B00B7H7M2E EBOK, page 32
Ptolemy’s summation of his measurements of the cosmos: The passage from the Almagest that gives these distances is quoted in Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, p. 24.
Al Fargani’s measurements of the cosmos: Albert van Helden has reproduced a chart of Al Fargani’s measurements in Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, p. 30. He has given it the footnote “Al-Farghani, Differentie, 38-40 (chaps. 21-22).”
Pythagoreans: An error, p. 51 in print edition: The Pythagoreans regarded a Central Fire, not the sun, as the source of all vital principles and energies in the universe. In their cosmology, the sun orbited the Central Fire and reflected and filtered its light. Kitty Ferguson, The Music of Pythagoras (Walker, 2008).
Copernicus’s medical knowledge: Rocky Kolb, Blind Watchers of the Sky, New York: Helix Books, 1996, p. 74.
Copernicus’s list of “assumptions”: Nicolaus Copernicus, Commentariolus. An English translation of Commentariolus (Commentary) is on the internet at http://dbanach.com/copernicus-commentarilous.htm. The list is to be found under the sub-heading “The Order of the Spheres.”
Copernicus’s economics book was Monetae cudendae ratio, published in 1526.
Gnapheus, The Wise Fool: This play mocking Copernicus bore the Latin title Morosophus. It was written by Wilhelm Gnapheus in 1541.
John Hedley Brooke’s statement that it is possible to identify only ten people in the years between 1543 and 1600 who actually advocated Earth’s physical motion: John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives in The Cambridge History of Science Series, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 90.
John Donne quotation, “Most men lived . . .”: Quoted in John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives in The Cambridge History of Science Series, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p.
88.
Owen Gingerich quotation, “These second-hand annotations . . .”: Owen Gingerich, “The Great Copernicus Chase,’ in The Great Copernicus Chase and Other Adventures in Astronomical History, Cambridge, MA: Sky Publishing Corporation; and Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, p. 75.
Fred Hoyle quotation, “It is because Copernicus . . .”: Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work, New York: Harper and Rowe, 1973, p. 17.
Further reading and sources: For a translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest: G. J. Toomer (Springer-Verlag, 1985). For Ptolemaic astronomy in the Middle Ages: Olaf Pedersen and M. Pihl, Early Physics and Astronomy (Cambridge University Press, 1993; reprint of 1974 edition). About medieval Islamic astronomy: David A. King and George Saliba, eds., From Deferent to Equant: A volume of Studies in the History of Science in the Ancient and Medieval Near East, in Honor of E.S. Kennedy (New York Academy of Sciences, 1987). The most complete edition of Copernicus’s writings, including a facsimile of De Revolutionibus and English translations, comes from the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw and Cracow, 1973). For information about the life of Copernicus: The introduction to Noel M. Swerdlow and Otto Neubegauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus (Springer-Verlag, 1984); Owen Gingerich, The Great Copernicus Chase (Camridge University Press, 1992 and The Book Nobody Read (Walker, 2004); Thomas S. Kuhn,The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought, (Harvard University Press, 1957).
Chapter 3. Dressing Up the Naked Eye, 1564-1642
Thomas Kuhn’s quip about Galileo’s legendary demonstration from the Leaning Tower of Pisa: Thomas S. Kuhn,The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought, New York: MJF Books p.95.
Information about the origins of the telescope: Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope, Mineoloa, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955, pp. 27-36.
Fred Hoyle’s argument that Einstein’s theories actually slightly favor an Earth-centered cosmos: Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work, New York: Harper and Rowe, 1973, p. 87.
Further reading and sources: About Johannes Kepler: Max Caspar, Johannes Kepler (Dover, 1993); Arthur Koestler, The Watershed (University Press of America, 1985); Kitty Ferguson, Tycho and Kepler (Walker, 2002). About Galileo: Stillman Drake, Galileo (Oxford University Press, 1980), Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography (University of Chicago Press, 1978), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Anchor, 1990), Dialogo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (translation) (University of California Press, 1967); Michael Sharratt, Galileo, Decisive Innovator (Blackwell, 1994); James Reston, Jr., Galileo: A Life (Harper-Collins, 1994). For Galileo and the Catholic Church: John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Chapter 4: An Orbit with a View, 1630-1900
Pierre Gazzendi quotation, “entirely paradoxical . . .”: Quoted in Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, p. 2.
The invention of the micrometer: William Gascoigne’s own report of the spider web is quoted in Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope, Mineoloa, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955, p. 94-95.
The description of parallax measurement and the diagrams explaining it were developed with the help of Barbara Quinn, P. Susie Maloney, and David Vetter.
“Newton for Ladies”: See Massimo Mazzotti, “Newton for Ladies,” Bologna Science Classics Online, http://www.cis.unibo.it/cis13b/bsco3/algarotti/introbyed/algintro byed.pdf (accessed June 2011)
Newton’s odd way of measuring the distance to the nearest stars: Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, p. 158. Newton published his estimates and explained his way of deriving them in a book published posthumously titled System of the World.
Stories about those astronomers who attempted to measure the transits of Venus: John North, The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994, pp. 353-54. Background and information about David Rittenhouse: Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope, Mineoloa, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955, pp. 246-247.
Further reading and sources: About Newton: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge University Press, 1990), abridged to a more manageable length as The Life of Isaac Newton (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Newton’s measurement of stellar distances, discussions of Halley, Molyneux, and Bradley, and other material on this period: Martin Harwit, Cosmic Discovery: The Search, Scope, and Heritage of Astronomy (Basic Books, 1981). More detail on the work of Gasendi, Cassini Flamsteed, and Halley: van Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley, (University of Chicago Press, 1985); Owen Gingerich, “Newton, Halley, and the Comet,” in The Great Copernicus Chase and Other Adventures in Astronomical History, Cambridge, MA: Sky Publishing Corporation; and Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, p. 148-150. For the history of the telescope: Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope (Dover, 1955). History of this period and that covered in the following chapter: Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe: From Herschel to Hubble (Dover, 1994), includes excerpts from the original papers of the astronomers themselves. Fraunhofer: His life and the development of spectroscopy: Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1955, p.178ff; Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe: From Herschel to Hubble, New York: Dover, 1994.
Chapter 5: Upscale Architecture, 1750-1958
Information about Thomas Wright and his 1750 book An Original Theory or New Hypotheses of the Universe: Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper, The Guide to the Galaxy, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 8.
Immanuel Kant’s pamphlet was General Natural History and Celestial Theory, or Research into the Constitution and Mechanical Origins of the Whole World Structure Based on Newton’s Law. He published it anonymously and the publisher went bankrupt.
Carolyn Herschel quotation, “My brother began . . .”: Quoted in Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope, Mineoloa, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955, p. 128. King was quoting from Mrs. J. Herschel, Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, 1876, p. 54.
Information about William Parsons: Patrick Moore, The Astronomy of Birr Castle, London: Mitchell Beazley, 1971; Charles Parsons, ed., The Scientific Papers of William Parsons, Third Earl of Rosse, 1800-1867, London: Self-published, 1926.
William Parsons quotation, “The weather here . . .”: Quoted in Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope, Mineoloa, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955, p. 215.
John Herschel quotation, “21 MARCH—Alpha Hydrae . . .”: Patrick Moore, Fireside Astronomy, New York: John Wiley, 1992, p. 141.
Early telescopes at Harvard: Solon Bailey, The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839-1927, Boston: Harvard University Press, 1931.
Biographical information about Harlow Shapley: Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper, The Guide to the Galaxy, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 14-15.
Harlow Shapley quotation, “all dressed up . . .”: Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper, The Guide to the Galaxy, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 14.
Harlow Shapley: Harlow Shapley, in 1929, wrote a delightful popular introduction to his research and discoveries: Harlow Shapley, “Measuring the Universe,’ in Timothy Ferris, ed., The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, Boston, Toronto, London: Little Brown, 1991, pp. 292-98.
The debate between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis: Rocky Kolb, Blind Watchers of the Sky, New York: Helix Books, 1996, pp. 187-194; and Robert W. Smith, The expanding Universe: Astronomy’s “Great Debate,’ Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
John Miller quotation, “Something happened . . .”: Quoted in Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, London: W W. Norton & Col, 1978, reprinted 1992, p. 18. The story was told to Jastrow by John Hall, at one time Director of the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, who heard it from John Miller.
Biographical information about Edwin Hubble: Rocky Kolb, Blind Watchers of the Sky, New York: Helix Books, 1996, p. 213ff; and Gale E. Christianson, Edwin Hubble, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995.
Edwin Hubble quotation, “All I want . . .”: Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper, The Guide to the Galaxy, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 19.
Further reading and sources: Michael J. Crowe (see reference for Chapter 4). About William Herschel: J. L. E. Dreyer, A Short Account of Sir William Herschel’s Life and Work, 1912; J. L .E. Dreyer, The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel, Royal Astronomical Society, 1912; and Owen Gingerich, “The 1784 Autobiography of William Herschel,” in The Great Copernicus Chase,” Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Gingerich quotes at length from the autobiography.
Chapter 6: The Demise of Constancy and Stability, 1929-1992
Kant quotation, “The character . . .”: Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 1755. Available in translation by Ian Johnston, Richer Resources Publications, 2009.
Stalin’s purge of Soviet scientists who thought the universe is expanding: Patrick Moore, “Astronomers and Joseph Stalin,” in Fireside Astronomy, New York: John Wiley, 1992.
Robert Jastro quotation, “This is an exceedingly strange development . . .”: Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978, reprinted 1992, p. 9.
Jesse Greenstein quotation, “the ideal American inventor . . .”: Kip Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy, New York: Norton, 1994, p. 327.
Further reading and sources: A comprehensive history of cosmology in the first half of the 20th century: J.D. North, The Measure of the Universe: A History of Modern Cosmology (Oxford University Press, 1965; Dover, 1990). About Albert Einstein: Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford University Press, 1982). About Edwin Hubble: Gale E. Christianson, Edwin Hubble (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995). Some of the original articles of Hubble, Einstein, Lemaître, and Friedmann reprinted and annotated: Jeremy Bernstein and Gerald Feinberg, Cosmological Constant (Columbia University Press, 1986). George Smoot’s discovery: George Smoot and Kay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time (Morrow, 1993). The Big Bang Theory and religious belief: Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion and the Search for God (Templeton, 2004). Roger Penrose’s ideas: Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford University Press, 1989).
Chapter 7: Deciphering Ancient Light, 1946-1999
Profile of Allan Sandage: Frederic Golden, “Astronomy’s Feisty Old Man,” in Astronomy Magazine, December 1997.
Story about the Reverend Robert Evans’ search for supernovae: Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997, p. 59.
Margaret Geller, John Huchra, and Valerie de Lapparent: Margaret Geller writes about the Geller-Huchra Wedge and related measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe in her article “Mapping the Universe: Slices and Bubbles,” in James Cornell, ed., Bubbles, Voids, and Bumps in Time: The New Cosmology, Cambridge, UK, and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Hubble Deep Field: Web site is http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/hdf.html
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Web site is http://www.sddss.org
Further reading: Malcolm Longair, Our Evolving Universe, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), a spectacularly illustratedaccount of late twentieth century astronomy that also traces the history of the concept of a “grand design” and discusses sizes and distances in the universe.
Chapter 8: The Quest for Omega, 1930-1999
Kamioka Neutrino Observatory and Yoji Tkotsuka: The website is www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/sk/index-e.html (accessed June 2011) Information about Wendy Freedman and her work: Wendy Freedman, “The Expansion Rate and Size of the Universe, Scientific American, 1998 Website http://www.sciam.com/1998/0398cosmos/0398freedman.html (accessed July 1998); and conversations and correspondence with the author.
The debate between Wendy Freedman and Allan Sandage: Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 63-66; and personal conversations and correspondence (with both Freedman and Sandage) with the author.
John Noble Wilford comment: John Noble Wilford, “New Surveys of the Universe Confound Theorists,” The New York Times, January 15, 1991; http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/15/science/new-surveys-of-the- universe-confound-theorists.html?src=pm (accessed Feb. 1997)
Carlos S. Frenk: For information about the computer simulations being carried out by Carlos Frenk’s team: http://star-www.dur.ac.uk/~frazerp/virgo/virgo.html (accessed July 1998)
James Peebles quotation, “No one . . .”: P.J.E. Peebles, “Evolution of the Cosmological Constant,” Nature 398, March 4, 1999, p. 26. Saul Perlmutter and the Supernova Cosmology Project: Saul Perlmutter, “Distant Exploding Stars Foretell Fate of the Universe,” Press Release, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, January 8, 1998; https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~rkirshner/whowhatwhen/Perlmutter_ Press.pdf (accessed June 2011) Perlmutter quotation “all the indications . . . “: Saul Perlmutter, “Distant Exploding Stars Foretell Fate of the Universe,” Press Release, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, January 8, 1998; https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~rkirshner/whowhatwhen/Perlmutter_ Press.pdf (accessed June 2011)
Michael Turner quotation, “If it’s true . . .”: John Noble Wilford, “Wary Astronomers Ponder an Accelerating Universe,” The New York Times, March 3, 1998; http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~rkirshner/whowhatwhen/Wary_AstronomersNYT3Ma.pdf (accessed June, 2011)
Brian Schmidt quotation, “Somewhere between amazement . . . “: John Noble Wilford, “Wary Astronomers Ponder an Accelerating Universe,” The New York Times, March 3, 1998; http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~rkirshner/whowhatwhen/Wary_AstronomersNYT3Ma.pdf (accessed June, 2011)
Adam Reiss quotation, “We are trying . . .”: John Noble Wilford, “Wary Astronomers Ponder an Accelerating Universe,” The New York Times, March 3, 1998; http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~rkirshner/whowhatwhen/Wary_AstronomersNYT3Ma.pdf (accessed June, 2011)
Further reading and sources:
Martin Rees, Before the Beginning (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Malcolm Longair (see reference for Chapter 7).
Chapter 9: Lost Horizons
Stephen Hawking quotation “if general relativity is correct . . .”: Stephen Hawking, “The Origin of the Universe,” lecture delivered at the Three Hundred Years of Gravity Conference in Cambridge, U.K., June 1987; reprinted in Stephen W. Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, and other Essays, London: Bantam Press, 1993, p. 91.
Andrei Linde quotation, “The universe is . . .”: Andrei Linde, ‘The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe,’ Scientific American, November, 1994, p. 48.
Further reading and sources: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Bantam, 1988); Kitty Ferguson, Stephen Hawking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Wormhole theory: Kip Thorne, Black Holes and Time warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy (Norton, 1994); Kitty Ferguson, Prisons of Light (Cambridge University Press, 1996). John Barrow, The Origin of the Universe (Basic Books, 1994) and The Book of Universes (Bodley Head, 2011).
Epilogue: Magnificent Enigma
The description of the Hale-Bopp comet as seen from the Lofoten Islands: Judy Anderson.
Addendum (2011)
WMAP first year results: NASA/WMAP Science Team, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, ‘First Year Results on the Oldest Light in the Universe,’ February 11, 2003.
