My thoughts after reading the classics about the history of the universe

"Experiencing the History of the Universe" is a hardcover book written by [English] Giles Sparrow and published by Hunan Science and Technology Press. The book price is: 78.00, the number of pages: 416, special I carefully compiled some readers’ comments from the Internet. I hope it will be helpful to everyone.

Comments after reading "Experiencing the History of the Universe" (1): Where the Dream Begins

How to use a book to describe a universe with a history of 13.8 billion years and such diversity? ?Experiencing the history of the universe? I chose a wonderful entry point, which is the most dazzling star in the universe - stars. However, the most conservative estimate of the universe is 160 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (22 zeros) stars. The author 21 stars and three quasi-stellar objects were selected from it, including famous stars, such as Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system, Cygnus X1, the first black hole to be discovered, and the first star to be discovered with a white dwarf companion. Sirius, etc.; there are also some unknown but low-key figures who played a vital role in the development of astronomy, including the first discovered three-star system Kaiyang, the first discovered Cepheid variable star Eta Aquilae, and the first The eclipse double star Algol was discovered, and so on.

These stars all have one characteristic. They are almost all the first to be discovered or the most representative among star types. It can be said that they are all the places where the dream of astronomy begins. From a utilitarian point of view, astronomy may be the subject farthest from the real life of us ordinary people, but since our ancestors looked up to the sky, the mysterious universe has never left human eyes. Generations of wise men and generations of advanced Technology, one after another, rushes towards the distant starry sky. It is the curiosity and exploration of unknown science that determines what mankind can achieve today.

Reflections after reading "Experiencing the History of the Universe" (Part 2): A lively and interesting astronomy popular science class

The main content of this book is to introduce 21 famous stars and 3 similar stars. Non-star celestial bodies help us understand the history of human exploration of the universe. There are 24 chapters in one ***, and the introduction order of each chapter is similar.

The second step is to introduce the history of the relevant stars. How did humans discover this star in history? Who discovered it? What impact did it have on the entire history of our universe? It is also interspersed with The stories of many related characters make the whole book less boring to read. From Chapter 1 to Chapter 24, it is step by step. If a new proper noun is mentioned, the author will also mark in which chapter it will appear. If you read the later chapters and forget the proper nouns in the previous chapter, The concept author will also mark it to help you find the corresponding location faster.

Finally, the explanation is as shown in the first picture above, and the second picture is some additional knowledge. These are the components of each chapter. The overall reading is easy to understand. The author's expression is very humorous and humorous, making you feel like you are listening to a popular astronomy class, and it will not make you feel boring. The more you read, the more interested you become. This book has a low threshold for people who are learning about the history of the universe for the first time. It contains a lot of basic knowledge that people have been exposed to in high school, and a university liberal arts major like me can understand it very clearly. For those who already know it, it can help you gain more knowledge about the history of the universe. In order to read this book completely, I even learned how to pronounce Greek letters. After all, there are many stars named with "constellation names in Greek letters". There are still too many things in this universe that we do not know, and concepts such as dark matter and dark energy cannot be said to be completely accurate, because new discoveries may one day overturn these concepts. I hope that future technology can Help us understand the universe better and solve more unsolved mysteries. < /p>

The bright stars. From ancient times to the present, human beings have never given up exploring the mysteries of space and the universe. When we look up at the stars, various myths and legends from China and the West may come to mind. I am still amazed by the romantic and magnificent imagination reflected by astronomers in the past when they named the constellations. Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Cygnus, Orion, Taurus... the bright stars seem to have souls after their romantic naming. With the contract, various wonders are staged in the universe.

We are all made of stardust in the universe, and the stars are inseparable from us. In this book, we can see very detailed knowledge about stargazing. The author can almost be said to teach us step by step how to identify various constellations in the starry sky, as well as nebulae and star clusters. Moreover, the illustrations in the book are also very considerate, and the content is concise and precise, which has a very good supporting effect.

In addition to the stars that have been introduced in detail, we can also improve our understanding of other celestial bodies. For example, the earth on which we live has "a little fat on the waist" - this is the equatorial part of the earth that rotates at high speed under the action of centrifugation. Matter has a tendency to be thrown outward. There are many similar wonderful metaphors close to life in the book, which make the principles of the movement and evolution of celestial bodies easier to understand.

The shining scientific spirit If there is anything that can attract my attention more than the bright stars, it may be the shining scientists on the ground and the great scientific spirit they embody. Professor Pickering invented an ingenious device that allows a photo to capture hundreds of spectra instead of just one star; he also formed a female research team to give more women the opportunity to start their own careers ;Although he cannot treat male and female researchers equally, he will not completely obliterate the scientific contributions made by female researchers. There are also those amazing numbers: in 1802, Herschel cataloged 500 newly discovered nebulae and star clusters; in 1846, the German astronomer Medler measured the proper motions of 3,000 stars; in 1963, Van der Kan Regular photography has been taken since 1937, and the research results are derived from more than 2,000 photographic negatives... Some of these scientists have made amazing and valuable discoveries, and some have believed in their wrong research results to death, but no one can question them. For outstanding contributions to astronomical research.

