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Sizing Up the Universe: The Cosmos in Perspective
Sizing Up the Universe reveals an ingenious new way to envision the outsize proportions of space, based on the work of Princeton University professors Richard Gott and Robert Vanderbei. Using scaled maps, object comparisons, and beautiful space photographs, it demonstrates the actual size of objects in the cosmos —from Buz Aldrin's historic footprint to the visible universe and beyond. The authors offer visual comparisons with astonishing precision and maximum reader-friendliness, conveying clear and understandable explanations of unimaginable vastness. Plus, as an unprecedented bonus, their 1.5-million-selling Map of the Universe is published here for the first time ever in a book—presented on an oversize foldout page that maximizes its eye-popping presentation of satellites, planets, stars, and galaxies. Based on the popularity of the map and of Richard Gott's Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, and offering innovative ways to appreciate the majesty of the universe, this new title should soar.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 2010
1 person is currently reading
190 people want to read
About the author
J. Richard Gott III
8 books55 followersJohn Richard Gott III is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He is known for developing and advocating two cosmological theories with the flavour of science fiction: Time travel and the Doomsday argument.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 26, 2010
How big is the universe and the things that are in it? You can throw around all sorts of numbers. 93 million miles is the distance to the Sun. Jupiter has a diameter of 142,800 kilometers. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away. It is 2 million light years to the Andromeda Galaxy, the furthest object visible with the naked eye.
But what does all that really mean? How do you wrap your way around those sizes and compare them to more familiar sizes and distances? J Richard Gott and Robert J Vanderbei, in National Geographic's Sizing Up the Universe, have set themselves this tall order--explain to the reader just how big things are, and tie it to the every day so that readers can get a handle around it. Also add in a gorgeous visual guide to the heavens, from star charts to pictures ranging from Neil Armstrong to the Cosmic Microwave Background, and you have Sizing Up the Universe.
The book starts off with apparent sizes of objects in the sky, starting with the Moon and moving its way upward. While I have seen many books explain size in a more conventional manner (and the book later does delve into the real size of objects), the authors obvious interest in astronomy and backyard sky viewing give them a perspective as to the apparent size of stellar objects that was illuminating even to a astronomy enthusiast like myself. I had no idea, for example, that the apparent size of the small dim smudge of the Andromeda Galaxy is actually much, much larger than that.
The book then launches itself into viewing the night skies, as a way to bridge the previous section with the subsequent ones, and again showing the astronomical interest of the authors. The charts in this book can be used to find objects in the sky in all four seasons.
Next, the book concerns itself with the distances and sizes of objects, and goes through the routine and familiar (to me) story of Eratosthenes, who discovered (roughly) the size of the Earth, and the efforts throughout history to find the distance to and sizes of the Moon, and the Sun. The authors then use those as scales to map distances all the way to the edge of the Universe. A centerpiece of the book is a gate-fold four page logarithmic size chart of the distances from the Earth that you may have seen on the internet.
Finally, in the tradition of the "Powers of Ten", the book uses a 1:1 size picture of Buzz Aldrin's footprint on the moon, and then proceeds to pictorially move up to larger and larger scales, until the entire universe is encompassed.
Amazing pictures, comprehensive, intelligently written but not written down to the viewer, Sizing Up the Universe is eminently designed for those teenagers and adults who have ever looked at the sky and wondered just how big and how far away the stars and planets *really* are.
Highly Recommended.
But what does all that really mean? How do you wrap your way around those sizes and compare them to more familiar sizes and distances? J Richard Gott and Robert J Vanderbei, in National Geographic's Sizing Up the Universe, have set themselves this tall order--explain to the reader just how big things are, and tie it to the every day so that readers can get a handle around it. Also add in a gorgeous visual guide to the heavens, from star charts to pictures ranging from Neil Armstrong to the Cosmic Microwave Background, and you have Sizing Up the Universe.
The book starts off with apparent sizes of objects in the sky, starting with the Moon and moving its way upward. While I have seen many books explain size in a more conventional manner (and the book later does delve into the real size of objects), the authors obvious interest in astronomy and backyard sky viewing give them a perspective as to the apparent size of stellar objects that was illuminating even to a astronomy enthusiast like myself. I had no idea, for example, that the apparent size of the small dim smudge of the Andromeda Galaxy is actually much, much larger than that.
