Coming of Age in the Milky Way (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Ferris’ ability to write in an engaging way on difficult concepts in astronomy and physics does not mean that he has sacrificed breadth and depth. His book is divided into three sections: Space, Time, and Creation. These sections trace man’s historical and theoretical understanding of how mankind moved from mapping space to grasping the age of the universe and finally to struggling with the problem of genesis: How did the universe come about?

Through “Newton’s Reach,” astronomy accepted not only the concept of a sun-centered solar system but also the idea of a universe far greater in size than ever imagined. In the following century, the concept of galaxies took hold. Stars that seemed fixed were actually moving in systems made up of countless suns of their own. Then Albert Einstein extended Isaac Newton’s domain of the stars and planets to the geometry of the cosmos as a whole.

From the vast stretches of geological and biological time clocked by Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century to the first discoveries of radiometric dating by Ernest Rutherford in the twentieth, science brought together two strongly linked secrets of the universe: its immense age and the enormity of energy locked in its tiniest particles--atoms. The key to understanding the energy locked in the stars became the exploration of the structure of the atom.

Ferris closes his work with reflections on the broken symmetries of the cosmic landscape. An immortal system, constantly expanding, leaves man scattered but alive in space and time. We are because we are imperfect.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXIV, July, 1988, p. 1768.

Boston Globe. July 31, 1988, p. 96.

Chicago Tribune. August 10, 1988, V, p. 3.

The Christian Science Monitor. July 13, 1988, p. 17.

Kirkus Reviews. LVI, June 15, 1988, p. 872.

Los Angeles Times. July 15, 1988, V, p. 8.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIII, July 17, 1988, p. 1.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIII, June 10, 1988, p. 62.

Vogue. CLXXVIII, July, 1988, p. 70.