Personally, before watching "Experiencing the History of the Universe", most of my astronomy knowledge came from "Encyclopedia" and middle school geography class. I know that stars are very important in the universe, but all knowledge It seems that's all. The author wonderfully connects the entire history of the universe with 21 famous stars and 3 non-star-like celestial bodies, and provides persuasive arguments and detailed explanations in the preface. I have to admit that this book may not be suitable for non-astronomy majors like me to read in one sitting, but I can gain something new every time I read it. And in the text of each chapter, I think the author has obviously considered that some readers may skip chapters to read, or select certain contents to read first, so the text gives a thoughtful explanation of this - which chapter has XX already The explanation, or the professional knowledge here will be explained in detail in the following chapters. This will make me feel as if I am not reading alone, but facing the author's patient narration like a teacher. All the contents are independent of each other but implicitly related. For some personal reasons, one of the most satisfying parts of this book is the annotations. Here are the gossip stories that I love to hear, as well as the complex human nature.

Finally, I still want to praise the author's thoughtfulness, which is shown in all aspects of the book. In addition to what has been mentioned before, the author will connect the previous and later professional knowledge in the chapters to facilitate readers to track and consult. More importantly, the author takes care of the reading needs of ordinary readers and astronomy enthusiasts, and tries to use more popular and widely circulated methods. vocabulary, rather than relatively more difficult and professional terms. A very typical example is "light-year", which is a concept more familiar to ordinary people, but the measurement system commonly used by astronomers is actually "parallax". To facilitate understanding and acceptance, the distance unit used in the book is still light-year.

I think this is a good book for astronomy enthusiasts to read again and again, and it is also a popular science book that ordinary readers can understand.

Comments after reading "Experiencing the History of the Universe" (4): Understanding the universe starts with this book

In those days when industry was not developed, the exploration and understanding of the unknown world, Most of them are derived from the scrutiny of existing theories. Even today, when science and technology are extremely advanced, the acquisition of a lot of new knowledge must still be based on our existing knowledge, because everything in the world conforms to the basic laws of physics and chemistry, and the same goes for stars.

Although the countless stars that exist in the universe are all unique, they all go through similar stages in their birth and death cycles. They all have the same basic principles of light and can be classified into different categories. , which means that what happens to one star will basically happen to billions of other stars. Therefore, although "Experiencing the History of the Universe" only uses 21 stars to tell the entire history of the universe, it is enough for us to understand the evolution laws of all stars.

Stars are spherical or spherical celestial bodies that are composed of hot gas and can emit their own light. Through this book, we can understand that stars are not motionless, but because they are too far away from us, the parallax is too small. In ancient times, it was impossible to observe with special tools and it was difficult to detect changes in their positions in the sky, so the name stars continued from then on. Moreover, some stars that appear to be alone are actually not as "lonely" as we see with the naked eye. Many of them exist in a binary state (such as the Kaiyang star and the auxiliary star in Ursa Major).

Real shots of Ursa Major (quoted from the Internet)

"Experiencing the History of the Universe" is indeed a well-researched professional history of science book, covering astronomy from the Galileo period to the present develop. Although there are a large number of professional terms in the book, most of them are explained in easy-to-understand terms to ensure that even astronomy novices can understand it. The author Giles Sparrow is obviously not only a theorist but also a practitioner. In the book, he shows us how to find and observe stars that are important to the development of astronomy, as well as the constellations to which they belong, and draw The star map is for everyone to refer to and find. After reading this, I believe everyone will be eager to find their own binoculars or even astronomical telescopes, wait for nightfall, look up at the stars, and follow the pictures.

The position map of celestial objects in the book

The Orion Nebula (quoted from the Internet)

The Andromeda Galaxy (quoted from the Internet)

The book Many of the astronomical scientists mentioned have made outstanding contributions to our understanding of stars and the universe, but the author does not praise one person's achievements in a lengthy article. If you want to know more about them, an index is provided at the end of the book, and you can find each one here Find the work or scientist to which the discovery corresponds.

Index of scientists’ names

Index of cited monographs

In this book, I gained a lot of new knowledge: why do Cepheids have light cycles? Type Ia supernovae can be used as standard candles to measure their distance from Earth... and so on. Of course, all the knowledge about stars and the universe cannot be condensed into a 400-page book. For content that is not detailed, if it involves knowledge blind spots, you still need to consult some information, but this does not affect it as a A rare book for you to understand the universe.