The book then launches itself into viewing the night skies, as a way to bridge the previous section with the subsequent ones, and again showing the astronomical interest of the authors. The charts in this book can be used to find objects in the sky in all four seasons.
Next, the book concerns itself with the distances and sizes of objects, and goes through the routine and familiar (to me) story of Eratosthenes, who discovered (roughly) the size of the Earth, and the efforts throughout history to find the distance to and sizes of the Moon, and the Sun. The authors then use those as scales to map distances all the way to the edge of the Universe. A centerpiece of the book is a gate-fold four page logarithmic size chart of the distances from the Earth that you may have seen on the internet.
Finally, in the tradition of the "Powers of Ten", the book uses a 1:1 size picture of Buzz Aldrin's footprint on the moon, and then proceeds to pictorially move up to larger and larger scales, until the entire universe is encompassed.
Amazing pictures, comprehensive, intelligently written but not written down to the viewer, Sizing Up the Universe is eminently designed for those teenagers and adults who have ever looked at the sky and wondered just how big and how far away the stars and planets *really* are.
Highly Recommended.
October 17, 2015
We current humans have a brain of about 3 pounds in weight. Its volume is about 1300 cubic centimeters. Any football is larger. It isn't even the largest brain of all hominids. Neanderthals had brains significantly larger (but that wasn't enough to guarantee their survival.)
We humans like to investigate, speculate and measure. We compare ourselves to other living creatures and we wonder about that which is beyond our home, our planet, our solar system. The authors are among the inquisitive. For the rest of us, they have provided some handy comparisons illustrated with wonderful pictures to help us along.
We need to use some very large numbers to do the measuring: a billion = 10 to the ninth power; a googol = 10 with 100 zeros following it; a googolplex = 10 to the googol power. All these numbers are relevant at some point in the scale of our universe.
As we gaze up in the sky we often encounter beauty. Sizing Up the Universe enhances that feeling while satisfying much of our curiosity about many things astronomical. As with many books published by National Geographic, it is easy to spend time just gazing at the photos and graphic images. And, that isn't such a bad thing in itself.
We humans like to investigate, speculate and measure. We compare ourselves to other living creatures and we wonder about that which is beyond our home, our planet, our solar system. The authors are among the inquisitive. For the rest of us, they have provided some handy comparisons illustrated with wonderful pictures to help us along.
We need to use some very large numbers to do the measuring: a billion = 10 to the ninth power; a googol = 10 with 100 zeros following it; a googolplex = 10 to the googol power. All these numbers are relevant at some point in the scale of our universe.
As we gaze up in the sky we often encounter beauty. Sizing Up the Universe enhances that feeling while satisfying much of our curiosity about many things astronomical. As with many books published by National Geographic, it is easy to spend time just gazing at the photos and graphic images. And, that isn't such a bad thing in itself.
July 6, 2015
Mind melt! Want to get lost in space? Check this out. A lavishly illustrated treatise on the relative size of the earth and the universe (ours anyway) and everything astronomical in between. Think back to ancient Greece. How would one measure the diameter of the earth knowing only on a particular day you could see the reflection of the sun at the bottom of a well? How to proceed from there? Once that little tidbit is calculated, how do you progress to determine size and distance relative to the sun, planets and stars? Phenomenal explanations of the history and the processes with artwork so glorious I wonder how even the Barnes and Noble special sale edition can be sold for only $14.95 list. Very creative illustrations - for example, starting with Buzz Aldrin's footprint in the lunar dust and then stepping through the universe in stages 1,000 times bigger.
The only disappointing aspect is that there are some pictures that can be viewed in 3D if one can view them cross eyed which seems to be beyond my capabilities. Oh, well, there are worse things to be bad at! If you ever stare at the night sky and wonder, this is a great one to read.
The only disappointing aspect is that there are some pictures that can be viewed in 3D if one can view them cross eyed which seems to be beyond my capabilities. Oh, well, there are worse things to be bad at! If you ever stare at the night sky and wonder, this is a great one to read.
August 10, 2018
Great book. Easy to read, organized well, superb pictures and illustrations. Seeing planets and other space objects from our solar system to scale is exactly what I wanted from this book.
March 30, 2019
Simply amazing. The images are mesmerizing, and the description has plenty of qualitative and quantitative merit to dazzle the newbie and the astronerd.
January 5, 2012
I find that comparisons between things in the universe are pretty interesting, for example just how tiny the earth is compared to the sun, or how tiny the sun is compared to some of the other stars like Betelgeuse. Another thing I find interesting is just how large the distances between objects in space actually are, for example the circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles, the circumference of the sun is 2,713,406 miles and the distance from the earth to the sun is 92,955,887.6 miles (and we're right next to the sun, the distance to the closest non solar system star is 271,000x further away). I think its hard to get a grasp of just how vast those numbers are, this book is full of images which show comparisons between some of these objects and its pretty fascinating and worth getting. (Just seeing a picture of the tiny earth in front of the massive sun really puts things into perspective). On the other hand the accompanying text is pretty simplistic (although undoubtedly on purpose).
One really cool thing was a foldout of a modified version of some of the many galaxies of the Great Sloan Wall. Its hard for me to see this stuff and still have any feeling of significance, I'm just one of 7 billion people on a tiny little spec in space.
One really cool thing was a foldout of a modified version of some of the many galaxies of the Great Sloan Wall. Its hard for me to see this stuff and still have any feeling of significance, I'm just one of 7 billion people on a tiny little spec in space.
December 24, 2013
As I'm in the middle of writing a short book on science and scale, it was delightful to come across this imaginative, gorgeously-illustrated riff on a similar theme. Unlike some "science through scale" projects, this is about astronomy only, so the human-and-smaller scales are ignored. But Gott, an astrophysicist at Princeton, has also gone beyond the usual "A is ten times bigger than B is ten times bigger than C" model. For instance there's a whole section on comparative angular diameters, showing for instance that if you have a super telescope with 14 million times magnification, you could make out both Buzz Aldrin's footprint on the Moon and, a little bigger, the star Proxima Centauri.
Lots of other delights: several different 'maps' of the whole universe; an astonishing gatefold of galaxies in the Sloan Great Wall; a double-page color spread of Mars's Valle Marineris with a tiny thumbnail inset that's the Grand Canyon on the same scale.
If you like this sort of thing, don't miss also this very fine, vertigo-inducing singe web page: http://htwins.net/scale2/
Lots of other delights: several different 'maps' of the whole universe; an astonishing gatefold of galaxies in the Sloan Great Wall; a double-page color spread of Mars's Valle Marineris with a tiny thumbnail inset that's the Grand Canyon on the same scale.
If you like this sort of thing, don't miss also this very fine, vertigo-inducing singe web page: http://htwins.net/scale2/
December 8, 2015
Have you ever wondered what a map of the universe would look like? Well, wonder no more. In this National Geographic published book about the universe, you get just that. But really, is it that easy to put everything into perspective?
Gott gets us started by introducing topics such as apparent sizes, distances between stellar objects, and differing sizes in the universe. And to top it all off, there are pictures! Ultimately, if you're into getting a better perspective on the universe, check this out.
Gott gets us started by introducing topics such as apparent sizes, distances between stellar objects, and differing sizes in the universe. And to top it all off, there are pictures! Ultimately, if you're into getting a better perspective on the universe, check this out.
January 30, 2014
The universe is a place of superlatives - of sizes and of distances - that truly boggle the mind. Just one example: the reach of the Hubble space telescope is 13.7 billion light years, all the way to the cosmic microwave background radiation resulting from the Big Bang. This volume does a great job of explaining - with text and excellent photos/graphics - complex science in layperson (but not dumbed down) terms. Really outstanding.
November 29, 2010
The illustrations and pictures are stunning. The subject matter is of course interesting as well.
December 21, 2010
Fascinating. It's incomprehensible how vast the universe is.
January 16, 2011
Fantastic book. Well done. Kicks every other book about the Universe out of the park.
September 18, 2014
Nice coffee-table book for casual stargazers.
January 27, 2015
Amazing... if you are a nerd. I am.
Read
January 21, 2016Great for anyone with an interest in Astronomy.
January 28, 2017
A book about the relative sizes of things in our universe, from asteriods to planets to galaxies. Really interesting and engaging, and made me feel very small by comparison.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews