A Journey Through the Universe: A Traveler's Guide from the Centre of the Sun to the Edge of the Known Universe

New Scientist: Instant Expert

by New Scientist

There's a whole universe out there...
Imagine you had a spacecraft capable of travelling through interstellar space. You climb in, blast into orbit, fly out of the solar system and keep going. Where do you end up, and what do you see along the way?

The answer is: mostly nothing. Space is astonishingly, mind-blowingly empty. As you travel through the void between galaxies your spaceship encounters nothing more exciting than the odd hydrogen molecule. But when it does come across something more exotic: wow!

First and most obviously, stars and planets. Some are familiar from our own backyard: yellow suns, rocky planets like Mars, gas and ice giants like Jupiter and Neptune. But there are many more: giant stars, red and white dwarfs, super-earths and hot Jupiters. Elsewhere are swirling clouds of dust giving birth to stars, and infinitely dense regions of space-time called black holes. These clump together in the star clusters we call galaxies, and the clusters of galaxies we call... galaxy clusters.

And that is just the start. As we travel further we encounter ever more weird, wonderful and dangerous entities: supernovas, supermassive black holes, quasars, pulsars, neutron stars, black dwarfs, quark stars, gamma ray bursts and cosmic strings.

A Journey Through The Universe is a grand tour of the most amazing celestial objects and how they fit together to build the cosmos. As for the end of the journey - nobody knows. But getting there will be fun.

ABOUT THE SERIES
New Scientist Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points to the most important subjects in science; subjects that challenge, attract debate, invite controversy and engage the most enquiring minds. Designed for curious readers who want to know how things work and why, the Instant Expert series explores the topics that really matter and their impact on individuals, society, and the planet, translating the scientific complexities around us into language that's open to everyone, and putting new ideas and discoveries into perspective and context.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Space, Physics, Astronomy

240 pages, Paperback

Published April 5, 2018

Reviews

[Matthew Ted]

108th book of 2023.

Disappointing read, mostly basic astronomy, some now outdated facts and a lack of physics. But nice pictures at times. I also found most of the articles dry, which is surprising as I enjoy reading the New Scientist magazine generally at work when we get the new copies in.

[Mohamed Asraf]

3.5/5. An eye-opening and fascinating journey through our solar system and beyond. Our sun has its own rains, and Mars boasts the highest mountain in our solar system, Olympus Mons, three times the height of Mount Everest.

Saturn's rings are mainly ice (and not rocks), and some of its moons have water-spewing volcanoes (and not lava), the only known bodies besides Earth to have water. Pluto was demoted partly because remembering too many planets is hard for children!

There are stars much larger than our sun, with the biggest discovered being 1,700 times our sun's diameter. The space is mind-bogglingly vast, majestic, and grandly designed, with the universe expanding faster than expected.

Interestingly, Allah mentions this in the Quran:

"The heavens, We have built them with power. And verily, We are expanding it" (Holy Quran, 51:47).

Indeed, if there is a grand design, there must be a Grand Designer.

[Nigel McFarlane]

An interesting and up-to-date review of what we know and what we don't know, from the solar system to the whole universe. There are plenty of items that even the most dedicated New Scientist readers might not have come across.

One highlight of the book is a little interview with Jocelyn Bell, relating the story of how she discovered the first radio signal from a pulsar in 1967; the sexism of the times is quite shocking.

[Samantha]

Went right over my head! I thought as it was a 'NewScientist Instant Expert' book it might have been dumbed down a bit for an average reader to find out a little about space. I was wrong and you do need prior knowledge to understand any of the writing.

It probably is a good book to expand your knowledge on the universe... but I can't be sure as I understood very little!!

[Laurel]

Fun! A little bit all over the place and I don't recommend this book if you're going into this topic with very little information. Luckily I happened to be reading an encyclopedia at the same time that helped explain things as I went and I found that very necessary.

The resources and extras at the end were so cute, super charming. Told my mom a couple of the jokes :)

[Deepak]

Fascinating. We are but a speck of sand...

[Stuart Parr]

Interesting and simple read about some of the more up to date information discovered about our solar system and beyond. Easy read.

[Benjamin Pierce]

Fascinating book! Learned a lot and thouroughly enjoyed it cover to cover.

[John Bleasdale]

fine

A great overview of our knowledge moving from the sun outwards. I love refreshing my knowledge and also adding to it

[Genesis Tan]

Easy to read
I'm astronaut now

[Cassie Blue]

Well written with lots of intriguing facts. It felt like Ms Frizzle was taking her alumnae on the journey and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

[MARC L'ESPERANCE]

Great read

[tammy (eskel's version)]

okay, nothing special. covered lots of ground, didn't go too into depth, but still very interesting.

[Day Powell]

not a fan. seemed disconnected and uninteresting