Galaxies

by Or Graur

An eminently readable overview of the history and physics of galaxies.

In Galaxies, Or Grauroffers a brief and fascinating overview of the history, physics, and astrophysical uses of galaxies. Starting with the history of the last two thousand years of galaxy studies, Graur discusses the types of galaxies we observe and the physics that drive them; the myths and physical structure of the Milky Way; how galaxies were used to discover and study the mysterious phenomena of dark matter and dark energy; and how scientists think galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang and evolved to their present forms.

Tracing galaxy studies back thousands of years ago to their beginnings, Graur describes their origin in Ptolemy’s book Almagest, whichwaswritten in the first century CE. Almagest catalogued hundreds of stars and a few hazy cloud-like objects, one of which was the Andromeda galaxy. The reader will also encounter in this book well-known figures such as William Herschel, who, along with his sister Caroline (the first professional female astronomer), discovered hundreds of galaxies and lay the foundations for modern galaxy studies, as well as lesser-known astronomers, including tenth-century Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, twentieth-century American astronomer Vesto Melvin Slipher, and others. Galaxies concludes by showing readers how they can get involved in galaxy studies themselves and do their part to fight the light pollution that today obscures the Milky Way and all but the brightest of stars.

Providing a brief but broad overview of galaxies for the nonspecialist, Galaxies shows just how modern science is done and what the future holds for this specific field of astronomy.

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction

206 pages, Paperback

Published August 6, 2024

About the author

Or Graur is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, as well as a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. Or studies how stars explode as supernovae or get torn apart by supermassive black holes. He is also interested in the multicultural mythology of the Milky Way.

Reviews

[taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another treasure from the MIT bookstore. I slurped this up like a cold beer on hot summer day. It's short, to the point, and well written. Yay, no unnecessary character development needed. The author starts with the morphology of galaxies and then dives down to the constituents of the galaxy (stars/dust/planets) and finally ends up with particle physics, this is a top down education. Next he discusses the expansion of the universe, how we know that it's getting bigger and what that might mean. This bottom up approach concludes with the current ideas of what is the universe and how we think it formed, ergo the fundamental model of cosmology.

Like most sciences that study nature, every new discovery leads to more questions. Again our knowledge is limited by what we can observe. Even the largest telescopes can only take a snapshot of a 14 billion year movie.

[Ka · Rating 4 out of 5]

** NOTE: I listened to the audiobook version of this book; since there's actually a Goodreads entry for that, I posted this review there, but then it occurred to me that people never look at the reviews on an audio edition, so I decided to repost this under the main book entry as well. :)
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I enjoyed listening to this. I'm not a scientist, so while I find these concepts very interesting, I also want the information to be accessible to a normal person who is not already an expert on the topic. I felt this book did that admirably. It's actually quite short, and I wished it were longer! I will probably look into other books from the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series as I'm guessing they are similar, something like going to a long topical overview lecture by an expert.

I didn't learn anything new really, since I've read lots of other (much longer) books about space, but I really enjoy hearing all the different takes by smart people trying to simplify the same incredibly complex information to make the general concepts understandable. Each person has their own set of analogies and descriptions, as well as their own ideas of what aspects of the science are most important, interesting, or salient. I feel like each time, I get a slightly different view, and each one helps me build and refine my own mental model of the concepts. Sure, without the required mathematical skills and deep knowledge of physics, I'll never have the same sharp, clear view that experts have, but if I can sharpen the fuzzy image in the telescope of my mind even a little more, I'm happy.

I often try to do this same thing in my own field (computers and technology), which is a similarly broad and complex field that most people don't WANT to understand in extreme technical detail. I get that they don't find it as interesting as I do, but that they ARE interested in the broad strokes of how it works, what is possible, what is happening in research, and so on. It's a fun puzzle for me to simplify complicated ideas in such a way that people who are not experts can understand the basics. And who knows -- for some, it might be the first step towards greater knowledge!

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This works pretty well as a fast paced overview of a field. The author's asides and quips grated on me after a while, especially in a book as short as this where they came to seem indulgent, but others may take to them differently.

[Matthew Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice quick read, Graur made a complex scientific topic easy and fun to read. Would check out his other books.