how do you know where and when to point your telescope?). It took the astronomers a long time to figure all this out. They are human, get things wrong sometimes and disagree with each other a lot, just like the rest of us. The Biggest Bangs does a good job of showing this human side of science as well as the science itself. As Sagan said, science is our most powerful tool to understand the world. This is how it works.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Science & Nature > Astronomy & Cosmology > Astronomy > Popular Astronomy
- Books > Science & Nature > Astronomy & Cosmology > Cosmology
- Books > Science & Nature > Astronomy & Cosmology > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Engineering & Technology > Aeronautics & Aerospace
- Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > Popular Maths
- Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Physics > Applied Physics > Astrophysics
- Books > Science & Nature > Physics > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Physics
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Astronomy & Cosmology > Astronomy
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
