Flash!: The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe

by Govert Schilling, Naomi Greenberg-Slovin (Contributor)

About three times a day our sky flashes with a powerful pulse of gamma ray bursts (GRB), invisible to human eyes but not to astronomers' instruments. The sources of this intense radiation are likely to be emitting, within the span of seconds or minutes, more energy than the sun will in its entire 10 billion years of life. Where these bursts originate, and how they come to have such incredible energies, is a mystery scientists have been trying to solve for three decades. The phenomenon has resisted study -- the flashes come from random directions in space and vanish without trace -- until very recently. In what could be called a cinematic conflation of Flash Gordon and The Hunt for Red October, Govert Schilling's Flash!: The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe describes the exciting and ever-changing field of GRB research. Based on interviews with leading scientists, Flash! provides an insider's account of the scientific challenges involved in unravelling the enigmatic nature of GRBs. A science writer who has followed the drama from the very start, Schilling describes the ambition and jealousy, collegiality and competition, triumph and tragedy, that exists among those who have embarked on this recherche. Govert Schilling is a Dutch science writer and astronomy publicist. He is a contributing editor of Sky and Telescope magazine, and regularly writes for the news sections of Science and New Scientist. Schilling is the astronomy writer for de Volkskrant, one of the largest national daily newspapers in The Netherlands, and frequently talks about the Universe on Dutch radio broadcasts. He is the author of more than twenty popular astronomy books, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles on astronomy.

Genres: Science, Astronomy

Hardcover

First published April 29, 2000

About the author

Govert Schilling is freelance wetenschapsjournalist en publicist. Hij schrijft over sterrenkunde en ruimteonderzoek voor kranten en tijdschriften in binnen- en buitenland, o.a. voor de Volkskrant, Eos magazine, Science, New Scientist, Sky & Telescope en BBC Sky at Night. Hij publiceerde tientallen boeken over uiteenlopende sterrenkundige onderwerpen, waarvan sommige zijn vertaald, o.a. in het Engels, Duits en Chinees. Regelmatig geeft hij op radio en tv toelichting op ontwikkelingen in de astronomie. Daarnaast verzorgt hij publiekslezingen en cursussen, en is hij eindredacteur van de populaire website allesoversterrenkunde.nl.

Govert is autodidact op het gebied van de astronomie en de journalistiek. Hij was jarenlang actief in de Jongerenwerkgroep (JWG) voor sterrenkunde, was van 1980 tot 1987 hoofdredacteur van het sterrenkundig tijdschrift Zenit, en was tot 1998 werkzaam als programmaleider bij het Artis Planetarium in Amsterdam.

Voor zijn werk op het gebied van de popularisering van de sterrenkunde ontving Govert diverse prijzen en onderscheidingen, waaronder de Simon Stevin-kijker van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging voor Weer- en Sterrenkunde KNVWS (1989, samen met astronaut Wubbo Ockels), de Eureka-oeuvreprijs van de Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek NWO (2002) en de David N. Schramm Award van de High-Energy Astrophysics Division van de American Astronomical Society (2014). In 2007 werd planetoïde (10986) Govert naar hem genoemd door de Internationale Astronomische Unie (IAU); in 2021 is hij benoemd tot erelid van deze organisatie.

Govert Schilling is getrouwd, heeft een zoon en een dochter, en woont in Amersfoort.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book relates the long and twisty path from the discovery of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in the late 1960s to their conclusive linkage with the deaths of massive stars in the late 1990s. Along the way the author seems to have tracked down and interviewed every major researcher in the field (including my Ph.D. advisor) and hits all the important highlights (and most of the backalleyways and dead ends as well). Because gamma-ray astronomy must be done above the earth's atmosphere, this is also the story of 5 or 6 expensive satellite missions and the large collaborations that ran them, and as such, it's also an interesting look at the perils and politics of launching scientific instruments into space.

Since this was my field of research I've had a lot of experience explaining just what they heck GRBs are and why they are interesting. To the average layperson I think GRBs a reasonably interesting topic to talk about (explosions! black holes!) but it does have a lot of moving parts that need explaining before certain basic facts make sense (like: what's a gamma-ray?). The author does a pretty good job of explaining the physics, but I think the core story found here is about the sociology of science and the scientific process. Maybe more so than many other discoveries, the history of GRBs is a great example of how paradigm shifts work in science.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Possibly more later...

[Adrian Griffis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells a scientific detective story. It shows the disagreements between scientists about a phenomenon they didn't fully understand, and the effects of injecting additional data, piece by piece, into scientific debate.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of astronomer's quests to figure out the origin and cause of Gamma Ray Bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang.