Parting the Cosmic Veil 2006th Edition by Kenneth R. Lang (PDF)

Description

This book describes our gradual awareness of a vast, previously concealed Universe. It is a story of expanding horizons and the discovery of invisible worlds. This voyage of discovery is presented within universal themes, such as invisibility, motion, content, form, impermanence, violence and emptiness, beginnings and ends. These are topics that concern us all, helping us take the Universe personally, so each chapter begins with the human aspect of some of these themes. The book is additionally broadened by including the perceptions of artists, poets and writers, as well as with line drawings that forcefully compact a scientific insight.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review From the reviews:”I read astronomy books both for information and for entertainment. Rarely do I come across one that provides gobs of both. Kenneth Lang’s Parting the Cosmic Veil easily makes that cut. It’s also beautifully written … . This book can be appreciated by the general reader, but its broad, imaginative scope is sure to benefit professionals too, especially those who teach. In short, this is a must read!” (Leif J. Robinson, Sky & Telescope, Vol. 113 (3), March, 2007) From the Back Cover Parting the Cosmic Veil describes our gradual awareness of a vast, previously concealed Universe. It is a story of expanding horizons and the discovery of invisible worlds, made possible with new technology and novel telescopes that have broadened our range of perception and sharpened our vision.Spacecraft have carried men to the Moon, and traveled throughout the Solar System, obtaining close-up views that have transformed the moons and planets from moving points of light to fascinating, diverse worlds. Modern technology has also enabled the detection of giant planets around other stars, taking us one step closer to the possible detection of life outside the Earth.Astronomers have used telescopes, operating at the visible wavelengths that we see with our eye, to reveal the true extent of the Milky Way and discover billions of remote galaxies that are rushing away from us in an expanding Universe. Each of these galaxies contains billions of stars wheeling around their massive central hub.Radio waves and X-rays, which lie beyond the range of visual perception, are used to detect a violent Universe, from exploding stars to gamma ray bursts and the Big Bang itself, with the associated discoveries of pulsars, black holes and quasars. Radio astronomers have also shown that the dark spaces between the stars contain vast tracts of cold hydrogen atoms and a host of molecules.Dark invisible matter has been discovered residing outside the shining stars and galaxies, outweighing them all. And a mysterious dark energy has also been found, which fills the nooks and crannies of seemingly empty space.The Cosmos is evolving, participating in ongoing processes of creation, destruction, and re-birth. But even though we are pushing the boundaries of knowledge closer to an understanding of the origins and destinies, of either the Universe or Life, the ultimate answers to these grand questions still lie hidden behind the Cosmic Veil.Parting the Cosmic Veil is additionally broadened by including the perceptions of artists, poets and writers, each example chosen for the insight it offers, as well as with line drawings that forcefully compact a scientific insight.Professor Lang is known for his famous, widely used reference books Astrophysical Formulae I, II, published in their third edition in 1995 by Springer-Verlag. He is also a writer of prize-winning science books that have a broad readership, including amateurs, experts and the educated layperson. Some of these popular books, which include Sun, Earth and Sky, Wanderers in Space, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Sun and the Cambridge Guide to the Solar System, have been translated into seven languages. About the Author Professor Lang has written several books about the Sun, as well as widely used reference works in astronomy and astrophysics. He has carried out radio observations of the active Sun with the Very Large Array in support of the SOHO spacecraft, teaches an extremely popular introductory course about the Sun to Tufts University students with non-scientific majors, and has served for two years as Visiting Senior Scientist in Solar Physics at NASA Headquarters. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Having read and greatly enjoyed Kenneth Lang’s book The Life and Death of Stars (an excellent book which I would highly recommend) I was looking forward to Parting the Cosmic Veil. I was disappointed with this book. If you are a reader of astronomy books you will find little new here. As the old cop on the beat would say “Move along, there’s nothing to see here.” For whatever reason Lang has attempted to weave art, poetry and astronomy together. Each chapter begins with an effort to relate some aspect of art and poetry to some aspect of astronomy. This effort at a synthesis between the three pops up again and again in each chapter. It just does not work for me. As I said, there is nothing new here. It is a rehash of basic astronomy circa 2015. If you are up to date this will be a waste of your time. Read Lang’s The Life and Death of Stars. In that you will learn some new things.That being said, this book would be a good text for an Intro to Astronomy 101 for a bunch of English or Art majors. Everything important is covered and there is no math. And perhaps that audience would like/get the effort to weave art, poetry and astronomy together. It did not work for me.The editor of this book should be ashamed of the job he has done. Several grammatical errors have slipped through, the sort of things spell check does not find, such as “its” when it should be “it’s” or “form” where it should be “from.” But there are also blatant editorial errors. On page 197 we find “…cosmologists are operating a cosmic con game, worthy of J. T. Barnum…” Or for example, on page 65, a discussion of the speed at which the Earth rotates around the Sun says “That speed is tremendous, amounting to 29.8 kilometers per second, or 107 thousand kilometers per hour, about one twentieth the cruising speed of the supersonic jet aircraft Concorde.” One twentieth (1/20)? That would make the Concorde really fast. Likely this should read 20 times the speed of the Concorde. And on page 26 we find the following slip up which is the most entertaining (in a way) of the editing errors: “These virtual observatories are the suppositories of a new digital Universe…” Well, I hope they meant repositories, as this is an astronomy book and suppositories only go where the light don’t shine and that would make doing any astronomy really difficult.

⭐This well written book is a nice effort to communicate basic features of modern astronomy and cosmology to a broad audience. Lang is a lucid and enthusiastic writer. The quality of illustrations is very good, which really enhances the book. Lang aims for broad coverage of not only the basic features of the universe but also who we came to our present understanding. There is a good balance of basic instruction and historical analysis. The discovery of the extent of the universe, universal expansion, the Big Bang, and some of the many surprising features of the universe such as pulsars and massive black holes are disoussed (and illustrated) quite well. Lang communicates the wonder of discovering the many unexpected and counter-intuitive phenomena that characterize the universe. He also shows how the development of astronomy and cosmology has been a function of developing new methods of observation, particularly as spinoffs of military technology, and is intertwined with developments in some fields of physics.

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