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Title: The Biggest Bangs: The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts, the Most Violent Explosions in the Universe by Jonathan I. Katz ISBN: 0-19-514570-4 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Written too Soon?
Comment: In the late 1960s the U.S. military discovered gamma-ray bursts: intense bursts of radiation coming from random points in the sky. Over the next thirty years these bursts remained one of the most mysterious astrophysical phenomena. Very little was known about them. This changed in 1997 when Paul Vreeswijk discovered an optical flash at the location of one gamma-ray burst. This discovery made it possible to determine that gamma-ray bursts are at cosmological distances and involve energies that are usually only seen in exploding stars. Jonathan Katz gives the history of gamma-ray bursts and provides a clear explaination of how astronomers have come to understand what they are and how they work. Unfortunately most of the book is devoted to what happened before 1997. Only four of the seventeen chapters cover the time after the discovery of the optical flashes. This is unfortunate because it has been since 1997 that science has been able to understand gamma-ray bursts. The book would have been much better if it had treated the two eras equally instead of concentrating on the early history of the field. The book also suffers from a slighly biased view of who contributed what to our understanding of gamma-ray bursts. The field is competetive, and rival researchers often refuse to give credit where credit is due. It is unfortunate that Katz chooses to continue this trend in a popular work. Gamma-ray bursts are a hot topic in astronomy, and the story of their discovery is worth telling. However, "The Biggest Bangs" is not that story.
Rating: 5
Summary: Science is Done by People
Comment: The Biggest Bangs is really two books in one. The first book is an entertaining popular account of astronomical gamma-ray bursts. It tells how they were accidentally discovered (by satellites launched to monitor the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty), how (through the development of better instruments) we gradually learned more about them, how the right ideas were sifted from the wrong ideas (there were plenty of wrong ideas), and how astronomers finally arrived at their present understanding. The picture is still rather cloudy, so there are likely many surprises yet to come. This is straightforward popular science writing, uncontroversial and rather well done.
The second book hiding inside The Biggest Bangs is an account of the human side of science, warts and all. This is reminiscent of The Double Helix (although Katz is only one of many contributors to understanding gamma-ray bursts, and his own name doesn't even appear in his index, in contrast to The Double Helix, in which Watson was the biggest player as well as the author). In both books the human side is often ugly. Good ideas are rejected for funding, scientists can be real backstabbers (they're human beings with the usual share of jealousy and more than the usual share of ambition), and credit doesn't always go to the most deserving (the Soviet contributors seem to have received particularly short shrift). NASA comes in for severe criticism (well-deserved, according to most scientists who have dealt with that agency). NASA apparatchiks and people who believe that science is a never-never land populated by goody-goodies above mere human failings have not been pleased.
This second book within The Biggest Bangs is really a book about the history and sociology of science, using gamma-ray bursts as a source of illustrations. It occupies only a small fraction of the text, a paragraph or a page here and there. Yet it may the most interesting part, especially for readers who don't begin with a great interest in astronomy. If the people who run science read it and pay attention it might do some good. Science could be more efficient and productive, if it were run a little differently.
Rating: 1
Summary: Biggest Bangs Abandons Scientific Objectivity
Comment: This would have been an excellent and very enjoyable book except for two major problems: the author's irrational bitterness against NASA and his resentfulness concerning the review process for scientific publications. The author does his usual whining about how it is all NASA's fault that more work in Gamma Ray Burst research is not being done. He provides a vast diatribe about how evil and conspiratorial NASA is. It leaves the reader with the impression that he cannot be objective about other subjects as well and that he may have had one of his own pet projects rejected so he couldn't buy the Porsche with first draw. Everything returns to normal for a while, and then he goes into another fit about the Scientific Peer Review Process, obviously revealing his own bitterness that one of his papers may not have been published. With these kind of emotional outbursts and losses of objectivity, it is no surprise that NASA and the Scientific Peer Process may lose some respect for the author. It ruined an otherwise enjoyable and interesting book for me and the editors should have removed these two sections before printing as they subtracted from rather than added to the book.
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Title: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375412883 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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Title: The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos by Robert P. Kirshner ISBN: 0691058628 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe by Charles Seife ISBN: 0670031798 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 10 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Universe: 365 Days by Robert J. Nemiroff, Jerry T. Bonnell ISBN: 0810942682 Publisher: Harry N Abrams Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375708111 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 29 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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