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Ponderables: 100 Discoveries that Changed History, Who Did What When
The Universe: An Illustrated History of Astronomy
Astronomers today believe that the Universe may have begun 13.7 billion years ago, when its entire energy, mass, space, and even time, expanded out from a single point. New, empty space was lit by innumerable baby stars and infant galaxies, their light finally reaching Earth many billions of years late
r. Every scientific discovery about space and the stars—their beginnings as well as our own—derives from this ancient light.
Here we track the history of the Universe and our quest to find our place within it. The story begins among the rough-hewn rocks of ancient megaliths such as Stonehenge, when they are positioned to catch the rising Sun. It continues when the Greek genius Aristarchus pictures the geometry of Earth, Moon, and Sun, revealing the huge empty spaces between them; when Edwin Hubble shows that the Universe is getting ever larger; and when Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky finds that most of the Universe is missing. These moments were turning points, times when years of accumulated thought converged upon one astronomer's obsession, to turn a confounding puzzle into a discovery that changed the way we see the world. We call these Ponderables.
Here you'll find the life and works of great astronomers as they watch the night sky, build observatories, discover galaxies, spot new objects and send probes into space. Together the insights of these great thinkers create an increasingly precise picture of an ever-expanding universe, one still full of mystery.
Today, the largest telescopes ever designed are probing farther into the Universe, deeper into the past, looking for clues to constantly evolving questions. What are today's Imponderables, mysteries yet to be solved? Where will they lead? What will be the next discovery?
Includes a removable fold-out concertina neatly housed in the back of the book. This fold-out provides a 12-page Timeline History of the Universe that embeds the story in historical context and shows Who Did What When at a glance. On the reverse side is a 12 page Star Chart of the Night Sky of the northern and southern hemisphere for every month.
r. Every scientific discovery about space and the stars—their beginnings as well as our own—derives from this ancient light.
Here we track the history of the Universe and our quest to find our place within it. The story begins among the rough-hewn rocks of ancient megaliths such as Stonehenge, when they are positioned to catch the rising Sun. It continues when the Greek genius Aristarchus pictures the geometry of Earth, Moon, and Sun, revealing the huge empty spaces between them; when Edwin Hubble shows that the Universe is getting ever larger; and when Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky finds that most of the Universe is missing. These moments were turning points, times when years of accumulated thought converged upon one astronomer's obsession, to turn a confounding puzzle into a discovery that changed the way we see the world. We call these Ponderables.
Here you'll find the life and works of great astronomers as they watch the night sky, build observatories, discover galaxies, spot new objects and send probes into space. Together the insights of these great thinkers create an increasingly precise picture of an ever-expanding universe, one still full of mystery.
Today, the largest telescopes ever designed are probing farther into the Universe, deeper into the past, looking for clues to constantly evolving questions. What are today's Imponderables, mysteries yet to be solved? Where will they lead? What will be the next discovery?
Includes a removable fold-out concertina neatly housed in the back of the book. This fold-out provides a 12-page Timeline History of the Universe that embeds the story in historical context and shows Who Did What When at a glance. On the reverse side is a 12 page Star Chart of the Night Sky of the northern and southern hemisphere for every month.
168 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
8 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
Tom Jackson
647 books56 followers"I'm a non-fiction author and project editor (plus I do a bit of journalism). I'm available for project development, writing, project management and I also work as a packager. Click on the links above to see examples of my work.
But first some background: Over the last 20 years, I've written books, magazine and newspaper articles, for online and for television. I get to write about a wide range of subjects, everything from axolotls to zoroastrianism. However, my specialties are natural history, technology and all things scientific. I've worked on projects with Brian May, Patrick Moore, Marcus de Sautoy and Carol Vorderman and for major international publishers, such as Dorling Kindersley, National Geographic, Scholastic, Hachette, Facts on File and BBC Magazines.
I spend my days finding fun ways of communicating all kinds of facts, new and old, to every age group and reading ability. I live in Bristol, England, with my wife and three children. I studied zoology at Bristol University and have had spells working at the zoos in Jersey and Surrey. I used to be something of a conservationist, which included planting trees in Somerset, surveying Vietnamese jungle and rescuing buffaloes from drought-ridden Zimbabwe. Writing jobs have also taken me to the Galápagos Islands, the Amazon rainforest, the coral reefs of Indonesia and the Sahara Desert. Nowadays, I can be found mainly in the attic."
~http://tomjackson.weebly.com/
But first some background: Over the last 20 years, I've written books, magazine and newspaper articles, for online and for television. I get to write about a wide range of subjects, everything from axolotls to zoroastrianism. However, my specialties are natural history, technology and all things scientific. I've worked on projects with Brian May, Patrick Moore, Marcus de Sautoy and Carol Vorderman and for major international publishers, such as Dorling Kindersley, National Geographic, Scholastic, Hachette, Facts on File and BBC Magazines.
I spend my days finding fun ways of communicating all kinds of facts, new and old, to every age group and reading ability. I live in Bristol, England, with my wife and three children. I studied zoology at Bristol University and have had spells working at the zoos in Jersey and Surrey. I used to be something of a conservationist, which included planting trees in Somerset, surveying Vietnamese jungle and rescuing buffaloes from drought-ridden Zimbabwe. Writing jobs have also taken me to the Galápagos Islands, the Amazon rainforest, the coral reefs of Indonesia and the Sahara Desert. Nowadays, I can be found mainly in the attic."
~http://tomjackson.weebly.com/
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 9, 2025
Continuing my way through the Ponderable series in which they lay out 100 ponderables on a big subject. In this case, astronomy covering topics like aliens and space animals to the speed of light and Halley's Comets.
My factoid from this one has to do with the "shadow snake": "El Castillo, the main pyramid at the Mayan complex of Chichen Itza in Mexico, has 365 steps, one for each day of the year. The pyramid is a temple to Kukulkan, a flying serpent god. At the foot of the steps on the northern side is a carved snake's head and on the spring and fall equinoxes, the Sun casts a snake-shaped shadow on the staircase showing Kukulkan slithering out of the sky."
My factoid from this one has to do with the "shadow snake": "El Castillo, the main pyramid at the Mayan complex of Chichen Itza in Mexico, has 365 steps, one for each day of the year. The pyramid is a temple to Kukulkan, a flying serpent god. At the foot of the steps on the northern side is a carved snake's head and on the spring and fall equinoxes, the Sun casts a snake-shaped shadow on the staircase showing Kukulkan slithering out of the sky."
July 11, 2023
As a thirteen year old, I was very bored in reading this book since I had no interest in space. But it has very simple but complicated information on space and astronomy. If you are very interested in space, astronauts then this is the book for you!
Srishti.
Srishti.
March 8, 2019
174 - 2019
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November 27, 2020I enjoy these books a lot, but BOY HOWDY could they use a good copyeditor.
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July 3, 2013I’ve often thought that, if there was an area of knowledge that I could suddenly gain understanding and excel in, it would be physics and astronomy.
This goes back a bit, to the days when I was fascinated with the planets. When I was 8 or so, I received a book about the beings that inhabit different planets. As it turns out, this book was fiction. I didn’t realize that, and was amazed and delighted that the book gave me numerical call signs to actually make contact with the planets–yes, really!! I spent many hours in my room, on the floor facing the window, with my walkie-talkie in hand, patiently tapping out (in Morse code, of course) these call signs. Hours. To no avail. No matter, though, I moved on…I had a period of fascination with Mars, and ordered as many books from the Weekly Reader as I could get my hands on. Then movies about space and aliens and time travel and the future. Books about string theory (started, rarely finished) and the cosmos. Pictures from the Hubble.
As it currently stands, I have a really hard time grasping some (most) of the basic principles, but I am still fascinated by it all. Is the universe expanding? What happened before the Big Bang? What is at the bottom/on the other side of a black hole (a thing we know exists not because we see it, but by the disappearance of everything else around it, that is crazy!)? Do all points in time really exist at the same time, all the time, and if so, can I somehow go back to the 23-year-old me and say ‘hey, maybe don’t take in 8 cats’? And most importantly, the question that comes to my mind whenever I read something about some distant star, why are we just now seeing the light from something that happened millions of years ago, and does the thing even exist anymore?? I don’t understand Einstein’s theories, I can’t really visualize multiple dimensions, and light years are mind-boggling. I just can’t.
Imagine my pleasure upon discovering The Universe: an illustrated history of astronomy. Pictures! Concise explanations! A fold-out timeline! 100 brief and interesting tidbits about astronomy explained for someone like me. If you’re like me, and you desperately want to ponder the mysterious stars and expanse of space and matter, but just can’t quite manage it on your own, you’ll want this book. Or, if you’re a little more advanced than I, but want something beautiful and very interesting to read, you just might want it as well.
--Candice
From the ICPL Staff Picks Blog
This goes back a bit, to the days when I was fascinated with the planets. When I was 8 or so, I received a book about the beings that inhabit different planets. As it turns out, this book was fiction. I didn’t realize that, and was amazed and delighted that the book gave me numerical call signs to actually make contact with the planets–yes, really!! I spent many hours in my room, on the floor facing the window, with my walkie-talkie in hand, patiently tapping out (in Morse code, of course) these call signs. Hours. To no avail. No matter, though, I moved on…I had a period of fascination with Mars, and ordered as many books from the Weekly Reader as I could get my hands on. Then movies about space and aliens and time travel and the future. Books about string theory (started, rarely finished) and the cosmos. Pictures from the Hubble.
As it currently stands, I have a really hard time grasping some (most) of the basic principles, but I am still fascinated by it all. Is the universe expanding? What happened before the Big Bang? What is at the bottom/on the other side of a black hole (a thing we know exists not because we see it, but by the disappearance of everything else around it, that is crazy!)? Do all points in time really exist at the same time, all the time, and if so, can I somehow go back to the 23-year-old me and say ‘hey, maybe don’t take in 8 cats’? And most importantly, the question that comes to my mind whenever I read something about some distant star, why are we just now seeing the light from something that happened millions of years ago, and does the thing even exist anymore?? I don’t understand Einstein’s theories, I can’t really visualize multiple dimensions, and light years are mind-boggling. I just can’t.
Imagine my pleasure upon discovering The Universe: an illustrated history of astronomy. Pictures! Concise explanations! A fold-out timeline! 100 brief and interesting tidbits about astronomy explained for someone like me. If you’re like me, and you desperately want to ponder the mysterious stars and expanse of space and matter, but just can’t quite manage it on your own, you’ll want this book. Or, if you’re a little more advanced than I, but want something beautiful and very interesting to read, you just might want it as well.
--Candice
From the ICPL Staff Picks Blog
February 12, 2013
Astronomy has a long and checkered past, and it can be interesting to see just how much the science has changed over the milennia. //The Universe: An Illustrated History of Astronomy// looks at its past, and how its wide range of accomplishments have been both technical and theoretical, as well as based on improvements on other sciences. Not only are the Top 100 accomplishments listed, but there is also a section on basic astronomy and ten imponderables, as well as a really nice pullout on general history.
This is a really nice coffee table book on astronomy. The pullout is a brilliant and concise history of the world, and is really nicely done. There needs to be some more illustrations, but the ones that are present are beautiful and nicely represent what they depict. The text is really well done, and concisely explains not only the concept and why it is important to the history of astronomy. Overall, this is a really nice book, and the book you want to get your nephew who has an interest in science, and definitely one in astronomy.
As written by Jamais Jochim for http://www.portlandbookreview.com/
This is a really nice coffee table book on astronomy. The pullout is a brilliant and concise history of the world, and is really nicely done. There needs to be some more illustrations, but the ones that are present are beautiful and nicely represent what they depict. The text is really well done, and concisely explains not only the concept and why it is important to the history of astronomy. Overall, this is a really nice book, and the book you want to get your nephew who has an interest in science, and definitely one in astronomy.
As written by Jamais Jochim for http://www.portlandbookreview.com/
August 17, 2013
If there was less ancient history in it, I would like it more. But it was good. I liked it.
July 7, 2022
I love this book, it is aesthecally pleasing as much as it is informative. It was worth every cent I spent on it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews