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Lives of the Planets: A Natural History of the Solar System
Lives of the Planets describes a scientific field in the midst of a revolution. Planetary science has mainly been a descriptive science, but it is becoming increasingly experimental. The space probes that went up between the 1960s and 1990s were primarily generalists-they collected massive amounts of information so that scientists could learn what questions to pursue. But recent missions have become more Scientists know better what information they want and how to collect it. Even now probes are on their way to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto, with Europa-one of Jupiter's moons-on the agenda. In a sweeping look into the manifold objects inhabiting the depths of space, Lives of the Planets delves into the mythology and the knowledge humanity has built over the ages. Placing our current understanding in historical context, Richard Corfield explores the seismic shifts in planetary astronomy and probes why we must change our perspective of our place in the universe. In our era of extraordinary discovery, this is the first comprehensive survey of this new understanding and the history of how we got here.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
8 people are currently reading
89 people want to read
About the author
Richard Corfield
14 books3 followersRichard Corfield is a Research Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University. He has been at the forefront of palaeontological innovation for the past decade.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 16, 2012
Out of date and plagued with minor errors.
May 15, 2020
Fascinating historical overview of astronomy and planetary study. A bit hard to discern why more wasn’t updated for the 2012 edition. Not surprising that it’s a bit outdated now but still a good survey of planetology.
August 7, 2008
Had to keep up with Ed and Colin.
October 11, 2021
I have a sincere love and interest in astronomy, and still this book was dull, at best. I couldn't finish it due to the errors in this. And I was especially taken aback by his statement on how climate change was closely related to solar flares, and how we might not really know what it causing global warming. No, we DO know, and trying to put most of the blame on solar flares is a bad argument. Also, this books isn't about the history of the planets, but our missions to them. Like I said, I just couldn't finish this. If you don't know anything about the Solar Sytem, it might have some interesting facts for you, but some of them will be wrong, so I wouldn't bother repeating them.
January 15, 2019
Engaging book about the planets and how our understanding of them has grown from the Neolithic to modern day. It also details the rise of space exploration and how what various missions discovered has colored scientific achievement.
Written in 2007, it understandably lacks information on the last decade’s exploration, but is still a good read and a great place to begin a study of our solar system.
Written in 2007, it understandably lacks information on the last decade’s exploration, but is still a good read and a great place to begin a study of our solar system.
December 21, 2021
Excelente contenido
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 20, 2025
I’m reading at least one thousand books of history in chronological order, going from the big bang through human civilization to the end of the world, and this is book #6 in that series. The previous book, David Stevenson's The Complex Lives of Star Clusters, taught me about how stars form and behave throughout the universe, so now I'm drilling down on our own star in a series of four or five books about our solar system.
And there’s a lot about the history and formation of the solar system here, but that’s not really where Corfield’s interest lies—this guy loves astronomers! I'll get back to that. The book is structured not chronologically but physically, by progressing from the sun outward to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, giving a description of each object along the way: size, orbit, chemical composition, atmosphere or lack thereof, moons and rings, and so forth. So there’s a ton of astronomical information that I never knew: Venus doesn’t have a magnetic field because it revolves too slowly on its axis; Triton is eventually going to be overpowered by Neptune’s gravity and plunge toward it, breaking up and forming a ring in the process; the sun is about as dense as water; the asteroid belt should have formed a planet—according to the Titius-Bode law, a fascinating bit of science that predicts the spacing between planets in any solar system—but Jupiter’s gravity was too strong to allow the particles to cohere (only partially though, which is why there’s still an asteroid belt at all rather than having them all sucked into Jupiter completely). It gave me lots of new things to think about along the way, like where exactly did the meteor that killed the dinosaurs come from (answer: the asteroid belt!), and I’m glad Corfield included all the moons and objects like comets and the Oort cloud that got less, or no, attention in my high school science classes.
But even with all that, like I said this is not really a history of the solar system, as his emphasis is really on the space programs and explorations—the people, the politics, the launches and touchdowns, the equipment and technology—that made all of the discoveries that he’s writing about here. This is a wonderful portrait of the American, Soviet, European, and Japanese space programs as they relate to interplanetary research, as well as the way they conducted their scientific investigations. So while this isn’t exactly a history of the solar system, if you’re as interested in the makeup of the solar system as you are in the ways mankind learned about it, this book balances both topics admirably, giving you a feast of information on both the solar system itself and the men and women who explore it.
The previous title in my series of 1,000 history books—going chronologically from dinosaurs to pyramids to knights to spaceships, with lots of other stuff in there too—is David S. Stevenson's The Complex Lives of Star Clusters, and the next one is From Dust to Life: The Origin and Evolution of Our Solar System by John Chambers and Jaqueline Mitton. You can also start at the beginning with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time or see the complete list here.
And there’s a lot about the history and formation of the solar system here, but that’s not really where Corfield’s interest lies—this guy loves astronomers! I'll get back to that. The book is structured not chronologically but physically, by progressing from the sun outward to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, giving a description of each object along the way: size, orbit, chemical composition, atmosphere or lack thereof, moons and rings, and so forth. So there’s a ton of astronomical information that I never knew: Venus doesn’t have a magnetic field because it revolves too slowly on its axis; Triton is eventually going to be overpowered by Neptune’s gravity and plunge toward it, breaking up and forming a ring in the process; the sun is about as dense as water; the asteroid belt should have formed a planet—according to the Titius-Bode law, a fascinating bit of science that predicts the spacing between planets in any solar system—but Jupiter’s gravity was too strong to allow the particles to cohere (only partially though, which is why there’s still an asteroid belt at all rather than having them all sucked into Jupiter completely). It gave me lots of new things to think about along the way, like where exactly did the meteor that killed the dinosaurs come from (answer: the asteroid belt!), and I’m glad Corfield included all the moons and objects like comets and the Oort cloud that got less, or no, attention in my high school science classes.
But even with all that, like I said this is not really a history of the solar system, as his emphasis is really on the space programs and explorations—the people, the politics, the launches and touchdowns, the equipment and technology—that made all of the discoveries that he’s writing about here. This is a wonderful portrait of the American, Soviet, European, and Japanese space programs as they relate to interplanetary research, as well as the way they conducted their scientific investigations. So while this isn’t exactly a history of the solar system, if you’re as interested in the makeup of the solar system as you are in the ways mankind learned about it, this book balances both topics admirably, giving you a feast of information on both the solar system itself and the men and women who explore it.
The previous title in my series of 1,000 history books—going chronologically from dinosaurs to pyramids to knights to spaceships, with lots of other stuff in there too—is David S. Stevenson's The Complex Lives of Star Clusters, and the next one is From Dust to Life: The Origin and Evolution of Our Solar System by John Chambers and Jaqueline Mitton. You can also start at the beginning with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time or see the complete list here.
February 9, 2017
i picked this up from an academic surplus book sale, so the bargain price was a trade off for it being relatively outdated (it doesn't cover discoveries made on the last 5 years). It was also not quite what I expected, being a story of solar system exploration missions, rather than the planetary histories as such, although aspects of the latter are a part of it of course. But these points were very minor, as I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
As a youngster, the history of the earth and the differences and similarities with the other solar system bodies was a source of wonder. New moons were being discovered and many of the familiar objects were being found to be quite strange. It is this sense of wonder that effuses through the story of the different planets. Beginning with the sun and working through each of the planets, Corfield outlines the initial discovery from earth-bound methods before proceeding to detail the expeditions made by spacecraft in the last 50 years. Some of the missions have failed, but the success rate has been better than might have been expected and while the cost benefit can be debated, the discoveries have been fantastic.
There was some familiarity with the discoveries mentioned, but much of it was fresh to me. Perhaps I'd forgotten or not understood details I've read earlier, whereas the simplicity with which things were described by Corfield re-opened my awareness. An example is Venus, which has a global topographic difference of less than 1000 m, whereas Mars has greater differences than earth despite being a smaller planet. These differences are due to the longer term difference in the story of each planet, which I had hoped to hear more of, but then, the recent missions have illustrated how little we know!
I was re-inspired by this book and look forward to reading more about the discoveries both in our solar system and beyond it. We indeed live in exciting times.
As a youngster, the history of the earth and the differences and similarities with the other solar system bodies was a source of wonder. New moons were being discovered and many of the familiar objects were being found to be quite strange. It is this sense of wonder that effuses through the story of the different planets. Beginning with the sun and working through each of the planets, Corfield outlines the initial discovery from earth-bound methods before proceeding to detail the expeditions made by spacecraft in the last 50 years. Some of the missions have failed, but the success rate has been better than might have been expected and while the cost benefit can be debated, the discoveries have been fantastic.
There was some familiarity with the discoveries mentioned, but much of it was fresh to me. Perhaps I'd forgotten or not understood details I've read earlier, whereas the simplicity with which things were described by Corfield re-opened my awareness. An example is Venus, which has a global topographic difference of less than 1000 m, whereas Mars has greater differences than earth despite being a smaller planet. These differences are due to the longer term difference in the story of each planet, which I had hoped to hear more of, but then, the recent missions have illustrated how little we know!
I was re-inspired by this book and look forward to reading more about the discoveries both in our solar system and beyond it. We indeed live in exciting times.
February 17, 2017
DNF. Dry facts, some of them inaccurate. Found myself getting bored very easily.
July 24, 2013
I've mentioned before that as a child I desperately wanted to be an astronomer. That was before I discovered that math and I were polite neighbors at best. Turns out astronomy needs a lot of math.
Anyway, I never really got over my first love--because planets are cool.
This book goes systematically through the solar system, object by object, including the asteroid belt. The solar system is incredibly well organized when you think about it. Rocky things here, big gassy things here, and cold solidy things over here--though admittedly that is a product of how the system formed and gravity pushed things together--but it's still really fun.
Corfield, aka "Jen's new nerd crush," not only goes over the physical properties of each piece of our solar system, but also humans' efforts to explore each world. He discusses how Venus was thought to be a primordial swamp...until we got there and saw it was just tormented. Things that I should have probably figured out, Corfield explained in a way that didn't make me feel stupid. Obviously planets with few craters have an resurfacing system (volcanic, erosion, plate tectonics), and aren't just really really lucky.
Corfield is extremely good at explaining big concepts in simple ways, though I would have liked a few more diagrams because some stuff I wasn't quite getting--but that's the visual learner in me. Yes, I do wish he had citations and detailed biography. But this is a guy who got his doctorate at Cambridge--I think I'll cut him some slack.
Anyway, I never really got over my first love--because planets are cool.
This book goes systematically through the solar system, object by object, including the asteroid belt. The solar system is incredibly well organized when you think about it. Rocky things here, big gassy things here, and cold solidy things over here--though admittedly that is a product of how the system formed and gravity pushed things together--but it's still really fun.
Corfield, aka "Jen's new nerd crush," not only goes over the physical properties of each piece of our solar system, but also humans' efforts to explore each world. He discusses how Venus was thought to be a primordial swamp...until we got there and saw it was just tormented. Things that I should have probably figured out, Corfield explained in a way that didn't make me feel stupid. Obviously planets with few craters have an resurfacing system (volcanic, erosion, plate tectonics), and aren't just really really lucky.
Corfield is extremely good at explaining big concepts in simple ways, though I would have liked a few more diagrams because some stuff I wasn't quite getting--but that's the visual learner in me. Yes, I do wish he had citations and detailed biography. But this is a guy who got his doctorate at Cambridge--I think I'll cut him some slack.
January 30, 2016
Ever wanted to take a tour of the solar system, but were deterred by that little problem of explosively decompressing once in the vacuum of space? Lives of the Planets takes readers on a tour by remote, through the history of American, Russian, British, European, and Japanese probes. Like the moons of Jupiter, it contains a lot of diversity in a modest number of pages, being a physical exploration of our cosmic neighborhood, a history of our robotic journeying, and lectures in brief along in the trail. Each stop along the way presents cause for a new topic; Richard Corfield writes on atmospheric dynamics near Venus, the origins of life on Earth, the vagaries of gravitational mechanics near Jupiter and the asteroid belt, etc. Pluto is treated with the rest of the Kuiper bet objects. There's a great deal of entertaining astronomical history to be found here -- history both distant (the formation of our solar system) and recent (our exploration of the same). Actual content on the planets is harder to come by, however, and therein lies this very likeable book's weakness: the information on the planets, if gathered together, might constitute a full essay on their own. This is an utterly delightful collection of thoughts on our exploration of the solar system, and what the search has taught us about astronomy in general, but it doesn't quite deliver as a work on the planets in particular.
August 7, 2022
Overpromises and underdelivers.
Planetary science is a massive topic, yet this book only makes it over the 250-page line with a section about exoplanets tacked onto the Pluto chapter. Corfield focuses mostly on the history of planetary science and exploration, with a lot less information about the planets themselves. He included dozens of personal anecdotes and historical asides which have little if anything to do with the topic on-hand, and makes lots of simply sloppy mistakes. I realize this book was written before checking things on the Internet had really reached fixation, but even a moderately-competent technical editor should have caught most of the mistakes I noticed. As it is, I can't help but wonder about the mistakes I didn't notice.
The text is just not very engaging, and several important missions (e.g., MESSENGER, Dawn, Cassini, New Horizons, Rosetta...) have massively advanced our knowledge of these topics. Save yourself the trouble and just read the planets' and moons' Wikipedia articles.
Planetary science is a massive topic, yet this book only makes it over the 250-page line with a section about exoplanets tacked onto the Pluto chapter. Corfield focuses mostly on the history of planetary science and exploration, with a lot less information about the planets themselves. He included dozens of personal anecdotes and historical asides which have little if anything to do with the topic on-hand, and makes lots of simply sloppy mistakes. I realize this book was written before checking things on the Internet had really reached fixation, but even a moderately-competent technical editor should have caught most of the mistakes I noticed. As it is, I can't help but wonder about the mistakes I didn't notice.
The text is just not very engaging, and several important missions (e.g., MESSENGER, Dawn, Cassini, New Horizons, Rosetta...) have massively advanced our knowledge of these topics. Save yourself the trouble and just read the planets' and moons' Wikipedia articles.
January 29, 2013
The Lives of Planets is a misleading title. This book has as much, if not more, history of astronomy then it does any natural history. It seemed to speak more about the probes sent to other planets than the planets themselves.
Generally it was a good book with one exception. In the first chapter in the context of sunspots he describes them as an extreme confounding factor in the science of climate change. While this is not necessarily an inaccurate description, the authors claim that sunspots and temperature changes on Earth have been closely linked for the last 75 years is factually incorrect. About thirty five years ago around 1980 the two graphs diverged significantly. Sunspot actively is believed to be a very small contributor to climate change, and certainly not the driving force behind the past three decades of warming. Even allowing for the five year lag since this book was published this is a pretty galling error.
Generally it was a good book with one exception. In the first chapter in the context of sunspots he describes them as an extreme confounding factor in the science of climate change. While this is not necessarily an inaccurate description, the authors claim that sunspots and temperature changes on Earth have been closely linked for the last 75 years is factually incorrect. About thirty five years ago around 1980 the two graphs diverged significantly. Sunspot actively is believed to be a very small contributor to climate change, and certainly not the driving force behind the past three decades of warming. Even allowing for the five year lag since this book was published this is a pretty galling error.
January 31, 2016
A good history of space exploration, but a not so great everything else. The author gets the formation of the moon, wrong (the moon was a protoplanet that struck the earth, not an accreted gas disk; if it were the latter it wouldn't be moving away from us every single year for the last 4.5 billion years due to the impact of the collision). Also, the theory that climate change comes from solar activity rather than man-made pollution - really?
Neat stories about the Mars rovers, the Russian missions to Venus, and the spacecraft launched decades ago that have hit nearly 40,000 MPH on their way past the outer planets. Still, Corfield gets too much wrong to be wholly credible.
Neat stories about the Mars rovers, the Russian missions to Venus, and the spacecraft launched decades ago that have hit nearly 40,000 MPH on their way past the outer planets. Still, Corfield gets too much wrong to be wholly credible.
July 26, 2013
I enjoyed this brief "biography", if you will, of our solar system. The author begins with the sun and travels out, describing each celestial body, including the history of how they were discovered and how they have been researched. He intersperses some great personal anecdotes, relating how these discoveries have affected him, from childhood to his professional life as an astrophysicist. I still do not like the fact that Pluto has been demoted to "dwarf planet" but I can see the reasoning behind the change. Very good introductory book that will leave the reading wanting to know more.
March 31, 2008
Easy read, and quite entertaining, to boot!
February 6, 2014
A book I found on the library shelf. As my family was once mildly into astronomy, I picked it up. This was an interesting read for that mild interest, nothing too rigorous.
July 31, 2011
I loved this book - a planet by planet (sorry to Pluto) biography of our solar system. An excellent tutorial resource for learning in depth, but no too deep, about our own little part of the galaxy.
October 19, 2011
Very well written and in a logical manner. It can feel a bit dry at times but considering it's a book about the history of the planets/objects in our solar system it's surprisingly compelling
June 27, 2013
It was really fun to learn about all the amazing probes human kind has sent to all the planets in the solar system. Amazing engineering feats.
October 3, 2013
this book was easy to read, very interesting, and a great "catch-up with what's going on book"; I learned a lot
August 18, 2015
Of the many astronomy books I have read this was is the most dry.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews