UNIVERSE

DOWN TO
EARTH
 Also by
Neil de Grasse Tyson
from
Columbia University Press
'
MERLIN S TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE
UNIVERSE
DOWN TO
EARTH

Neil de Grasse Tyson

...
Columbia University Press
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright© 1994 Neil de Grasse Tyson
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tyson, Neil de Grasse.

Universe down to Earth I Neil de Grasse Tyson.
p. cm .

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-231-07560-X
1. Cosmology-Popular works. I. Title.
QB982.T971994
523.1-dc20 93-32259
OP

Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed

on permanent and durable add-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 For
Alice Mae Young
 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
List of Figures xiii

PART ONE Methods of Science 1

1 A Sentimental Journey to the Googolplex 3
A romp through numbers big and small

2 The Structure of Science 13

Behind the scenes of the scientific process

3 Measure for Pleasure 37

Measurement is the lifeblood of all science

4 The Confused Person's Guide to

Astronomical Jargon 47
Names and words that do not always mean what they say

PART TWO Some Unifying Ideas in the

Physical Universe 77

5 Center of Mass 79
You will never leave home without it

6 Energy 91
Where it comes from and where it goes
viii CONTENTS

7 The Electromagnetic Spectrum 111

The world of light

8 Shapes of Radiation 125

Why blue-hot is hotter than red-hot

9 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 145

The most unifying concept in all astronomy

10 Highlights from the Periodic Table of

the Elements 163
Some of your best friends are composed of elements

PART THREE Astronomy Is Looking Up 185

11 Menagerie 187
A cynic's guide to the constellations

12 Horrorscope 205
An astronomer's rebuttal

13 Celestial Windings 213

Making sense of heavenly motions
Suggested Reading 253

Index 261
 Preface

It is not the intent of this book for you to learn the latest
scientific discoveries in astronomy; unfortunately, many
such books are out of date even before they make it to press .
It is not the intent of this book to train you to recite science
facts at a cocktail party; there is no shortage of books with
that as a mission. Nor is it the intent of this book to amuse
you with anecdotal stories on science personalities.
Contained in these pages is the consequence of my at­
tempts to convey science concepts to working adults, college
students, and to the average person . There is a greater need
than ever for educators and the community of research scien­
tists to find conduits through which the principles of science
can be conveyed to the lay audience. It is my experience that
success requires not only the proverbial translation from
jargon to lay terms-it also requires that an instructor de­
velop a sensitivity to those tangled mental roadways that
may confuse a person's attempt to understand a concept.
Only then can one claim to communicate with an audience
rather than simply lecture to it.
It is not always obvious what it takes to remember a
morsel of trivia, a physical principle, or a profound idea. But
it is well known tha t if you seek intellectual enlightenment,
x PREFACE

then rote memory is not as important as insight. Insight is

what remains after you have forgotten all the details. Yes, in
this book you will find some cosmic factoids and an anecdote
or two . But the book's objective is to convey ideas that etch
deeply enough on the mind so that the concepts are not just
remembered-they are absorbed into one's intuition.
Often, deep understanding comes from analogy-not po­
etic analogy but physical or household analogies drawn from
one's own path through life . Such analogies are common
throughout these pages, in my earnest attempt to bring at
least a part of the universe down to Earth.
 Acknowledgments

The chapters that appear in Universe Down to Earth were

derived, in part, from special topic lectures that I delivered
to undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin, the
University of Maryland, and Columbia University. Many of
the essays have appeared, in slightly abbreviated form, as
feature articles in Stardate Magazine between 1983 and 1993.
It is a pleasure to recognize the following educators and
scientists whose pedagogical visions have helped to shape
those of my own: Mark Chartrand Ill, Fred Hess, Alexander
Taffel, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Frank Bash, Joseph Pat­
terson, and John Archibald Wheeler. I also thank Ann Rae
Jonas, the former editor of Stardate Magazine, for her contin­
ued interest in my work and her efforts to ensure that I
always say what I mean.
Several perspectives and occasional assorted facts that ap­
pear in Universe Down to Earth evolved from specific conver­
sations held with certain colleagues, friends, and relatives:
Richard Binzel, Bohdan Paczynski, Robert Lupton, George
Wallerstein, David Spergel, Brian Marsden, Alice Mae
Young, Lynn Tyson, Lauren Vosburgh, Richard Vosburgh,
Jeffrey Rayner, Sangeeta Malhotra, Richard Joyce, and Char­
lie Caldwell. I am particularly grateful to Robert Lupton for
his careful reading and helpful suggestions on an early ver­
sion of the manuscript.
 List of Figures

Figure 6.1 Four simple orbits: The circle, ellipse, parabola,

and hyperbola
Figure 6.2 Exchange of potential and kinetic energy in an
eccentric orbit
Figure 7.1 Electromagnetic Spectrum
Figure 8.1 Effect of changing the bin size in a bar chart
Figure 8.2 Schematic bar charts for the height of American
adults, NBA players, and female Olympic gymnasts
Figure 8.3 Three temperature scales: Fahrenheit, Kelvin,
and Celsius
Figure 8.4 Three black body curves
Figure 9.1 Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
Figure 9.2 Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of a star cluster a t
three evolutionary stages
Figure 10.1 Periodic Table of the Eleme nt s
Figure 11.1 Orion, the Hunter
Figure 11.2 Pegasus, the U p s i de Do w n
- Flying Half-Horse

Figure 11.3 Libra, the Scales ( u pper panel); T ria ngu l um Aus-
tralis, the Southern Triangle (lower panel)
xiv L I S T OF FI GURES

Figure 11.4 Crux Australis, the Southern Cross (upper panel);

Apus, the Bird of Paradise (lower panel)
Figure 11.5 Big and Little Dippers with the North
Celestial Pole
Figure 11.6 South Celestial Pole (upper panel); Pleiades plus
thumb (lower panel)
Figure 11.7 Sagittarius, the Archer who resembles a teapot
(upper panel); Cassiopeia, the Queen of Egypt on her
throne (lower panel)
Figure 13.1 Earth's principal latitude zones
Figure 13.2 Tilt of Earth's axis and the seasons
Figure 13.3 Analemma
Figure 13.4 Path of the Sun in the daytime sky at an interme-
diate northern latitude
Figure 13.5 Path of the Sun in the daytime sky at the equator
Figure 13.6 Path of the Sun in the sky at the North Pole
Figure 13.7 Sun, Moon, and Earth: phases and eclipses
Figure 13.8 Moon's orbit in tidal lock
Figure 13.9 Total solar eclipse
Figure 13.10 Annular solar eclipse
Figure 13.11 Retrograde planet
Figure 13.12 Retrograde people
UNIVERSE
DOWN TO
EARTH
PART ONE
•

Methods
of
Science
 1 · ·

A Sentimental Journey to
the Googolplex

The methods of scie nce exte nd their deepest roots in the origin
of numbers . We owe it to the " number line" to give due atte n­
tion to all numbers big and small. As o ne who studies the
universe, however, it should come as no surprise that I have
sla nted the coverage toward the big ones.
If somebody asks you, " How big is a billion?"-what would
be your response? If you did n' t have much to say, then one
could infer that you are probably not an astro nomer. Of all the
natural and physical sciences, astro nomers domi nate the "big
numbers" market. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to conduct a
co nversation with an astronomer without greeti ng numbers
that contain more zeros tha n you would bother to count. This
chapter may help you appreciate the evolution of this phe­
nomenon.
L is generally agreed among historians that economics
played a role in the birth of mathematics. For example, if I
breed chickens and you breed sheep, and I want some of
your sheep, it would be natural for us to swap chickens for
sheep. But first we must answer the question: How many
chickens equal one sheep? This seemingly simple question
in fact requires the invention of a logical scheme for count­
ing. Some of the earliest evidence for the ability to count
comes to us on a 30,000-year-old wolf bone excavated in
eastern Europe that was deeply etched with fifty-five
notches in groups of five. But the ability to count, undeni­
ably a sophisticated concept, is still not sufficient to deal
with all our problems . Suppose I have only five chickens,
but you think a sheep is worth ten. I cannot afford to "buy"
a whole sheep. With this predicament, a revolutionary con­
cept of numbers is needed to help us consummate our trade:
the concept of a half a sheep. But we need not stop with
only half a sheep. Suppose my unit of barter is not a chicken
but a pea from my vegetable garden. Certainly five peas
will buy much less than half a sheep-perhaps only one­
thousandth of a sheep . Apart from the logistical difficulty of
actually trading a fraction of a (living) sheep, it is clear that
advanced barter requires one to be comfortable with numeri­
cal quantities borrowed from the world of fractions.
For most of the five thousand years of recorded history,
little scientific significance was attached to extremely small
quantities . It was not until the late 1600s, when the Dutch
naturalist Anton van Leeuwenhoek introduced the micro­
scope to the world of biology . With the desire to measure
precisely the sizes of cells, protozoa, and bacteria, there
6 METHODS OF SCIENCE

proliferated tiny fractions of the measuring unit such as one­

thousandth, one-millionth, and one thousand-millionth .
Meanwhile, astronomers actively explored in the opposite
direction with the help of Galileo Galilei's introduction of the
telescope to the world of astronomy in the year 1610. The
telescope heralded a new scientific era that allowed astrono­
mers to worry about, and subsequently estimate, the size of
objects in the universe and their distance from the Earth .
Equally bulky numbers then emerged, such as one million
billion, one billion trillion, and one trillion trillion.
Astronomers and biologists alike were faced with the
same problem: How can one talk cleanly and precisely about
extreme quantities of the universe without polluting the con­
versation with countless /1 -illions11 or /1 -illionths"? And Eu­
ropean travelers need not be reminded that a billion in En­
gland and most of Europe is a thousand times bigger than a
billion in the United States and France. This numerical di­
lemma was compounded in the early twentieth century after
atoms and subatomic particles were discovered by the physi­
cists J. J. Thompson, Ernest Rutherford, and James Chad­
wick at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cam­
bridge.
What follows is a quick journey through some awkward
11-illionths" and /1 -illions" that once bedeviled the scientific

community.
When measuring in parts of a meter:

one-thousandth The fraction one over one with three

zeros. This is the approximate radius of
a peppercorn .
011e-millio11tli The fraction one over one with six
zeros . The head of a human sperm typi­
cally has this radius.
one-billiontli The fraction one over one with nine
 A Sentimental Journey to the Googolplex 7

zeros. This is a common radius for the

tiniest bacteria.
one-trillionth The fraction one over one with twelve
zeros. Fifty-three of these is the classi­
cal radius of the hydrogen atom .
one-q uadrillionth The fraction one over one with fifteen
zeros. About three of these will get you
the classical radius of the electron.
one-q uintillionth The fraction one over one with eigh-
teen zeros. This slice of a sheep would
not buy much in any economy .

When simply counting, we get:

one thousand Written as a one followed by three zeros.

This is about the number of times per
minute that Earth is struck by lightning.
one million Written as a one followed by six zeros.
When counting people, there are about
eight of these piled into New York
City.
one billion Written as a one followed by nine zeros.
If you never slept, it would take you
thirty-two years to count this high. And
cows are dismayed to learn that, when
last checked, McDonald's hamburger
food chain has sold more than one hun­
dred of these. Laid end to end, this many
hamburgers would go around the Earth
two hundred times, and, with what re­
mains after you have eaten a few, would
bridge three round trips to the Moon .
one trillion Written as a one followed by twelve
zeros. This is about how many seconds of
time have passed since the Neanderthal
8 METHODS OF SCIENCE

roamed Europe, Asia, and northern

Africa.
one q uadrillion Written as a one followed by fifteen
zeros. When the human population
reaches this number, then everybody will
have to stand upright in order to fit on
the Earth's surface.
one q uintillion Written as one followed by eighteen
zeros. This is the sum of all sounds and
words ever uttered since the dawn of the
human species. The tally includes con­
gressional debates and filibusters. Coinci­
dentally, this is also about the number of
grains of sand on an average beach.
one sextillion Written as one followed by twenty-one
zeros. This is the estimated number of
stars in the universe.
one bezillion In spite of what your friends may tell
you, this number does not really exist.

The scientific community, unhappy with such awkward ter­

minology, needed a more elegant method of numerical orga­
nization. Hence, a sensible system of prefixes was formal­
ized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
to be used in conjunction with the metric system . With such
a scheme, physical quantities are described in units of thou­
sands so that every three zeros appended to a number yields
a new prefix. Additionally, scientific notation was intro­
duced to prevent writer's cramp if, for some reason, you
chose to write out the number. For example, a large number
like 2,000,000 (two million) can be written in scientific nota­
tion as 2.0 x 1 06 , where the "6" in the "106" tells you how
many places the decimal hops to the right. For a tiny number
such as . 000002 (two-millionths), scientific notation repre-
 A Sentimental Journey to the Googolplex 9

sen ts it as a 2.0 x 1 0 - 6 , where the "-6" in the "10-6" tells

you how many places the decimal moves to the left.
The officially accepted prefixes are listed below.
2 2
yotta- 10 4 giga- 109 deci- 10- 1 pico- 10-1
2
zetta- 10 1 mega- 106 centi- 10- 2 femto- 1 0 - 15
exa- 10 1 8 kilo- la3 mili- 10 - 3 atto- 10-18
2
peta- 101 5 hecto- 10 micro- 10- 6 zepto- 10 - 2 1
2
tera- 1012 deka- 101 mano- 10-9 yocto- 10 - 4

From what appears to be a melodic quartet in pentameter,

one simply locates the correct prefix and appends it to what­
ever quantity is measured. Some common examples are cen­
timeter (one-hundredth of a meter), kilogram (one thousand
grams), and megahertz (one million hertz).
A romp through the scientific offerings of the univ.erse
can occasionally tempt you to invent new units that will
make measurement simpler for the intended task. This, of
course, has already been done for the smallest to the largest
length scales. The branch of physics known as quantum
mechanics dictates that the structure of space itself is discon­
tinuous on scales of what is called the "Planck length, "
which is about 1 . 6 x 10-33 centimeters. The role of the
German physicist Max Planck, in the dawn of quantum me­
chanics, is discussed further in chapter 8. Atomic distances
and wavelengths of visible light are commonly measured in
units of "A ngstroms, " which is defined to be 10 - 8 centime­
ters. Yellow light has a wavelength of about 5, 000 A ng­
stroms.
Distances among planets in the solar system are conve­
niently measured in "astronomical units, " which is defined
to be the average distance between Earth and the Sun­
about 93 million miles. On this scale, for example, the aver­
age distance of Pluto from the Sun is just under 40 astronom­
ical units. The distance that light travels in one year is enor-
10 METHODS OF SCIENCE

mous. This is the famous "light-year," which is about 5 . 8

trillion miles. It forms a convenient yardstick to measure
distances between the stars. The nearest star to the Sun­
Proxima Centauri-is about 4. 1 light-years away.
For obscure historical reasons, most astronomers use the
"parsec" rather than the light-year as the yardstick of choice.
One parsec equals 3.26 light-years. There is no widely used
unit of distance that is larger than the parsec, although one
could, in principle, define the size of the entire universe
(about 15 billion light-years in diameter) as a new yardstick,
but it would not be very useful-what else could you find to
measure with it?
In any adopted set of units, there is no doubt that astrono­
mers monopolize the big numbers. But the biggest number
of them all-the one that signifies the physical limit of mea­
surable nature-is a very clean, compact-looking number
within which all of astronomy is contained:
1os1

This seemingly unremarkable quantity actually represents

the estimated number of atoms in the universe, yet it has no
name. How about totillion? If you are worried over the fact
that each of these atoms also contains discrete subatomic
particles that can in turn be counted, don't worry too much.
Over 90 percent of all atoms in the universe are hydrogen
atoms. Hydrogen in its most common form contains no neu­
trons-only a single proton and a single electron. For a better
estimate of the total number of atoms and subatomic parti­
cles in the entire universe, we should simply double our
newly named number: 2 x 1081
Does this mean that we cannot discuss numbers bigger
than 2 x 1081 ? Certainly not. We must simply remember
that such nu mbers have no relationship with physically
countable quantities in nature . Let's take 10100, for example.
 A Sentimental Journey to the Googolplex 11

It is a one followed by one hundred zeros. This rounded,

neat-looking number, which is ten quadrillion times larger
than the number of atoms in the universe, actually has a
name .. It was christened a "googol" by a nine-year-old
nephew of the mathematician Edward Kasner. Though it is
a worthy, even lovable, number, it is not my favorite. That
distinction goes to the number ten raised to the googol
power:
JO(googol) = 1010100

which has the immortal name of the "googolplex. " This

number was originally supposed to be a one followed by as
many zeros as it would take for someone to get tired of
writing them. Since different people obviously get tired at
different rates, the googolplex was redefined in terms of the
googol. Thus, a googolplex is a number so big that it cannot
be written without the aid of scientific notation. It has more
zeros than can fit in the universe. Actually, this should not
be surprising since a googolplex is a one followed by a goo­
gol zeros, and a googol is a number bigger than the sum of
all particles in the universe. Even if you could write your
zeros small enough to place one on every existing atom, the
googolplex still could not be written out in the space of the
universe. It is sobering to see the dynamic range of astron­
omy humbled by the imagination of a nine-year-old just as it
is enlightening to realize that one's imagination can extend
beyond the limits of astronomical perspectives.
Just for the record, there exists yet another named number
that dwarfs even the googolplex:
o34
1010t

This is known as Skewes's number, which gives mathemati­

cians information about the distribution of prime numbers.
Skewes's number can also be discussed abstractly even
12 METHODS OF SCIENCE

though it obviously has no measurable application to nature.

For example, the mathematician G . H. Hardy pointed out
that if the entire universe were a giant cosmic chessboard,
and the interchange of protons between any two atoms were
legal, then Skewes's number would represent the total possi­
ble number of moves!
Is this the whole story of science and numbers, or can
there be another level of investigation? One cloudy night,
when I had nothing better to do, I decided to look more
closely at our revered international system of metric prefixes.
In these days of inflated modifiers, a thank-you note
might get more attention if you signed it "Thanks x 109, "
provided, of course, you really d o mean "Thanks a billion. "
What happens if you are 10-6 biologist? That must make
you a microbiologist.
How about if you decided one day to read a copy of 2
x HP Mockingbird? That would of course be Harper Lee's
undiscovered classic novel, Two Kilo Mockingbird.
If you have ever played 10-12 boo with a child, then it was
probably the metric version called Pico-boo.
If the facial beauty of Helen of Troy was sufficient to
launch a thousand ships, then the 10-3 Helen, better known
as the milli-Helen, must be the amount of beauty required to
launch just one ship.
Suppose you owned 101 cards? That of course would be
your own personal deka-cards.
What happens if you live in a 1 06 lopolis? This is none
other than a megalopolis.
And finally, if you just had a 1 0-2 mental journey to the
googolplex, what kind of journey was it?
 . 2.
The Structure of Science

Science consists in discovering the frame and operations

of Nature, and reducing them, as far as may be, to
general rules or laws--establishing these rules by
obseroations and experiments, and thence deducing the
causes and effects of things.
-Sir Isaac Newton
 Scientific Method

The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is

science itself.
-Gerard Piel

Nearly every century since the dawn of recorded history can

boast a list of scientific achievements, but no list is as exten­
sive or has had as much impact on world order as that of
the twentieth century. For example, quasars, the expanding
universe, the proton, the neutron, the theory of relativity,
quantum mechanics, the airplane, vitamins, vaccines, DNA,
and nuclear bombs were all discovered or invented after the
year 1900. We often take this knowledge of the physical
world for granted, as though it were inscribed on a cosmic
tablet in the sky . But most scientific discoveries come from
sweat, perseverance, and insight. We may attribute this
brow-raising success of twentieth-century science to three
sources: (1) the unprecedented number of scientists in the
world today, (2) the development of laboratory equipment
that makes available to the human senses views of nature
that would otherwise go unnoticed, and (3) the widespread
and successful application of the scientific method .
The scientific method is responsible for the discoveries
and the predictions that shape our understanding of the
universe . It is the guiding principle of nearly all science.
Whether you know it or not, you are exposed to the scientific
method almost daily. In its most basic form, the scientific
method demands that an experiment or observation be con­
ducted to test a hypothesis. We find a colloqu ial version of
the scientific method with the residents of Missou ri, who (it
16 METHODS OF SCIENCE

is rumored) have a statewide compulsion to say "Show Me!"

if you approach them with a hard-to-believe claim. On a
national scale, by joint mandate of the Federal Communica­
tions Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, a tele­
vision advertisement must illustrate the scientific method
to substantiate any claim that is made about an advertised
product. This is why stains are lifted, ring-around-the-collar
is removed, paper towels become soaked, excess stomach
acid is absorbed, and headaches go away-all during the
commercial.
Two millennia ago, in the days before television commer­
cials, there lived a Greek philosopher named Aristotle whose
writings about the physical and biological world were, on
occasion, strikingly devoid of the scientific method. To be
fair to Aristotle, the scientific method had not yet been for­
mally developed . It emerged in the more familiar and ap­
preciated form we know today principally through the work
of Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. But Aristotle was so influential
that he may have delayed the advent of the scientific method
by several centuries. Aristotle's method would often be just
to think about the world and declare what ought to be true.
The truth was presumed to be self-evident as inferred from
the expectation of a philosophically perfect universe. It was
self-evident that a 100-pound iron ball would fall to the
ground one hundred times faster than a one-pound iron ball .
It was self-evident that the source of all human feeling and
emotion was the heart. It was self-evident that Earth was in
the center of the universe . It became quite evident that Aris­
totle was wrong.
Some of Aristotle's claims are easier to test than others.
You are not likely to attract volunteers who will let you
remove their hearts to see if they retain their emotions, but
 The Structure of Science 17

anybody can drop two objects to the ground. If you perform

this experiment yourself, you will discover that a big rock
and a little rock will fall at exactly the same rate. This experi­
ment, of course, does not require rocks. It will also work in
the privacy of your home with a bowling ball and a billiard
ball, or a bowling ball and a golf ball, or a bowling ball and a
marble, or even a bowling ball and a feather (if you removed
all the air from your room), but the downstairs neighbors are
not likely to appreciate these experiments.
Over the centuries, one by one, many of the Aristotelian
claims were abandoned . It is astonishing to realize that until
Galileo performed his experiments on the acceleration of
gravity in the early seventeenth century, nobody questioned
Aristotle's falling balls . Nobody said, "Show Me!"
When we believe that we understand nature on some
level, we can then attempt to predict events. Scientific theo­
ries are ideas that explain some of what is already known
and predict the future behavior of some of what is not
known. Some of the first of their kind were the three "laws"
of planetary motion published in 1609 and 1619 by the Ger­
man astronomer Johannes Kepler. His third law contains a
mathematical equation that predicts the orbital period of a
planet if you know its average distance to the Sun. It was by
no means self-evident that such a relation should exist.
Kepler labored for ten years over extensive and accurate data
on planetary positions that were willed to him by Tycho
Brahe, a well-funded and flamboyant observational astrono­
mer from Denmark. The result is a triumph of the scientific
method, where the importance of data and the application
of mathematics to a physical problem became a tradition that
was carried forth to the laboratories of modem science.
18 METHODS OF SCIENCE

Paths of Science

Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature;

it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it
describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.
-Werner Heisenberg

Now there is a sobering thought. Heisenberg deftly declares

that we are not passive, detached observers of natural law.
We are active participants who unravel the unive13e in the
context of our intellectual and experimental limitations .
A creative scientific mind is one that combines formal train­
ing with personal insight to achieve a discovery. Upon be­
coming a scientist, you bring with yourself a unique point of
view. It is amended and refined throughout one's career, al­
though it is not necessarily true that the best sc;ientists should
be the ones with the longest path of life. Sir Isaac Newton,
Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and
Wolfgang Pauli-towering greats in the history of science-­
all made their most profound contributions before age thirty.
Nor is it necessarily true that early training in a chosen scien­
tific discipline best prepares you for later discovery in that
discipline. Martin Harwit, in his book Cosmic Discovery, notes
that after 1945 about 70 percent of the important astronomical
findings were made by scientists not originally trained as as­
tronomers. The best examples of discovery come from those
who invent a new piece of hardware such as a detector, or
from those who introduce a new telescope design. The utility
of such a device is often immediately apparent to all, but it is
the inventor who often gets to use it first.
When you read newspaper accounts of scientific discov­
ery, you are not always told that there were countless other
research pa ths that were scientifically sound but produced
unfruitful, misleading, or wrong results. In some cases this
 The Structure of Science 19

realization can lead to disillusionment. The Nobel Prize-win­

ning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in the predawn of quantum
mechanics, lamented,

At the moment physics is terribly confused. In any case, it

is too difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie
comedian or something of the sort and had never heard
of physics.

One does not normally hear about the daily failures on

the path to discovery. In more blunt terms, the public reads
about the hits and not the misses. There is a scene in the
film The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy (and Toto too) come to
a fork in the yellow brick road. The Scarecrow, after what
appears to be random arm-swingings, points to what is later
revealed to be the correct path to Oz. Once again, the audi­
ence is treated to a hit and not a miss . I often wonder how
boring the film would have been if Dorothy and Toto missed
and had taken the wrong path. Not only would Dorothy
have been lost in her dream, she and her little dog wouldn't
have met such charming characters as the ugly bad witch,
the ill-mannered talking trees, and the winged monkeys.
Science is replete with examples of time devoted to wrong
paths. But this does not mean that we should abandon sci­
ence or the scientific method. As early as the seventeenth
century, Francis Bacon noted that truth emerges more
readily from error than from confusion. Some spectacularly
wrong concepts include Ptolemy's earth-centered (geocen­
tric) universe, the caloric theory of heat (where heat is taken
to be a physical substance), and the luminiferous ether
(which was thought to permeate all of space as an omnipres­
ent medium for light to propagate) . From these misguided
ideas grew the Copernican sun-centered (heliocentric) model
of the solar system, thermodynamics, and Einstein's special
theory of relativity, which led later to his general theory of
20 METHO D S OF SCIENCE

relativity. In a more earthly example we find that cows rather

than lions are domestic farm animals because (among other
reasons) while a cow is content to eat grass, a lion is content
to eat the farmer. Yes, in science and in animal husbandry,
wrong paths can be the source of their own undoing.
One's point of view, when merged with one's path of life,
provides the framework within which steps are taken in the
name of scientific progress. As we have seen, a point of view
can sometimes be skewed. What some people may consider
to be an insightful point of view may even tell more about a
person's bias than about a scientific truth. For example, in
the 1940s and 1950s, the now-defunct steady state theory of
the universe was developed and held to be aesthetically
more fulfilling than the oscillating universe. (At the time,
there were not enough data to distinguish one model from
another. ) In the steady state theory, space is infinite and all
regions of the universe look the same, on average, for all of
time. The oscillating model, however, holds that our ex­
panding universe will one day recollapse and then explode
into existence again . If cosmological theory were dominated
by women, who are no strangers to cycles, how can we
know for sure that we wouldn't then be told that the oscillat­
ing universe is the more aesthetically fulfilling alternative?
Another example comes from the field of mathematics,
where there is a theorem that colloquially translates, "You
cannot comb the hair on a bowling ball . " Aside from the
complication that most bowling balls have no hair, the theo­
rem means that if a bowling ball did have hair, and if you
tried to comb it, there would be at least one spot on the ball
where the hair would not know which way to lay. Clearly,
none of these mathematicians had Afros, because to "comb"
an Afro is to pick it straight away from the scalp. If bowling
balls had Afros, then yes, they could be combed without
viola tion of ma thematical theorems .
 The Structure of Science 21

Sometimes a naive observation can lead to misnomers and

misconceptions. Historically, when very bright new stars
appeared in the sky, each was promptly declared to be a
nova, from the Latin novus, meaning "new. " Stars that were
even brighter were each called a supernova. The ensuing
paths of research unfolded with the misguided assumption
that these stars were indeed new. We now know these ob­
jects to represent the explosive end stage of a star's life.
A more appropriate pair of terms might be "mortem" and
"supermortem. "
I n other examples, there i s a deficiency i n the vocabulary.
The words "particle" and "wave" have a worthy, indepen­
dent existence . But when the behavior of photons is dis­
cussed, conceptual problems emerge because photons are
accurately and legitimately described as waves and particles
at the same time. They are genuine "wavicles." A bias in the
minds of many pre-quantum mechanics physicists prevented
their acceptance of this unorthodox view. Similar trouble
emerged with the words "space" and "time. " After 1905,
when Einstein first introduced special relativity, the mar­
riage was inevitable; space and time became "space-time . "
A s noted b y the Russian mathematician Hermann Minkow­
ski in 1908,

Nobody has ever noticed a place except at a time, or a time

except at a place . . . . Henceforth, space by itself, and time
by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows,
and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an
independent reality .

Those trapped with co n cep tual blinders were the last to be

convinced of the merits of the new phy si cs .

W ro n g ana logie s also form skewed paths . Betw een 1 609

and 1619, Jo hanne s Kepler was in search of his third law of
p la n e tary motion. His mathematical training led him to be
22 METHODS OF SCIENCE

fully aware of the five regular geometric solids: the tetrahe­

dron (four sides of identical triangles), the cube (six sides of
identical squares), the octahedron (eight sides of identical
triangles), the dodecahedron (twelve sides of identical penta­
gons), and the icosahedron (twenty sides of identical trian­
gles). What makes these solids unique among all possible
shapes is that for each solid, all edges have exactly the same
length. These are the only five solids that qualify. No one
will doubt that these solid shapes are intriguing. But Kepler
was so intrigued that he wasted ten years of his life in
pursuit of a mystical-philosophical assumption: that the ge­
ometry of these five solids and the five distances between
the orbits of the then-known planets (Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) were somehow related.
A more modern example brings us to Einstein. He was
philosophically uncomfortable with the new field of quan­
tum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, subatomic nature
can be described only statistically, while Einstein believed
nature to be deterministic on all scales. Einstein is often
quoted as saying, "God does not play dice with the uni­
verse. " What he really means is "It would fit better into
my conception of the universe if God did not play dice. "
Unfortunately for Einstein, with regard t o quantum mechan­
ics, God does play dice . And unfortunately for Kepler, plan­
ets' orbits have no relation to geometric solids.

Importance of Data

First get your facts; and then you can distort them
at your leisure.
-Samuel Clemens

Data are bits of informa tion obtained from a physical process

about which models and theories are constructed. All data
 The Structure of Science 23

are subject to wh at are called "measurement errors ." This is

a most unfortunate term because when we discuss the errors
in our data with the general public they often wonder if we
constantly make mistakes . A less confusing term would be
"experimental result range" (although its acronym, ERR, is
not much of an improvement over "error") . When a scientist
measures a phenomenon several times, it is expected that the
results will vary from the true value of what is measured . It
is presumed that the average value of the measurements indi­
cates this true value. But an average alone is not especially
informative. The average of 0 and 10 is 5, but 5 is also the
average of 41/2 and 51/2. The tightness of the measurements
around the average is an important quantity called the "devi­
ation," which can lend confidence to the average that is
computed from the data. Clearly, the 5 is a more telling
average for the second pair of numbers than for the first pair
of numbers . A common measure of the tightness of the
deviation is the sum of the square of each deviation divided
by the number of measurements . The square root of this
number is called the "standard deviation," which is one of
the simplest and most widely used statistical descriptions for
the accuracy of data. If you seek a more complicated test,
there are professional journals in the field of statistics that
are devoted entirely to methods of data analysis. But there is
often healthy skepticism of scientific results that require ex­
otic statistical tests for their believability. As demonstrated
through the history of experimental science, results that can
be justified through simple statistical tests are more likely
to be correct. With somewhat exaggerated skepticism, the
esteemed New Zealand physicist Lord Ernest Rutherford
noted, "If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to
have done a better experiment . "
A scientific study i s not the truth simply because i t i s a
scientific study . Science is conducted by human beings who
24 METHODS OF SCIENCE

are not immune from errors caused by blunder, personal

bias, or even fraud. Data may occasionally contain errors of
contamination. For example, let's say you invent an appara­
tus that counts the number of raindrops that fall on your
lawn. But your neighbor, who lives fifty feet away, runs a
lawn sprinkler that sprays one hundred feet. The data you
obtain will say more about your neighbor's lawn habits than
the precipitation over your house. A genuine example of
contamination occurred in the early 1970s. Telescopes near
major cities tended to show specific and identical sodium
features in the spectra of all stars . What seemed, at first, to
be a cosmic sodium presence was ultimately determined to
be scattered light in Earth's atmosphere from the new so­
dium vapor street lamps that are now common in urban
areas.
The way to obtain high-quality data is to design a high­
quality, blunder-resistant, bias-resistant experiment. The
most secure experiments are the ones where any result
would be interesting, even a null result. An example of an
interesting null result would be if you went out to the side
of your neighborhood's busiest street to count the number
of Lamborghini Countachs (or Ford Model Ts) that pass per
hour. If you get zero for every hour of every day for an
entire year, then you have every right to postulate that there
are no Lamborghini Countachs in your neighborhood. You
have thus made a valid and somewhat interesting conclusion
from a null result.
Arguably the most important null-result in the history of
physics was the 1 887 experiment by the American physicist
Albert Michelson and the American chemist Edward Morley.
They sought to determine the change in the speed of light
when measured at different angles to Earth's orbital motion
around the Sun . To their amazement, as well as to the
amazement of the scientific community, the measured speed
 The Structure of Science 25

of light remained constant in all directions. This humble

null-result helped to bury the long-held concept of the lumi­
niferous ether and laid one of the foundations for Einstein's
principles of relativity.
To collect data is often a long and arduous process. In the
end, we don't look for the right or wrong answer, we look
for consistency. It is not whether one study finds evidence
in support of a claim, it is whether all studies find evidence
in support of a claim. We ask, "Is Dr. Aster's research results
consistent with those of Dr. Roid's?" Equivalently, we can
ask, "Are the data from Dr. Aster's experiment within the
range of data from Dr. Roid's experiment?" If the answer is
"No," then we ask, "Were their experiments or observations
of similar design?" or, "Might there b errors other than
errors of measurement?" Scientists will, in general, pursue
those topics that are not yet resolved because these are the
most exciting research areas. When the data from different
researchers are consistent with each other and when a theo­
rist helps to provide a predictive understanding for the mea­
sured phenomenon, then the boundary of human under­
standing of the universe has grown .

Mathematics

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such

wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.
-Mark Twain

If you happen to be in Katmandu, and your Nepali dialect is

rusty, and you wish to buy a snack, and you remain clueless
even after the merchant tells you that it costs "nau rupya or
pachas pice," then just motion for the price to be written .
The merchant will likely use the most widely accepted sym-
26 METHODS OF SCIENCE

bols of them all: 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, and write 9.50. You

will then both be happy. This universality of numbers, and
of mathematics in general, provides an international conduit
through which you may buy snacks in exotic places. And
since mathematics is the language of the physical sciences, it
also allows scientists to communicate discoveries throughout
the world. We know that skyscraper office buildings, the
steel icons of urban centers, could not have been realized
without the tandem development of appropriate construc­
tion tools and machinery. Such is the union of science and
mathematics. While science was being discovered, mathe­
matical branches and their tools were being invented . Some
noteworthy examples follow.
The Greek mathematician Euclid laid the foundation for
two millennia of plane geometry in his book The Elements,
which appeared circa 300 B.C. Armed with these tools, an­
other Greek mathematician, Eratosthenes, measured the cir­
cumference of Earth. (It should now come as no surprise
that the term "geometry" derives from the two Greek words
that translate to "earth-measurement.")
You may remember Cartesian coordinates from high
school. Rene Descartes, a celebrated mathematician of the
seventeenth century, introduced the concept of coordinate
systems, which is the foundation of graphical solutions to
problems that have been mathematically formulated .
Nonplane geometry is the fabric of curved space-time in
Albert Einstein's relativity theory. It is, with inverted re­
spect, called non-Euclidean geometry, although it was devel­
oped eighteen hundred years later than Euclid's geometry,
principally through the work of Nikolai Lobachevski in the
late sixteenth century.
In the eighteenth century, the brilliant German mathema­
tician Karl Gauss invented the powerful statistical method
called "least squares" to compute with unprecedented preci-
 The Structure of Science 27

sion the orbit of the asteroid Ceres from incomplete data

available to him.
The Scottish nobleman John Napier invented logarithms
and the "slide rule" in the late sixteenth century, which
simplified computations among scientists for more than
three hundred years. It was not until the 1970s that the
hand-held calculator rendered slide rules obsolete. Yes,
among researchers at the major computation centers of the
world, the side-of-the-thigh slide rule holsters were rapidly
replaced by zip-closable calculator pouches that were
donned at the hip.
With the available mathematics of the mid-1600s, Sir Isaac
Newton could not easily demonstrate why planets orbited
in ellipses. By 1666, he summarily invented integral and
differential calculus to help solve the problem.
Group theory, the mathematical description for families of
properties, has widened our understanding in many disci­
plines that range from solutions of the Rubick Cube to ele­
mentary particle physics.
There are also trigonometry, differential geometry, num­
ber theory, complex analysis, vector calculus, topology,
boolean algebra, and so on. Some have proved to be indis­
pensable to the advances of the physical sciences, while
others remain mathematical curiosities.

Mathematics is the purest product of logical thinking-a cre­

ation of the human mind. It is often marveled that mathe­
matics can describe nature at all. Scientific research benefits
greatly from this happy fact. Physical models and theories
become remarkably useful when given a mathematical trans­
lation because it ensures that only logical conclusions are
drawn from the original assumptions. It also provides a vehi­
cle to help one contemplate abstract concepts. Often it is
the manipulation of an equation that indicates a physical
28 METHODS OF SCIENCE

prediction or property that may not otherwise be high­

lighted. For example, our entire understanding of classical
gravity can be derived from a single, relatively simple for­
mula laid down by Isaac Newton. And the equivalence of
energy and mass, a concept that irreversibly shaped twenti­
eth-century physics and wartime politics, is described by
Einstein's famous formula E = mc2, which is discussed fur­
ther in chapter 6.
You may have been taught in eighth grade algebra that
not only does three times three equal nine but so does nega­
tive three times negative three; in other words, the square
root of nine has two equally valid solutions. In the late 1920s
there was a mathematical discovery that had scientific as
well as literary importance: the theoretical physicist Paul
Dirac explored a second (negative) solution to his equation
for an electron. From this solution Dirac boldly predicted the
existence of antimatter-that favorite fuel of science fiction
writers. And in 1932 the American physicist Carl Anderson
discovered the positron, the antimatter partner to the
electron .
All scientists are familiar with some level of higher mathe­
matics, and while the world's nations speak different lan­
guages, everybody's mathematics looks the same .

The Right Question

Wind is caused by the trees waving their branches

-Ogden Nash

You will agree, no doubt, that it is possible for a question to

be gramma tically correct (with subjects and verbs in the right
places) yet at the same time be physically meaningless or
make no sense at all. Some examples:
 The Structure of Science 29

At what temperature does the number seven melt?

What is the sound of one hand clapping?
What is the square root of a pork chop?

In the sciences, it is also true that your query is not guaran­

teed to have meaning or significance just because you assem­
ble words in the form of a question.
Perhaps half the effort to answer a question occurs when
the question itself gets formulated. In general, the fewer
assumptions that are contained in a question, the more trac­
table is the solution. A poorly formed question might read,
"How far is the edge of the universe from the center of the
universe?" The question, as constructed, assumes that (1) an
edge of the universe exists, (2) a center of the universe exists,
and (3) there exists a method by which this distance can be
measured. Clearly, if the universe has no edge then the
entire question has no meaning. Ideally we would use sev­
eral questions:
Does the universe have an edge?
Does the universe have a center?
How can this distance be measured?
What is this distance?

The original question is now subdivided into morsels of

concepts that may now be addressed individually, and in se­
quence.
The most successful of all scientists are those who consis­
tently ask the right question. The mind-scrambling i nverse
of this talent was displayed by the researchers of the Lagado
Academy in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire, Gulliver's Travels.
They are unforgettable examples of people who conduct
meaningless research beca use they are not guided by the
right questions. In one such instance, a Lagado astronomer
30 METH O D S O F S C I E N C E

places a sundial atop a weather vane of the local townhouse.

By adjusting the sundial's reading for Earth's rotation and
revolution around the Sun, he attempts to deduce which
way the wind blows. Then there is the Lagado chemist who
labors to turn marble into soft pillows. In another example,
a Lagado inventor, in an attempt to design a cheap method
to plow the soil, recommends that farmers bury rows of tasty
grubs for hogs to dig up and eat. After a few days, the hogs
will have dug up the whole ground in search of their food
and thus make it fit for sowing, while at the same time
"manuring it with their dung. " The fact that one would have
to invest great effort to dig up the soil and bury the food in
the first place seems to elude the inventor.
As scientists, if we do not suitably guide the questions we
ask, then we may also fall victim to asking questions that
transcend the available data or even transcend the realm of
experiment. Consider the following: "What existed before
the universe?," "Why do energy and matter exist?," "Is our
universe a single atom of a larger megauniverse?," and "Can
the human mind ever understand the universe if the human
mind is part of the universe?" These are all-at least for
now-questions of philosophy and metaphysics .

What's in a Theo ry ?

The great tragedy of Science-the slaying of a beautiful

hypothesis by an ugly fact.
-Thomas Henry Huxley

The power of a theory lies not with what it predicts that is

already known, but with what it predicts that remains to be
discovered . An excellent scientific theory is one that is not
only based on data but is falsifiable, predicts new phenom­
ena, and unifies previously d isjointed sets of ideas. Several
 The Structure of Science 31

of the most successful theories and discoveries in all of sci­

ence are listed below:
· Newton's laws of gravity
· Thermodynamics
· Darwin's origin of species
· Mendeleev's Periodic Table of the Elements
· Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) Diagram
· Einstein's theory of relativity
· Quantum mechanics
· Watson and Crick's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)

There exists, of course, a much longer list of theories that

have fallen to the junkyard of failed ideas.
After the dawn of the twentieth century, scientists
stopped labeling successful theories as "laws . " What helped
to instigate this change of vocabulary was that twentieth­
century physics opened new experimental domains where
the predictions of previous laws were inadequate. It was the
humble recognition that newer and better equipment may
provide data that will indicate a deeper realization of the
physical world. This is why before 1900 we had Kepler's laws
of planetary motion, Newton's laws of gravity, and the laws
of thermodynamics whereas after 1900 we have Einstein's
theory of relativity, quantum theory, big bang theory, and so
forth. It is important to remember that the universe doesn't
care much at all about our laws and theories. It doesn't obey
our laws any more than the Sun obeys us when we say,
"The Sun will rise at 6:58 tomorrow morning. "
Some theories are more tested than others . A good exam­
ple of a theory in progress is the big bang description of the
origin of the universe. It is consistent with most of the avail­
able data, which makes it the best supported of all theories
of the universe . If the big bang theory continues to be consis­
tent with new data, then we may place more confidence in
32 METHODS OF SCIENCE

the concept. Eventually, if its success continues, there will

be a day when conflicting data will be held suspect unless
the evidence is truly compelling and irrefutable. Only then
will we be forced to rethink the theoretical framework of the
universe's origin. This is why data that conflict with a well­
established and well-tested theory must be interpreted with
extreme skepticism. To alter established physical theory sim­
ply to explain somebody's peculiar data ought to be consid­
ered something beyond a last resort. Such claims of discover­
ies often attract media attention . The public needs to remem­
ber, however, that resistance to ideas that overthrow a
scientific worldview is a productive and healthy posture. In
the research community, we are simply being skeptical and
cautious, not self-righteous and stubborn . History has
shown that the overwhelming majority of ideas that conflict
with established physical law turn out to be wrong. These
failures usually pass undocumented by the public press .
Many people who are not formally trained in mathematics
or physics want to be "armchair" Einsteins. I have a file
drawer that bursts with people's pet theories on the evolu­
tion of the universe. It is not often appreciated that major
theoretical leaps of science typically come from those who
know nearly everything that has come before them. When
combined with a spark of scientific inspiration, a successful
theorist then sees what everyone else sees, yet thinks what
no one else has thought. This does not normally happen
from an armchair tyro in the absence of extensive training­
especially since one may not even know what questions
to ask.
Some theories are scientifically empty. An early example
includes the following line of argument that is traceable to
Aristotle and was adopted by the Roman Catholic church
through to the seventeenth century: God created the uni­
verse; God is perfect, so must be the universe; the circle is a
 The Structure of Science 33

perfect geometric shape; therefore all orbital motion must be

perfect circles. A similar argument was propounded to de­
fend why Earth must be in the center of the universe: God
created the universe; God created humans on Earth in His
own image, humans must be special; the center of the uni­
verse is special; therefore the Earth is in the center of the uni­
verse. Well, all orbits we have ever measured are flattened
circles, and we have not found Earth to be in the center of
anything. Theories without physical basis are fragile indeed .
Some types of theories are of no utility to science because
they make no predictions, or the predictions are untestable.
For example, "At the beginning of the universe, seven sepa­
rate universes were formed . Ours is one of them . The other
six are outside our universe so they cannot be detected."
These are the kinds of theories you should keep to yourself.
Other theories conveniently explain all that is known in ad
hoc fashion-a separate and exotic cause is invented for
each phenomenon-yet they do not lend insight to new
discoveries. Erich von Daniken, author of the bestseller Char­
iots of the Gods, was notorious for this approach. He continu­
ally explained ancient monuments and stone carvings that
he did not understand by attributing their origin to extrater­
restrials that visited Earth eight to ten thousand years ago.
Before Sir Isaac Newton published the Principia, his 1 687
treatise on gravitation, others had hypothesized that there
were different mechanisms that kept the moon in orbit, rocks
on the ground, and projectiles in their ballistic paths. The
English scholar William Occam suggested in 1340 that
Multiplici ty o u gh t not be posited without necessity .

In regular English, Occam meant that the simplest explana­

tion with the fewest assumptions is likely to be the correct
explanation for a phenomenon-a principle now called "Oc­
cam's Razor. " Newton published a similar comment:
34 METHODS OF SCIENCE

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than

such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appear­
ances. To this purpose . . . Nature is pleased with simplic­
ity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

Guided by these principles and his towering genius, Newton

weaved all of gravity into one concept and one fundamental
equation . Guided by the opposite of these principles-where
the most extraordinary explanation is preferred-Erich von
Daniken sold millions of books.
Some other theories are constructed so that they are not
falsifiable. Herein lays the primary schism between deity­
based mythology and scientific theory. If all that you see,
do, measure, and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas
can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power,
and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind
most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.
Ongoing science is not without conflict. Occasionally the
general public, by way of news reporters, gets to eavesdrop
on scientific discourse. If the topic is "hot" then the public
will see several (or more) scientists in active debate about
some theory or hypothesis. The lack of agreement is a nor­
mal, healthy part of the progress of science . Usually the
disagreements are resolved when appropriate data become
available, but often it is the exchange of ideas that serves to
guide how the resolving data are to be obtained . The ex­
change of ideas occurs at all conventions, all conferences,
and in the hallways and coffee lounges of research institu­
tions.
The prospect of a profou nd discovery serves as an im­
portant research incentive, but it is the process of science
that excites the scientist. It occurs daily for most research
scientists and continues nightly for many astronomers. And
like the busy construction of an anthill-where each ant
 The Structure of Science 35

carries a single grain of sand with a single purpose-we

design and build experiments, develop theories, generate
computer simulations, invent new methods of analysis,
solve problems, and publish the results for the international
community of scientists to see. These are the activities that
are along the yellow brick road. One's formal training, when
combined with insight, and sometimes luck, is what im­
proves the chance that you will find yourself on the correct
path to discovery and thus contribute to the growth of this
great tapestry we call science.
 .3.
Measure for Pleasure

No science attains maturity until it acquires methods

of measurement.
-Logan Clendening
Rrhaps the first fraction anybody learns is one-half. From
about age five onward this is what you likely used to append
to your age when asked how old you were. Three weeks
after your fifth birthday you probably proclaimed, "I'm five
and a half years old . " You were older than five and younger
than six, and more complicated fractions were yet to be
learned . Little did you know that all measurement that has
ever occurred suffers a lack of precision not unlike your early
age estimate.
If you were a precocious child who knew there are fifty­
two weeks in a year, you might have proclaimed, "I am
five and three fifty-secondths years old . " An even more
precocious child might have gone on to inquire whether the
question was asked exactly twenty-one days after the fifth
anniversary of the moment of your birth. If this was indeed
the case, then someone else (perhaps a five-year-old child
who is ready for college) might indicate that you took four
seconds to declare "I am five and three fifty-secondths" and
then want to know which of the four seconds occurred at
exactly five years and three weeks.
Such a conversation could of course continue without
limit: through tenths of a second, hundredths of a second,
thousandths of a second, and so forth . The circumstances are
further confused because mammalian births do not happen
instantaneously, and all calendar years are longer than fifty­
two weeks.
Adults are as guilty as children when it comes to the
fraction one-half. Have you ever heard someone proclaim, "I
am 5 feet 7 and 3/sths inches tall" ? Not likely. People tend to
round up in units of one-half inch . But even if they didn't,
40 M E T H O D S OF S C I E N C E

one's height cannot be measured more precisely than the

smallest unit of division on the measuring stick. In America,
that unit tends to be one-sixteenth of an inch.
Your measured height is likely to fall between two tick
marks, which might prompt you to engrave even finer divi­
sions on the measuring stick. Eventually, you may find that
your height falls exactly on a tick mark-perhaps the 5 feet 7
and 45/i2sths-inch tick mark. But the grim truth is that the tick
mark itself has a thickness within which your true height
falls. It should be clear by now that no matter how finely
spaced the tick marks are placed on a measuring stick your
height cannot be determined exactly-only more and more
precisely .
However, if you are six feet tall and of the human species,
then there was a time in your life between when you were
born and now when you were exactly 5 feet 7 and 45/1 28ths
inches tall. This remains true in spite of your inability to
measure it as such to unlimited precision. Age and height
are only two of many quantities that vary continuously and
cannot be measured exactly. Other common examples are
temperature, volume, and weight. Note, however, that you
cannot simply add temperatures the way you can add vol­
umes or weights . Two people in bed, each with body tem­
peratures of 98. 6 degrees Fahrenheit, do not normally create
a 197. 2 degree under-the-cover oven.
If all this talk about imprecision upsets you, then you may
be happy to know that discrete entities can be reckoned
exactly. You (probably) have exactly one head . A rectangle
has exactly four corners . You can cut a pizza into exactly
eight slices. Here, of course, we are simply counting rather
than measuring.
Some physical entities involve more than one measurable
unit. Speed is always given as some unit of distance "per"
some unit of time . The "55" speed limit that is occasionally
 Measure for Pleasure 41

obeyed on the nation's freeways implies the units of miles

per hour (mph). You can know your speed only as accurately
as you can measure the length of a mile and the duration of
an hour. In practice, however, your accuracy is thwarted
by sources of much greater uncertainty such as low-quality
speedometers, tire size, and tread depth .
Apart from inchworms, residents of the United States,
and the Aborigines of the Australian Outback, the metric
system is the basis of nearly all measurement by the Earth's
population. The metric system was first proposed in 1670 by
Gabriel Mouton, the Vicar of Lyons, France, but it was not
in widespread use until the French Revolution of 1789 pro­
vided the political and social vehicle to disseminate it. By
1795 the metric system was formally adopted throughout
France . This new system of weights and measures then
spread rapidly throughout the civilized world.
The American fear of the metric system has very little
basis. True, no one will deny that many units of the metric
system sound like an ensemble of insects that crawl in your
garden (millimeters, centigrams, kilometers, etc . ) . But no­
body will force you to say, "A gram of prevention is worth a
kilogram of cure," and you can even continue to use words
such as milestone and pint-sized . In general, the metric sys­
tem is defined through physical concepts rather than
through correspondence with everyday things such as cups,
somebody's feet, horses, candles, and bushels. But I am
worried: since the American system elects to measure car
engines in "horse power, " then will American intergalactic
spaceships be measured in "car power"?
Behind the scenes of ordinary measurement are the met­
rologists-scientists who work to define the basis of the met­
ric system itself. At the 1967 General Conference on Weights
and Measures, the meter was defined as the length of a
designated number of cycles of the orange-red photons that
42 M E T H O D S OF S C I E N C E

the atom krypton-86 can emit when i t is excited . The second

was defined as the duration of a designated number of peri­
ods of the photon of light that corresponds to a specified
atomic transition within cesium-133 . But how well can we
measure the wavelength of the orange-red light from kryp­
ton-86? How reliable is the photon's period that is associated
with cesium-133? These uncertainties set the ultimate experi­
mental limits on the measurement of length and time.
The first attempt to measure the speed of light was by
Galileo in the early 1600s . He sent an assistant to a distant
hill to flash the light of a lantern. Galileo responded immedi­
ately with flashes from a lantern of his own. An attempt to
time the delay proved futile-human reflexes were inade­
quate for such a task. Galileo succinctly noted that light "if
not instantaneous . . . is extraordinarily rapid ." One could
call this a low-precision estimate.
In 1675 the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer noticed that,
as seen from Earth, eclipses of Jupiter's moons occurred
systematically earlier and later than expected . Roemer was
clever enough to realize that the eclipses occurred early
when Earth, in its orbit, was nearest Jupiter, and they oc­
curred late when Earth was farthest from Jupiter. Roemer
deduced correctly that these time differences were due to
the time it took for light to span the diameter of Earth's orbit.
By simple division (diameter of Earth orbit + total time
difference = speed of light), Roemer provided the first rea­
sonable estimate for the speed of light.
Albert Einstein later postulated through his theory of rela­
tivity that in a vacuum, no matter your state of motion, you
will always measure the speed of light to be the same­
within experimental accuracy . Such a theory, coupled with
continued and irrefutable experimental support, has en­
dowed the speed of light with an almost sacred importance.
Over three hundred and fifty years after Galileo's first esti-
 Measure for Pleasure 43

mate, the precision in the speed of light has finally reached

the experimental limits imposed by the meter and the sec­
ond. This limit corresponds to an accuracy of about one part
in ten billion.
To be fair to the cesium atom, the second can be measured
to about one part in one hundred trillion, so our constraints
on the precision of the speed of light can be blamed on the
meter. In other words, if we knew the length of the meter as
precisely as we know the duration of a second, then we
could know the speed of light ten thousand times more
accurately. This frustration has led the International Com­
mittee on Data for Science and Technology, in an unprece­
dented decision, to define the speed of light at the current
best value: 299, 792,458 meters per second. For the future,
improved precision in the speed of light will translate di­
rectly to a modification in the length of the meter so that the
defined value for the speed of light is preserved . The defini­
tion of the meter is now: the distance traveled by a beam of
light in a vacuum during l/299792458th of a second.
Future modifications to the length of the meter will not be
of the kind that ordinary people need to worry about. You
will not wake up one morning to find that you suddenly
measure twice as tall as when you went to sleep . Meter
modification would occur on a scale that is smaller than the
thickness of the molecules that compose the measuring edge
of a household ruler. That being said, the quantum behavior
of the physical universe on the smallest of scales ensures
that space itself is discontinuous, which leads to an ultimate
precision with which the length of the meter can be defined.
As was noted in chapter 1 , you cannot measure precision, or
lengths in general, on scales smaller than the teeny-weeny
"Planck length" of 1 . 6 x 1 0 - 33 centimeters . Anything
smaller is physically meaningless.
Digital clocks have given society a false sense of accuracy .
44 M ET H O D S O F S C I E N C E

Several years ago I was one of the tens of thousands of

people that assembled in New York City's Times Square to
celebrate New Year's Eve. While there, I took note of three
different digital clocks that were part of large neon bill­
boards. Two of them displayed time to the tenth of a second.
The other displayed time to the hundredth of a second. A
fourth digital clock high on a building in the middle of Times
Square was the clock that most people watched . At precisely
midnight, whenever that was, none of the clocks agreed . A
full ten seconds separated the fastest from the slowest clock.
At least three clocks-and quite possibly all four-were
wrong with impressive precision . Most people assembled for
the occasion took no notice, but I was devastated. As the
adage goes, "The person with one clock knows the time.
The person with two clocks isn't sure . "
Hand-held calculators and computers in general have also
given society a false sense of accuracy. For example, if you
drive a car at 23 mph and your destination is s·even miles
away, and if you are one of those people who never leaves
home without a calculator, then you might take pleasure in
computing how much time your trip requires. So you divide
7 (miles) by 23 (miles per hour), and your calculator
promptly displays 0. 3043478261 (hours), which of course
comes to 18 minutes and 15.6521 7391 seconds. Nobody mea­
sures the duration of car trips to the billionth of a second­
but your calculator doesn't know this. It also doesn't con­
sider that there will be traffic lights and stop signs and pe­
destrians that normally require you to stop once or twice,
thus rendering the precision of the calculator computation
completely useless. It is up to you to say, "We will arrive in
about twenty minutes . "
The airline industry i s also guilty. Moments after takeoff
the pilot announces your trip will take 2 hours and 47 min­
utes. What the pilot should say is, "My on-board computer
 Measure for Pleasure 45

tells me we will be airborne for 2 hours and 47 minutes, but

all I can say with assurance is that we will land within several
minutes of the computed time. "
The entire (responsible) scientific community, when re­
porting a measurement or computation, will give the reader
an indication of the believability of the results. A convenient
symbol, which often precedes an uncertain quantity, is the
single or double tilde: - or = . They are the scientific equiva­
lent of an "-ish" as in, "Dinner will be served around six­
ish" . Better yet, if the range in error estimate is known, it
may be noted by the famous "plus-or-minus" symbol which
is simply a plus sign sitting atop a minus sign: " ± " . It is
more than a math symbol-it is a symbol of honest uncer­
tainty. The next time somebody tells you an exact-sounding
quantity just respond, "Plus or minus what?"

In summary, then, we can say:

Our precocious preschooler was 5 years 6 months ± 6
months old .
Your height is 5 feet 7 inches ± 1h inch.
The speed of light is 299, 792,458 ± 0 meters per second .
The car trip of the calculator addict will last 20 ± 5 minutes.
Your plane trip will last 2 hours 45 minutes ± 15 minutes.
And, of course, you have exactly one head.
 4 · ·

The Confused Person's Guide to

Astronomical Jargon

This chapter might possibly belong at the e nd of the book as a

glossary, but a discussion of the methods of scie nce would be
incomplete without paying homage to the inventio n, develop­
ment, a nd usage of jargo n. An academic discipline that is suffi­
cie ntly mature will have normally assembled for itself a jargon­
filled lexicon. But before you get indigna nt about this, consider
that academic researchers are not exclusively guilty. Whe n was
the last time you u nderstood your car mecha nic when you were
duly informed of what was wrong with your car? And if base­
ball were not your passio n, the n the following plausible sce­
nario would sou nd completely mea ningless: "The DH, who
had homered in each of his first two at-bats, reached first on a
pitcher's balk, a nd two outs later adva nced to third on a
ground-rule double . He the n scored to wi n the game on a
payoff pitch to a batter who laid down a bu nt for the squeeze­
play in the bottom of the tenth . " Yes, we all have our jargo n,
and we all use it to commu nicate with others in our field . But in
my (possibly biased) opinion, astro nomy has the most enter­
taining jargo n of a ny discipline-e nough to warrant a chapter
of its own.
 Terms of Entearment

To a botanist, the North American rose is a Rosa nutkana. To

a marine biologist, a household goldfish is a Carassius aura­
tus. To a medical doctor, a bruise on your jaw is a mandibu­
lar contusion. To a sociologist, your next-door neighbor is
your residential propinquitist. These professions, and many
others, are replete with polysyllabic terms that are precise
yet devoid of romance . To Juliet Capulet (of Romeo and Juliet
fame), "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. "
But what Juliet neglected to mention is that a rose by a five­
syllable term would make its way into much less poetry.
Astronomers, however, get the award for creating the
most diverse set of terms ever assembled to communicate
science . There are romantic-sounding words, words that
mean something different from what they say, words that
are intentionally misspelled, words that sound like diseases,
words that are historical relics, and most importantly, house­
hold words that mean exactly what they say. Consequently,
terms of astronomy can be enlightening as well as mind­
scrambling-but never boring.

Some Terms That Mean Exactly What They Say

Red Giants: This is what we call big red sta rs . It is an evolu­
tionary phase through which ne a rl y all stars pass.
White Dwarfs: This is what we call little white dead stars .
Only rarely is "dwarfs" spelled as "dwarves. " Do not
confuse these with dwarf stars, which are " living" main
sequence sta rs such as the Sun that burn hydrogen for
fuel i n their core .
50 M E T H O D S OF S C I E N C E

Black Holes: This i s what w e call gravitational holes in space

and time that look black. A black hole's surface gravity is
so strong that the speed one needs to escape from them is
greater than the speed of light. Since light itself cannot
escape, which is why black holes look black, then all hope
would be lost for you if you happened to stumble upon
one . Unlike a simple hole in the floor, you can fall into a
black hole from any direction. Yes, the properties of black
holes would make good script material for a science fiction
horror story.
Big Bang: This is the technical term we use to describe the
beginning of the universe. It must have been a really big
explosion, even if nobody was around to watch or listen.
It is estimated to have occurred about 15 gigayears (15 x
109 years) ago.
Missing Mass: This refers to dark matter in the universe that
we have good reason to believe ought to be out there, but
we cannot see it. We are still looking for it.
Star Cluster: This is a cluster of stars that are held together
by their collective gravity. One variety of cluster contains
relatively few (up to a thousand) stars and has an open
appearance . We call these open clusters. Another variety is
globular in appearance and can contain up to hundreds of
thousands of stars . We call these globular clusters.
Star Formation: This is the official term to use when it is time
to discuss the formation of stars.

Some Famous Names That Precisely Describe

the Object's Appearance
Jupiter's Red Spot: There is a large circular red region on
Jupiter's cloudy surface . It is a raging anticyclone several
times larger than Earth that was discovered by Galileo
more than 350 years ago. It is officially called the Red Spot.
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 51

Incidentally, the planet Neptune has a big (dark) spot of

its own, which is officially called Neptune's Dark Spot.
Sunspots: On the Sun's visible gaseous surface are small ar­
eas that are cooler than the surrounding regions. Relative
to the rest of the Sun, these spots look dark. Ignoring the
fact that they are periodic magnetic storms that move
in pairs across the Sun's disk, we simply call them sun­
spots.
Ring Nebula: The tenuous outer envelope of what was for­
merly a red giant star has escaped into interstellar space.
It is nebulous and it looks like a ring. We call it the Ring
Nebula.
Crab Nebula: Even though there are no claws, no roaming
eyeballs, and no antennae, this nebulous explosive rem­
nant of the famous supernova of A . D . 1054 resembles what
an impressionist artist might draw as a crab .
Horsehead Nebula: In a corner of the constellation Cygnus
there is a dark cloud that obscures part of an illuminated
gaseous region behind it. The dark cloud bears a remark­
able resemblance to the silhouette of a horse's head.
Milky Way: If thoroughfares of ancient times had been called
"streets" instead of "ways," then our galaxy might have
been named Milky Street. Without a telescope, the billions
of stars that compose our galaxy are distant enough, and
dim enough, to blend together in what resembles a milky
path across the sky. The milk theme also exists in the
word "galaxy" itself-the Greeks called the Milky Way
the galaxias kuklos, which translates to "milky circle . "

Some Terms That S ound Mysterio us

Albedo: Pronounced "al-bee-dough," it is simply a measure
of how much light a surface reflects. A perfectly white
surface will reflect all light and have an albedo of exactly
52 M E T H O D S OF S C I E N C E

1 . 0, while a perfectly black surface will absorb all light and

have an albedo of 0 . 0 .
Zone of Avoidance: The solar system is embedded in the star­
filled, gas-rich, and dusty disk of our Milky Way galaxy.
We must look above and below this galactic pancake to
see other galaxies and the rest of the universe. A map of
all objects in the sky will readily show that galaxies seem
to "avoid" this zone where our own galaxy's disk is in
the way.
Event Horizon: The boundary between what is in our uni­
verse and what is not in our universe. For example, it is
the horizon that separates us from the undetectable galax­
ies that recede with the speed of light at the "edge" of the
universe. Additionally, the event horizon of a black hole
is what separates us from the region where light (and
anything else) cannot escape. Indeed, the size of black
holes and the size of the universe are defined by their
event horizons.
Roche Lobe: In the mid-nineteenth century, the astronomer
E. Roche studied the detailed gravitational field in the
vicinity of a binary system. The Roche lobe is an imagi­
nary, dumbbell-shaped, bulbous envelope that surrounds
any two orbiting objects. What makes the Roche lobe
special is that if material from one object passes across
its own envelope, then the material is no longer gravita­
tionally bound . This peculiar-sounding event is actually
common among binary stars where one star swells to be­
come a red giant as it overfills its Roche lobe. The material
then spirals toward the second star, which adds to its
mass, thereby hastening its evolution. When the second
star becomes a red giant, the mass-transfer will reverse,
thus creating a modeling nightmare for binary star theo­
rists .
 Guide to Astronomical Jargon 53

Some Terms That So und Like Names One Might Give

to an Alien
Perigalacton: For anything in orbit around a galaxy (inclusive
of another galaxy), it is the point of closest approach. The
farthest orbital point is, of course, apogalacton.
Boson: What at first sounds like the name given to residents
of planet "Boso," is actually the collective name given to
particles with a specific quantum mechanical property in
common. This includes all photons (massless particles of
light) and all mesons (elementary particles with masses that
fall between that of the electron and proton) . Bosons are
named for the Indian physicist Jagadis Chandra Bose.
Baryon: Another group of particles, named from the Greek
barus, meaning "heavy." These are neutrons and protons
and all heavier particles that decay to become them .
Omega Centauri: Surely there must have been a person,
place, or thing on the Star Trek television and film series
that was an "Omega Centauri." In astronomy, however,
it is the name given to the titanic globular cluster of stars
that appears in the southern constellation Centaurus.

Some Terms That Look Like Typographical Errors

Gnomon: A vertical stick in the ground (not the otherwise
well-known stick-in-the-mud) that was used by the an­
cients to measure the angle of the Sun above the horizon .
By knowing the height of the stick and by measuring the
length of its shadow, one can determine the altitude of
the Sun with great precision . The same term is used for
the raised pointer of a sundial. A gnomon is useless on a
cloudy day.
Analemma: If you place marks on the ground at the top of
your gnomon's shadow at exactl y the same time of da y ,
54 M E T H O D S OF S C I E N C E

for every day of the year, then the pattern of marks will
trace a figure "8 . " This is a simple demonstration that the
Sun does not always return to the same spot in the sky at
the same time each day. The figure "8" is called an ana­
lemma and is often inscribed in sundials or drawn on
globes of the Earth-usually somewhere in the Pacific
Ocean.
Syzygy: A favorite of crossword puzzle enthusiasts, this
less-than-elegant term describes the moment when three
cosmic bodies have aligned. For example, during full
moon and new moon, the Earth, Moon, and Sun are in
syzygy.
Gegenschein: A faint glow seen in the nighttime sky 180 de­
grees away from the sun. It is the reflection of stmlight
back to Earth from particles in the plane of the solar sys­
tem. Gegenschein translates from the German as simply
"reflection. "
Ylem: The American physicist George Gamow suggested
this name for the high-temperature primordial cosmic
soup that preceded the big bang. George Gamow is no
longer with us, and neither is his word.
Orrery: Any mechanical model of the solar system where
planets can actually revolve around the Sun. The better
models also display the various moons that revolve
around the planets.

Some Terms That Don't Carry Emotio nal

or Intellectual Stigma
Mean Sun: Here "mean" means "average. " Because of
Earth's elliptical orbit, and because the Sun does not tra­
verse the sky along the celestial equator, the Sun does not
always take 24 hours to reach its highest point in the
daytime sky. Sometimes it takes less, sometimes it takes
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 55

more. Also, atmospheric refraction makes the Sun appear

to move through the sky more slowly than it otherwise
would. To render the Sun more friendly to timekeepers,
we define the average Sun as simply the one that moves
uniformly through the sky so that it always takes 24 hours
to reach its highest point. All the clocks of society are
set to the mean Sun and grouped, for convenience, into
time zones.
Major Planet: Any of the nine known planets (i. e . , Mercury,
Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,
and Pluto) .
Minor Planet: Any asteroid .
Inferior Planet: Refers to the planets found between Earth
and the Sun (i. e . , Mercury and Venus).
Superior Planet: This refers to the planets found beyond
Earth's orbit (i. e . , the rest of them) .
Unstable isotope: One of the few properties of atomic nuclei
that is modified by a word also used by psychopatholo­
gists. The identity of a chemical element is set by the
number of protons in its nucleus. The number of neu­
trons, however, can vary. Each variation in the number of
neutrons is called an isotope of that element. But deep in
the world of atomic nuclei, life is not always tranquil.
Some elements have isotopes that are decidedly unsatis­
fied with the number of neutrons they contain. These
elements can transmutate (decay) into another element by
converting one of their neutrons into an electron and pro­
ton pair. Such disgruntled elements are quite sensibly
referred to as unstable isotopes.
Great Circle: This is, quite simply, the shortest distance be­
tween two points on the surface of a sphere. There is
nothing especially great about it, and it normally refers to
only a segment of a circle, such as the path an airplane
might take between two cities.
56 METH O D S OF SCIENCE

Eccentricity: The mathematical measure o f the shape o f a

simple orbit. For example, a perfect circle has zero eccen­
tricity. An ellipse can have an eccentricity anywhere be­
tween zero and one. A parabola has eccentricity equal to
one, and a hyperbola can have any eccentricity greater
than one . Eccentric orbits are easier to understand than
eccentric people, but perhaps slightly less interesting.
Degenerate Star: Any star that is supported from collapse
by an interparticle pressure that prevents electrons from
getting too close to one another. This electron degeneracy
supports all white dwarfs from further collapse . Neutrons
can alsn support a star from collapse by a similar mecha­
nism. This neutron degeneracy supports all neutron stars
(inclusive of pulsars) . White dwarfs and neutron stars
contain some of the densest known matter in the uni­
verse .
Greatest Brilliancy: Used almost exclusively for the planet
Venus, the term refers to the moment when the planet, in
its orbit around the Sun, is brightest as viewed from Earth.
When this happens, Venus is likely to be near the horizon
and brighter than any airplane in the sky. Since Venus is
not "coming in for a landing, " people who do not know
better tend to call police departments to report Venus as a
glowing and hovering UFO .

Some Terms That Sound Like Diseases

Inferior Conju nction: Refers to when an inferior planet passes
between Earth and the Sun. This is not a very interesting
event because it is the other side of the planet that is
illuminated with sunlight.
Superior Co11ju11ction: Refers to when a planet (inferior or
superior) passes to the other side of the Sun from Earth. If
for no other reason, inferior and superior conjunctions are
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 57

worth noting because they are the moments in a planet's

orbit that signal the transition between when a planet is
visible in the evening sky and morning sky. For both
inferior and superior conjunctions, the Sun, Earth and the
planet are in syzygy.
Occultation: Refers to when a foreground object passes in
front of a background object. The term is typically used
when an asteroid or the Moon passes in front of either
a planet or a star. Strictly speaking, a solar eclipse is
an occultation.
Obliq uity of the Ecliptic: This is simply the tilt angle of Earth's
axis . More complicatedly put: when the plane of the solar
system (the ecliptic) and Earth's equator are each pro­
jected onto the sky, they will intersect at an angle called
the obliquity of the ecliptic.
Bok Globules: What sounds like malignant tumors is actually
the name for small, opaque regions of gas and dust in the
Milky Way galaxy that are the sites of forthcoming star
formation . They are named for the pioneering Dutch as­
tronomer Bart Bok.

Some Terms That Sound Like They Could Be Rock Groups

Shadow Bands: These are fleeting ripples of shadows that are
noticed during a solar eclipse just before and just follow­
ing totality. With the Sun as a skinny crescent, the atmo­
spheric optics are ideal for revealing the fluctuations in
density within Earth's lower atmosphere .
Kirkwood Gaps: Regions in the asteroid belt between the
planets Mars and Jupiter where orbits are unstable and
almost no asteroids are found . Named for the nincteenth­
century American astronomer Daniel Kirkwood, who first
explained the e ffect. A gap with similar dynamical origin
is found in the rings of Saturn, except that it is called
58 M E TH O D S O F S C I E N C E

Cassini's division, after the seventeenth-century Italian

astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
G-Band: A region of a star's spectrum that has a strong ab­
sorption feature from the presence of the two-atom mole­
cule carbon hydride (CH) in the star's atmosphere.
Atmospheric Band: A region of a star's spectrum that has a
strong absorption feature from the presence of the oxygen
molecule (02) in Earth's atmosphere. All starlight that
is observed from Earth's surface must pass through the
atmosphere. Consequently, this band sneaks into the
spectrum of every star.

Some Terms That Have Too Many Syllables

Magnetohydrodynamics: In the Germanic tradition of slapping
together word parts to make an even bigger word, magne­
tohydrodynamics is the study of the effects of a magnetic
field (magneto) on the behavior and motion (dynamics) of a
fluid (hydro) that is hot enough for electrons to be sepa­
rated from their host atoms. Such a gas is called a plasma
and is often considered to be the fourth state of matter.
Thermonuclear Fusion: It takes very high temperatures
(thermo) to merge (fusion) positively charged atomic nuclei
(nuclear) against their natural force of repulsion to create
heavier atomic nuclei. The core of the Sun merges hydro­
gen atoms to form the heavier helium atom with an enor­
mous energy dividend . This nuclear reaction powers the
Sun and, in a less contained way, also powers H-bombs.
Spectroheliograph: A device that solar astronomers use to ob­
serve the Sun in a narrow part of the spectrum. Often the
intent is to isolate a single emission or absorption feature.
Orthoscopic Ocular: One of many different varieties of tele­
scope eyepieces, this one is relatively expensive and is
good if you want excellent image quality. It is also one of
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 59

the few eyepieces that work well with bespectacled ob­

servers.

Some Terms That Sound Like Romantic Places

Coude Room: It sounds romantic as long as the English trans­
lation of the French coude is not revealed. Some telescopes
have secondary and tertiary mirrors whose adj ustable
placement can considerably extend the path of starlight
before it comes to what is then called the coude focus. En
route to the detector, the starlight is directed out of a hole
in the telescope's side and focuses in a separate room-the
coude room-where high-resolution spectra are recorded.
(And in case you are still wondering, the English transla­
tion of coude is "elbow. ")
Ascending Node: The spot in space where a tilted orbit
crosses a preestablished plane going north. When the or­
bit crosses the plane going south the node is descending.
It is commonly used when planet orbits and binary stars
are discussed .
Lagrangian Point: What sounds like it ought to be the name
of one of those erogenous spots on the human anatomy i s
actually any one of five points in the vicinity of two or­
biting bodies where all centrifugal and gravitational forces
balance. It is named for the eighteenth-century French
mathematician J. L. Lagrange. One of the five Lagrangian
points, "L-5," had been adopted as the original name of a
space exploration society that seeks to promote, among
other things, the construction of a space station at this
location of the Earth-Moon system.

Some Terms That Are Historical Relics

Spectral Lines: In the old days of astronomy, when photogra­
phy was the standard means of detection, it was common
60 M E T H O D S OF S C I E N C E

to publish photographs of stellar spectra . A typical stellar

spectrum produced by a prism or a diffraction grating will
display an elongated rectangle of light that is marked with
narrow emission and absorption features, which indicates
(among other things) the chemical composition and tem­
perature of the star's atmosphere. In a photograph, these
features look like lines that segment the rectangle-hence
the term spectral lines. Nowadays, with modern digital
detectors, spectra are commonly published as graphs of
intensity versus wavelength (or something equivalent to
wavelength) . In these displays the word line loses its de­
scriptive meaning. The emission features look like peaks,
and the absorption features look like crevasses-but they
are still called "lines." It is not a singular tragedy, how­
ever. There are plenty of examples where word meanings
have changed due to technology . For example, some peo­
ple still call the refrigerator an "icebox," and many people
still say they "dial" a telephone number even though they
are simply pushing buttons.
Redshift: This word can lead to confusion if taken literally.
Formerly two separate words, it soon became hyphen­
ated . In its current use, "redshift" has finally lost its hy­
phen. When used among astronomers who study galax­
ies, it refers to the shift in spectral features (absorption or
emission lines) toward the longer wavelengths that is the
consequence of a galaxy's motion away from us. In an
expanding universe, where distant galaxies recede faster
than nearby galaxies, the redshift is frequently taken to be
an indicator of distance. All the spectral lines that were
first used to measure this shift had shorter wavelengths
than red light. A measured "red shift" therefore had the
unambiguous meaning that the spectral features shifted
toward the longer wavelengths of the red part of the spec­
trum . Yet infrared, microwaves, and radio waves all have
 Guide to Astronomical Jargon 61

longer wavelengths than red light. A feature in these parts

of the spectrum, if it experienced what is called a redshift,
would still shift to longer wavelengths-but to do so
moves the feature away from the red part of the spectrum,
not toward it. A less confusing (though nonhistorical)
name might be "longshift."

Some Famo us Acronyms

Laser: Laser, like "scuba" and "radar, " is one of those acro­
nyms that has achieved greater status than the words for
which the letters stand. Certain atoms and molecules,
when excited, can be made to emit photons of visible light
upon being stimulated by photons of the same energy.
The remarkable result is an amplified "coherent" pulse of
photons, all with the same energy. With a specially de­
signed cavity, this unusual property can be exploited to
sustain a narrow beam of coherent photons. The process
was dubbed "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission
Radiation" or laser, for short.
Maser: Identical to a laser except microwave light is emitted
rather than visible light. The molecules OH (hydroxyl),
H20 (water), and SiO (silicon monoxide) have each been
discovered to be a source of maser energy in gaseous
regions of our galaxy.
Pulsar: Quite obviously, a pulsing star. Many types of stars
pulse . The term "pulsar, " however, is reserved for rapidly
rotating neutron stars where their magnetic field axis is
tilted from their axis of rotation . As th e magnetic pole
sweeps past our field of view, we detect pulses of radia­
tion. Not all neutron stars have the favorable geometry to
be called pulsars, yet all pulsars are neu t ro n stars.
Quasar: A loose assembly of letters from the phrase q u a si­
"

stellar radio source . " Wi th few exceptions, quasars look

62 METHO DS OF SCIENCE

like ordinary stars on ordinary photographs. Their enor­

mous redshifts and their staggering energy production
make them some of the most curious objects in the sky.
The first of these quasi-stellar objects to be discovered
were strong radio sources. Later discoveries showed that
most quasars are radio-weak. To be fair to this majority,
the "radio source" was changed to "object" to now read
"quasi-stellar object, " or QSO, for short.

Some Terms That Have Nothing to Do with Punctuality

Early Galaxy I La te Galaxy: Early-type galaxies are elliptical,
and late-type galaxies are open-pattern spirals. The origi­
nal "tuning fork" galaxy classification diagram of Edwin
Hubble displayed elliptical galaxies on a tuning fork's han­
dle (extending to the left) with normal spiral galaxies
placed along one tine, and spiral galaxies with a bar-pat­
tern in their center placed along the other tine (each ex­
tending to the right) . The spiral pattern became less
tightly wound as you moved along the tines. Hubble pos­
tulated an evolutionary sequence among the galaxy
shapes, but it was later found that no obvious connection
exists. If you have difficulty remembering early from late,
then imagine you are a snail on a page where the tuning
fork diagram is drawn. If you started a left-to-right page
trek, you would pass the elliptical galaxies early and the
spiral galaxies late.
Early Stars I Late Stars: Early-type stars are hot, and late-type
stars are cool. The original Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) dia­
gram plots luminosity versus temperature with the hotter
part of the scale on the left and the cooler part of the scale
on the right. Our page-trekking snail, moving once again
from left to right (across an H-R diagram), will pass the
hot stars early and the cool stars late.
 Guide to Astronomical Jargon 63

Some Terms That Have Nothing to Do with Texture

Soft X-Rays: Low-energy X-rays. Nobody has ever squeezed
them to verify that they are indeed soft.
Hard X-Rays: High-energy X-rays. Considerably more deadly
than soft X-rays.

Some Terms That Have Nothing to Do with Distance

Near Infrared: If our peripatetic snail actually lived on the
visual interval of a map of the electromagnetic spectrum
(violet-indigo-blue-green-yellow-orange-red), and if our
snail wanted to visit the infrared part that was just beyond
the red, then it would consider the destination to be near.
Far Infrared: The snail would have to go far if it wanted to go
beyond the near infrared to the part that was on the
border with microwaves. Far infrared photons have much
lower energies and longer wavelengths than near infrared
and visual photons .

Some Terms That Have Nothing to Do with Etiq uette

Proper Motion: This is the motion of a relatively nearby star
when measured against the background of "fixed" stars .
Peculiar Velocity: For a star, this is the velocity that is left
over after you have accounted for the larger-scale motion
of the Milky Way galaxy's rotation. For a galaxy, it is the
velocity that is left over after you have accounted for the
larger-scale motion of the expanding universe. There is
nothing particularly peculiar about either of these .

A Term That Ha s No th ing to Do with Jesus Christ

Right Ascension: As lines of longitude are used to locate east­
west positions on Earth, so is right ascension used to
locate positions of stars east-west in the sky.
64 M E TH O D S O F S C I E N C E

Some Terms That Lie

Metals: Contrary to the tenets of a chemist, metals to an
astronomer are all elements other than hydrogen and he­
lium in the Periodic Table of the Elements. There is actu­
ally a practical utility to this scheme . The big bang en­
dowed the universe with primarily hydrogen and helium.
Everything else is "pollution" that was forged in the ther­
monuclear furnaces of stellar cores . Furthermore, in most
environments that are astrophysically interesting (such as
stars), the temperatures are so high that elements are
vaporized and ionized into the free-floating charged parti­
cles of the stellar soup we call plasma . The traditional
laboratory concept of a metal thus loses its meaning and
significance .
Hydrogen Burning: This term is used by nearly all astrono­
mers to describe energy production in the Sun's core .
Conventional usage of the word "burn" refers to the
breakup and rearrangement of molecular bonds with a
release of chemical energy. But nothing actually burns in
the Sun (not that all your possessions wouldn't vaporize
if you tossed them there) . It's just that the thermonuclear
fusion of hydrogen in the Sun's core has no resemblance
to any traditional understanding of the word "burn." Hy­
drogen fusion unleashes what is aptly called nuclear en­
ergy, which is not normally released in your household
fireplace .
Planetary Nebulae: Everybody who owns a telescope and has
looked skyward with it knows that stars do not look much
different through a telescope than they do with the un­
aided eye-they just look like twinkling points of light.
Planets, however, look like points of light only with the
unaided eye . Through a telescope they become distinctive
circular disks . The sky also contains fuzzy-looking things
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 65

like galaxies, star clusters, and genuine gaseous nebulosit­

ies . One variety of nebulosity (the lost, over-puffed spher­
ical envelope of a dead red giant star) often appears disk­
like through a telescope. The visual resemblance to plan­
ets led to the unimaginative and misleading term
"planetary nebulae . "
Amateur Astronomer: I f you put the word amateur i n front of
most professions, you would probably doubt whether a
person with such credentials could be of any use to you .
For example, it is not likely that an amateur neurosurgeon
or an amateur attorney could attract much business. Ama­
teur astronomers, however, are indispensable. Let it be
known that the average amateur astronomer knows more
about the appearance of the sky than the average profes­
sional astronomer. Furthermore, in almost all cases, the
professional astronomer who knows the sky probably
started as an amateur. The advantage to knowing what
the sky looks like is that you also know when it looks
different. Many supernovae, most comets, and nearly all
asteroids are discovered by amateur astronomers upon
noticing that a familiar region of the sky has a visitor.

Further Causes of Cosmic Confusion

What Do You Call Something That Is Big ?

I n the business o f astronomy, i f you dare call something
big or bright you are at risk of exhausting your vocabulary
of superlatives if you discover something even bigger or
brighter. With open arms, astronomers have welcomed the
word-prefix super- into the dictionary of cosmic jargon .
It endows astronomers with the power to create terms
like supergiant, supercluster, s 1 1 pe rbubble, and supernom , and it
66 M E TH O D S O F S C I E N C E

gives physicists terms such as supercollider, supersymmetry,

superstring, superconductivity, superfluid, supersonic, and super­
luminal.
This penchant for using the word super has adequate prec­
edent in twentieth-century society. Comic book characters
with transhuman powers were always called superheroes.
There are markets and supermarkets. There are highways
and superhighways . There are ordinary bowls, and then
there is the Super Bowl. The engines of some cars are
charged while those of other cars are supercharged . And we
can credit Walt Disney's Mary Poppins for the super version
of "cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious." A notable exception to
this trend was the Boeing 747, which was spared being super
in favor of the alliteration offered by Jumbo Jet.
In astronomy, giant stars are called giants. But when even
bigger giants were discovered we were forced to call them
supergiants. These are objects that we now know to be the
bulbous evolutionary fate that awaits high-mass stars. Nor­
mal main sequence stars such as the Sun are officially called
dwarfs, which is clearly what they would look like to a giant;
dwarf stars typically have a million times smaller volume
than giants. Yet let us not confuse normal dwarfs with the
hot degenerate stellar corpses that we call white dwarfs,
which have a million times smaller volume than normal
dwarfs.
Note the rapid loss of descriptive adjectives at the
"dwarf" end . I am convinced that it is the result of the
relative scarcity of English words that describe what is
smaller than normal when compared to words that describe
what is bigger than normal.
The day that super- becomes an insufficient modifier, as­
tronomers will be armed and ready. Some of us have re­
served the term super-duper for the occasion .
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 67

Alphabet Soup
Astronomers have always had a penchant for lettering
things. Ever since Joseph Fraunhofer lettered major features
in the solar spectrum in the early 1800s, astronomers have
been lettering things from stellar surface temperature to gal­
axy shapes . Some of Fraunhofer' s nomenclature is still used
today to identify strong absorption features: atmospheric
"A" and "B" bands, sodium "D," calcium "H and K, " and
the "G" band of calcium hydride.
As is detailed in chapter 9, the lettering tradition contin­
ued across the turn of the century when Annie Jump Cannon
at the Harvard College Observatory classified and sequenced
stellar spectra according to the strength of an absorption
feature due to hydrogen. The stars with the strongest fea­
tures were lettered "A," the stars with the next strongest
features were lettered "B, " and so forth. It was later found
that a temperature (color) sequence revealed more stellar
physics than a spectral line-strength sequence. Some lettered
categories were discarded . Others were combined. What re­
mains is the famous spectral classification sequence that is
still used today to classify all stars. In order of decreasing
temperature we have: 0 B A F G K M. This sequence has
occupied, and will continue to occupy, the minds of mne­
monic writers for decades.
Letters are also used to convey shapes. In 1925 the Ameri­
can astronomer Edwin Hubble classified the appearance of
galaxies in a lettering scheme that still bears his name. It is
this lettering scheme that one follows as you move from
"early galaxies" to "late galaxies" along Hubble's tuning fork
diagram. Preserving the I-call-them-as-1-see-them tradition
of astronomers and baseball umpires, Hubble identified el­
liptically shaped galaxies with the letter "E"; the most round
among them was labeled EO (pronounced "E-zero"), while
68 M ET H O D S O F S C I E N C E

the most elongated among them was labeled E7. Hubble

labeled flat, spiral-shaped galaxies with an "S. " If the spiral
arms were connected by a straight barlike section in the
middle of the galaxy (as is true for nearly half of all spiral
galaxies), then a 'B' was appended to the 'S. ' Some spirals
were so puffy-looking that they resembled elliptical galaxies.
These became their own category called SO (pronounced "S­
zero") . Tightly wound spirals were sublabeled "a," interme­
diate spirals "b, " and loosely wound spirals "c. " In modern
times this three-tiered scale was expanded to describe really
loose spirals, which are sublabeled "d . " For symmetry with
the "SB" of barred spirals, nonbarred spirals are now noted
by "SA." And, of course, irregularly shaped galaxies are
labeled "Irr. " If you are curious, the family photo of the
Milky Way galaxy and its nearest neighbors would show:
the Milky Way-SAbc (a cross between types b and c); the
Large Magellanic Cloud-Irr; the Small Magellanic Cloud­
Irr; the Andromeda galaxy-SAb; and NGC205 (a satellite
galaxy to Andromeda)-ES. As you can begin to see, Hub­
ble's original scheme is now extended to describe all sorts of
galaxy morphology. My favorite among them is the letter
"p," which you add to the classification if, no matter how
else you describe it, the galaxy just looks peculiar.
Stars that vary in luminosity are no strangers to lettering
schemes. Omitting A through Q, the first variable star dis­
covered in a constellation is noted by R followed by the
genitive of the constellation name. Clearly, only a few vari­
able stars can be discovered before one exhausts the alpha­
bet. By convention, after Z comes RR, then RS, and so forth,
all the way to RZ. If that's not enough, then the scheme
resumes at SS, then ST, and so forth all the way to SZ. This
continues until ZZ. If the constellation is big and has many
stars, then it may need even more letter combinations than
those up to ZZ. When this happens, the scheme continues
 Guide to Astronomical /argon 69

at AA, then AB, through to AZ. Next comes BB, then BC,
through to BZ. The last possible lettered variable star is QZ,
because afterward you would hit RR, which was already
used after Z. This naming scheme, for no particular reason,
ensures that the first letter is always earlier in the alphabet
than the second letter-unless the letters are the same. One
final criterion is that the relatively modern letter "J" is never
used . If you kept count of all this, then you should have
obtained 334 combinations.
If a constellation has the audacity to exhaust this many
letters and letter-pairs, then stars are simply numbered (not
from one, but from the number that is appropriate if all
previous variables in the constellation were numbered in­
stead of lettered) with a prefix of "V" for variable. For exam­
ple, the star V471 Tauri is a well-studied variable that can
change its brightness abruptly. If a variable star is discovered
to be the prototype of a new class of variable stars, then the
entire class is named for that star. The famous star RR Lyrae
(discovered after, of course, Y Lyrae and Z Lyrae), in the
constellation Lyra, defined the properties of what are now
called "RR Lyrae" variables.
If you think the lettering scheme for variable stars is ob­
tuse, then you might as well skip over the next paragraph
on asteroids.
Asteroids are lettered in order of discovery. Built into the
lettering scheme, however, is a time-of-year indicator. If you
split the year into twenty-four semimonths and letter them
"A" through "Y" (omitting "I," keeping "J," and never
reaching "Z"), then you have the first letter of a nev.·ly
discovered asteroid at that time of year. For example, the
first letter of an asteroid discovered at any time during the
first half of January is " A . " The second half of January would
yield asteroids with "B" as a first letter, and so forth down
the calendar. For each semimonth, newly discovered aster-
70 M E TH O D S O F S C I E N C E

oids have their second letter sequenced "A" though "Z"

(omitting "I," once again). In case you missed it in the news,
Earth had a close encounter with a 200-million ton asteroid
1989FC, which was the third asteroid discovered in the sec­
ond half of March in the year 1989. In a semimonth where
more than twenty-five asteroids are discovered, the second­
letter sequence is restarted with an appended numeral. For
example, the asteroid 1980RZ was followed by 1980RA1, and
then by 1980RB 1 .
Comets are also each lettered i n annual sequence, except
that the scheme is considerably less ornate, and all twenty­
six letters of the modem alphabet are used. You simply letter
comets in order of discovery in a year, and double back with
an attached numeral when you run out of letters: Using
lower case letters, begin with "a" and continue through "z."
Resume with "al" through "zl," then "a2" through "z2,"
and so forth.
Supernovae are also simply lettered, but the first pass
uses uppercase and the second p<Uis uses a double alphabet
in lowercase . In other words, begin with "A" through "Z, "
and continue with "aa" through "az," then "ba" through
"bz," and so forth. The famous supernova that was discov­
ered in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987 (which made the
cover story of Time Magazine with the headline "BANG")
was the first supernova to be discovered that year. Its official
designation is "1987A . " The ultimate "zz" has never been
reached, so we do not yet need to worry about what hap­
pens afterward .
Unlike supernovae, which keep their lettered identifica­
tion forever, asteroids graduate to number-name status after
their orbits and identities are confirmed. The number part is
simply a catalogue sequence, while the name part is assigned
by the discoverer in honor of any person, place, or thing.
For example, the asteroid 2873 Binzel is named for Rick
 Guide to Astronomical Jargon 71

Binzel, a good friend friend and colleague of mine who has

built his professional career on the study of asteroids. The
asteroid 517 Edith is named after somebody I've never met
named Edith . The asteroid 2906 Caltech is named for the
California Institute of Technology, and 1432 Ethiopia is
named for the African nation. But there is also the asteroid
1896 Beer, which is very well known to some .
Comets, like asteroids, get named when their orbits and
identities are confirmed, except that they are never named
for places or things-or alcoholic beverages. They are named
only for their discoverers or for the first person to compute a
reliable orbit. The new label also identifies the year and the
sequence (in Roman numerals) of a comet's closest approach
to the Sun. Famous examples include comets 1965VIII Ikeya­
Seki, 197011 Bennett, and 1973XII Kohoutek. To distinguish
short-term periodic comets from those comets whose orbits
are longer than anybody is willing to document, the letter
"P" is often inserted. For example, during its most recent
visit to the inner solar system, Halley's comet was officially,
and unpoetically, designated 1986III P/Halley.

Roman Numeral Sou p

There are Type I, Type II, and Type III comet tails; there are
Type I and Type II supernovae; there are Seyfert galaxies of
Type I and Type II; there are Population I and Population II
stars; and there are stellar luminosity classes of Type I
through VII . There is nothing mysterious about these classi­
fications. They are the product of a humble attempt to distin­
guish more than one variety of object in a given category.
A picture-book that compares all the comet tails of re­
corded history would reveal a diversity that is no less rich
than that found among fingerprints or snowflakes . In sci­
ence, however, simple appearance is rarely as important as
72 METHODS OF SCIENCE

substance. Cornet tail taxonomy recognizes only three basic

types. The Type I tail is composed primarily of molecules
whose electrons have been stripped away to form ions. It is
commonly known as a "plasma tail." The Type II variety is
less exotically composed of small dust or ice particles and is
known simply as a "dusty tail . " A cornet's tail always points
away from the Sun-except when it doesn't. There is usually
something anomalous about such a tail, so astronomers call
them "anomalous tails" and tag them Type III. Anomalous
tails are typically caused by the chance alignment of the
cornet with illuminated debris in the plane of its orbit. Corn­
ets commonly display all three tail types simultaneously,
which handily contributes to their uniqueness.
All supernovae have at least one property in common: a
star explodes. If you wish to understand supernovae in de­
tail, however, then further classification is warranted. Type I
supernovae have weak hydrogen absorption features in their
optical spectrum while in Type II supernovae these features
are strong. Recently, Type I supernovae, based on closer
examination of the class, have been split into two categories,
Type la and Type lb . This schism helped to reveal that Type
lb and Type II owe their origin to the explosive death of an
isolated high-mass star. A Type la supernova, however, is
the consequence of mass transfer in a binary system where a
white dwarf recipient explosively unbinds from a thermonu­
clear runaway.
Seyfert galaxies are normal-looking spiral galaxies with
remarkably luminous nuclei. Carl Seyfert first identified the
class in 1943 as part of a larger survey of spiral galaxies .
Once again, the class subdivision is based on the appearance
of hydrogen in the spectra . Type I Seyfert galaxies have
much stronger hydrogen emission than Type II Seyferts .
The light from elliptical galaxies is dominated by old red
stars while the light from spiral galaxies is dominated by
 Guide to Astronomical jargon 73

young blue stars . This simple observation leads to the idea

that ellipticals and spirals have different stellar populations .
The most recently formed stars are called Population I. They
have been enriched (or polluted, if you prefer) by heavy
elements that have been scattered through space by previous
generations of supernovae. The oldest stars, however, were
born before significant enrichment could occur-they are
called Population II. Ellipticals are generally considered to be
Population II while spirals have a mix of Population II and
Population I. The population concept is only a convenience
that actually clouds the reality of transitionary populations
within spiral galaxies. To confuse matters further, note that
Type II supernovae are found only among Population I
systems.
Luminosity class is one of the few intuitive Roman nu­
meral classification schemes . In basic terms it is an indicator
of how big a star is . Class I are supergiants . These are stars
that can get as big as the orbit of Mars . (That's why they are
called supergiants . ) Class III are normal red giants, and Class
V are main sequence "dwarf" stars, like the Sun. The small­
est are among Class VII, which are exclusively white dwarfs.
The three other classes are intermediate in size: Class II
contains bright giants, Class IV contains subgiants, and
Class VI contains subdwarfs .

Greek Soup
The eighty-eight constellations in the sky have their brightest
stars lettered in order of brightness. The squiggly looking,
lowercase, twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet (a {3 y 5 E ? T/
8 i K A µ, vgo rrp<T1'V'PX "1w) has been endowed with this honor.
The brightest star in any constellation is named with the first
Greek letter a (alpha) followed by the genitive case of the
constellation name . Dimmer stars are named in sequence
74 M E TH O D S O F S C I E N C E

down the alphabet. There exist notable exceptions to this

rule, however. Some constellations contain stars of approxi­
mately equal brightness, such as the seven brightest stars in
Ursa Majoris. These magnificent seven form the Big Dipper
and are simply lettered in sequence from west to east across
the sky.
Other famous stars include a-Centauri in the southern
constellation Centaurus, which happens to be the closest
star system to the Sun, and J3-Cygni, which is also known
as Alberio, a beautiful double star system in the northern
constellation Cygnus. The science fiction series Star Trek bor­
rowed this nomenclature and appended a Roman numeral
to indicate a planet's number according to its distance from
a star. One of their better-known planets is a-Ceti-V to
where Khan (the bad guy) was banished.

Catalogue Queries
The astronomer's cosmic laboratory contains billions of stars
and galaxies. It should be no surprise that catalogues prolif­
erate the profession. There are three basic naming formats .
One scheme uses somebody's name followed by a number
like Messier 101, or Arp 337. These are objects that have
simply been collected together in a list and then numbered.
The Messier catalogue happens to be a list of fuzzy objects
in the sky that was originally intended to prevent confusion
with what might otherwise be a newly discovered cornet.
The Arp catalogue is a list of peculiar-looking galaxies, most
of which are gravitationally disturbed by a near neighbor.
Occasionally, an astronomer (or an institution) will publish
more than one freshly numbered list. These objects require
an extra identifier. For example, II-Zwicky-70 (a compact,
irregular galaxy) is the seventieth object on Zwicky's second
list of compact objects, and 3C273 (the brightest and first
 Guide to Astronomical Jargon 75

confirmed quasar) is the two hundredth and seventy-third

object in the third University of Cambridge catalogue of
radio sources.
Another basic scheme uses a name followed by the ap­
proximate coordinates of the object on the celestial sphere.
For example, IRAS 1243 + 30 is simply an object located at 12
hours 43 minutes in right ascension and + 30 degrees in
declination that was discovered by the Infrared Astronomical
Satellite. Cosmic objects that are not fortunate enough to
make it into anybody's list are simply noted with their coor­
dinates preceded by the letter A for "anonymous." Among
astronomers, this coordinate designation is affectionately re­
ferred to as the object's telephone number.
The third basic scheme is a hybrid of the first two. Here
all objects are listed in order of increasing right ascension
and are numbered in this order. Famous (enormous) cata­
logues like the New General Catalogue of Non-stellar Ob­
jects (NCC) and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Star Catalogue (SAO) are well-known examples. Inciden­
tally, NCC 224 is the Andromeda galaxy and SAO 000308 is
Polaris, the North Star. And if you see a star labeled BS 1457,
don't be alarmed; it's just a star (in the constellation Taurus)
from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue.

Epilogue
Among its varied and numerous duties, it is the job of the
International Astronomical Union (IAU) to establish rules of
naming and nomenclature. In many cases, however, these
rules are set after a naming scheme or term has already been
widely used by professional astronomers. Consequently,
typical rules of the IAU are simply the formal recognition of
naming trends. This approach to the jargon of a discipline
tends to preserve the history, spontaneity, and novelty of
76 M E TH O D S O F S C I E N C E

the language o f scientific discourse . These ingredients are

likely to ensure that the discoveries of astronomy will forever
remain attractive and accessible to the general public. It is
also no surprise that astronomy, the oldest of all sciences,
is the most frequently tapped discipline for science fiction
literature and films . The subject, as well as the terms them­
selves, seem to capture the imagination and romance of sci­
entific exploration.
May the terms be with you .
PART T W O
•

Some
Unifying
Ideas in the
Physical
Universe
 .5.
Center of Mass

Your center of mass is a place you cannot visit but you

always carry with you. Like memories, it is part of
life's baggage.
h e center of mass of a uniform spherical object is found,
quite sensibly, at its center. For squishy and flexible objects
that are not spherical, like most humans, the center of mass
can be inside or outside the object . With some clever contor­
tions you can do some interesting things with your center of
mass. For example, the best way to rid your body of its
center of mass is to bend forward at the waist. If you bend
far enough then your center of mass will emerge from your
midsection and be suspended somewhere over your feet.
Unless your feet are nailed to the ground, you will fall over
the moment your center of mass extends beyond your toes.
Notice that because your feet do not extend behind you, it is
quite easy to fall backward. If you bend that way, then
your center of mass emerges from your lower back with no
supporting feet and toes below it.
You may have noticed that high jumpers and po l e-va u l t ­
ers curl around the bar as they pass over it. As a conse­
quence, their center of mass leaves their bodies and actually
sails below the bar. This little-known fact is the secret of these
two track and field events . Olympic history was made at
Mexico City in 1 968 when the American h igh jumper Dick
Fosbury set a world record by jumping "ba ckw a rd " over the
bar with his back toward the ground. This clever innovation
allowed Fosbury to send his center of mass farther below the
bar than is possible by a simple fo rw a rd j u m p . The entire
spinal column of any flexible athlete can bend backward
almost as easily as it can bend forward . You may have dis­
covered, however, that your knees (whether or not you are
an athlete) bend only one way . They bend in the way that
will allow a backwa rd jump to se p ara te the center of mass
82 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D EA S I N T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

from the body by the farthest amount. If you jump forward

over the bar, then you do not get to bend at your knees­
unless you have no bones in your legs. One could say that
Dick Fosbury jumped higher than ever before simply by
jumping lower than ever before. One can apply the same
physical reasoning to the pole vault. Pole-vaulters already
have their back toward the ground from the moment they
are airborne . There is no reason why the world record could
not improve immediately if vaulters managed to continue
backward over the bar.
The Moon's gravity is about one-sixth Earth's gravity. Na­
ive thinking would suggest that a high jumper would jump
six times higher on the Moon. But this is true only from the
point of view of the center of mass. The center of mass of a
tall high jumper starts at about four feet above ground level
and, at the peak of the jump, comes within about a foot of
the bar. On Earth, a world record jump clears eight feet. If
you add and subtract the right numbers you will find that
the high jumper's center of mass was raised a mere three
feet. The same jump on the Moon will also start with a center
of mass four feet above the ground, and it will also come
within about one foot of the bar. It is only the in-between
distance that benefits from the Moon's reduced gravity. The
three-foot rise of the high jumper's center of mass will, on
the Moon, sail six times higher-to eighteen feet. Once
again, if you add and subtract the right numbers you find
that the world record 8-foot jump becomes a Moon-record
23-foot jump.
Pole-vaulters also start with their center of mass about
four feet above ground and also clear the bar with their
center of mass sailing about a foot below it. But their center
of mass travels much farther. By the same arguments used
for high jumpers, we find that Moon pole-vaulters gain con­
siderably. A 19-foot pole vault on Earth becomes an 89-foot
 Center of Mass 83

vault on the Moon. The nursery rhyme "and the cow

jumped over the Moon" might be best reworded "and the
cow pole-vaulted over the Moon . "
Center o f mass i s one o f the most widely used concepts
in physics. It is computed routinely for subatomic particle
interactions, and it occupies a pivotal role if one wishes to
understand orbits of binary stars and binary galaxies. Sir
Isaac Newton, the champion of gravity and apples, provided
early insight to the related concept of center of gravity in the
Principia (Book I, Corollary IV) :
The common centre of gravity of two or more bodies does
not alter its state of motion or rest by the actions of the
bodies among themselves, and therefore the common cen­
tre of gravity of all bodies acting upon each other (exclud­
ing external actions and impediments) is either at rest or
moves uniformly in a straight line.

If two subatomic particles (or two of anything) are in motion,

we can refer to the center of mass of the individual particles
or, if we choose, we can refer to the center of mass of both
particles combined . If the particles have equal mass and
equal but opposite velocities, then the center of mass of both
particles combined is exactly midway between them and
stationary. If the particles had, say, kinetic-energy-absorbing
chewing gum affixed to their front surface, then they would
collide, stick together, and stop.
The combined center of mass would not be stationary if
one of the particles had more mass. Given the same chewing
gum setup, the particles would collide, stick together, and
would still be moving (though more slowly) in the same
direction as that of the high-mass particle before the encoun­
ter. From the low-mass particle's perspective, it had its for­
ward motion halted and then reverse d .
T o have your forward motion abruptly halted a n d then
84 S O M E U N I FY I N G I D E A S I N T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

reversed can be traumatic if you are bigger than a subatomic

particle. In automobile accidents, the safest vehicles on the
road are the big, 4-door, 8-cylinder, 10-miles-per-gallon
American cars of yesteryear. Actually, the safest vehicles
are probably fully loaded cement trucks, but these are not
common participants in road accidents. In a head-on colli­
sion between our vintage American car and a small imported
car, it is very likely that the imported car would have its
forward motion abruptly halted and then reversed while the
American car's velocity would become only somewhat
lower. A safety note: Passengers without seat belts do not
get their forward motion slowed, halted, or reversed-they
simply sail into, or through, the windshield.
The location of the center of mass between two bodies is
easy to find. For example, Earth is eighty-one times more
massive than the Moon. The center of mass is therefore
1/s 1 st of the way from Earth's center to the Moon's center,
which would put it about one thousand miles beneath
Earth's surface along an imaginary line that connects with
the Moon. We, as earthlings, mistakenly claim that the Moon
orbits Earth. To be precise, one must say that Earth and the
Moon orbit around their common center of mass. Gravity
and orbit dynamics dictate that the Moon and Earth are al­
ways opposite each other with the center of mass between
them . This means that the Moon and Earth circumnavigate
their joint center of mass once every lunar month. In tum,
the Earth-Moon center of mass traces annual orderly ellipses
around its mutual center of mass with the Sun.
The Sun is two hundred thousand times more massive
than the Earth-Moon system, so the Earth-Moon-Sun center
of mass is 1/200,000th of the way from the center of the Sun
to the Earth-Moon center of mass. This is just over four
hundred miles from the Sun's center-deep within the core
of thermonuclear fusion. The planet Jupiter is more massive
 Center of Mass 85

than all other planets combined and is farther from the Sun
than Earth. These factors put the Jupiter-Sun center of mass
much farther than four hundred miles from the Sun's center.
With nine or ten orbiting planets one can imagine the com­
plexities with tracking the Sun's motion. In spite of this, the
enormity of the Sun's mass ensures that it contains, deep
within its surface, the single center of mass of the entire
solar system.
Sir Isaac first showed that for spherical objects (or for any
shaped object if you were far enough away) the force of
gravity acts as if all the mass were located at its center of
mass . Returning to Newton's Principia (Book I), he states:

If spheres be however dissimilar . . . I say, that the whole

force with which one of these spheres attracts the other
will be inversely proportional to the square of the distance
of the centres.

This discovery is more profound than it might sound . For

example, it says that the Sun's force of gravity as felt by
Earth is unrelated to the size of the Sun. If the Sun were to
swell up like a beach ball or shrink to become a black hole,
then life, of course, would be very different (or nonexistent),
but planet Earth would still complete its orbit in 3651/4 days
and keep its average orbital distance of 93 million miles.
Current theories of stellar evolution do not predict a black
hole as the ultimate fate of the Sun. We do, however, expect
an occasional black hole to be found among the 50 percent of
all stars that are in binary systems. If one star out of a
happily orbiting pair collapses to a black hole, the pair will
remain in happy mutual orbit. If you follow their common
center of mass through space, then what used to be two
stars dancing loops would become one star dancing what
appears to be lonely loops. Indeed, this is the most reliable
means by which underluminous companions are discovered .
86 SO M E U NIF YING I D E A S IN THE PHY S ICA L U NIVERSE

In addition to black holes, the list includes neutron stars,

white dwarfs, "brown" dwarfs, and Jupiter-like planets.
The center of mass of a system, when stationary, cannot
set itself into motion . For example, a motionless rocket in
space has a motionless center of mass. If the rocket wants to
go forward, it cannot bring its center of mass with it. The
rocket must aim and jettison a piece of itself, such as com­
bustive fuel, in the opposite direction. For the remainder of
the rocket trip, no matter where the rocket goes, the center
of mass of the rocket plus the jettisoned fuel will not have
budged from its original motionless spot in space . A survival
note: If you are ever stranded in space without fuel, then a
sequence of well-aimed flatulents will send you on your
way again .
If you do not like math or fractions or numbers but you
want to find the centers of mass of things, then all you need
to do is poke around for balance-points. An unevenly loaded
dumbbell weight-set will only balance if lifted at its center of
mass, which would obviously be found closer to the side of
the bar with the greatest weight.
Seesaws (or teeter-totters) may have provided the first
occasion where you as a child noticed that some of your
friends did not weigh the same as you. If you were a little
kid, or simply underfed, then it was no doubt unforgettable
the first time you were kept stranded some four feet above
the ground with your legs dangling helplessly below you,
while your bigger or overfed friend sat firmly planted at the
other end. If you were lucky, your playground's seesaw had
an adjustable point of balance that allowed small children to
see and saw (or teeter and totter) with bigger children-little
did you realize that you were finding the center of mass
betwee n you and your friend . Even less did you realize that
if you were isola ted in space, you could orbit each other
around that same spot.
 Center of Mass 87

The center of mass of tossed objects, no matter the shape,

will follow smooth, arched trajectories . The wobble-flopping
that some objects are known to display (like jugglers' bowl­
ing pins, boomerangs, and airborne baseball bats) is a visual
consequence of the object's off-center center of mass. A
slow-motion film that follows the center of mass will show
the smooth path that we have learned to expect from normal
spherical objects. In fact, if the jugglers' bowling pins were
not strongly bottom-heavy, then they would be much more
difficult to catch. Freely rotating or flipping objects must do
so around their center of mass . The bowling pin's design
permits the neck of the pin to flip securely into your ex­
tended palm without the fat bottom getting in the way.
The only object in the universe that exists entirely at its
center of mass is the remnant of the death of a high-mass
star. There is no known force in the universe that can pre­
vent the collapse of these short-lived luminaries. The col­
lapse is expected to continue until all the star's material
occupies its own center of mass. Light cannot escape these
objects. If you fall in, you don't come out. This is why we
call them, quite sensibly, black holes.
A household cat knows all about its center of mass. If you
have ever seen a cat accidentally fall or have been deranged
enough to toss a cat through the air, you may have noticed
that it usually lands on its paws. This feline feat of acrobatics
may also hold for the larger jungle cats, but I have never
tossed a tiger to test this hypothesis. Upon being thrown, an
airborne cat will use its momentum of rotation to flip its
body (paws included) around its own center of mass. Just as
rotating ice skaters spin faster upon drawing their arms
closer to their body, a tossed cat will curl its body to rotate
quickly into position .
The moment the cat's paws point toward the ground, the
cat immediately unfolds its body, which abruptly slows its
88 S O M E U N I FY I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

rotation and allows it to land on its paws . Clearly, cats who

know one or two laws of physics will earn the full nine
lives that are due their species . This impressive maneuver
happens quickly, but not quickly enough for you to grab the
cat and slam it into the ground. This is the sort of thing that
professional wrestlers do to each other, but it is not a fitting
treatment for a cat.

The center-of-mass concept can be generalized to answer

questions such as, "Where is the center of mass of the conti­
nental United States?" If you cut from a sheet of cardboard
the exact shape of the contiguous United States, then by
poking around underneath the cutout you could find the
exact spot (there is only one) where the United States bal­
ances. If you are curious (but you don't feel like carving your
expensive road atlas), then the spot lies in the state of Kansas
about fifteen miles south of the Kirwin Reservoir off the
north fork of the Solomon River in Rooks County. If you feel
that you must build mountain ranges into the cardboard
before you poke, then make sure they have the correct rela­
tive height to the size of the cutout. If the United States were
cut from an 81h x 1 1 inch sheet of cardboard, then the Rocky
Mountains would loom about one-hundredth of an inch
above the page .
Every ten years the U.S. Census Bureau counts people
and determines where they live . One can then ask, "Where
is the center of the population of the United States?" One
could have equivalently asked, "Where is the population's
center of mass?" For simplicity's sake, if we assume every­
body has the same mass, then imagine a (very large) card­
board cu tout of the United States with all residents standing
where they live . The Northeast would be quite dense with
its string of large cities: Washington, D.C. , Baltimore, Phila­
delphia, New York City, and Boston-all within 450 miles .
 Center of Mass 89

The upper Midwest farming states, such as North and South

Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa, of course have a rela­
tively low population density, as does the entire set of states
in the Rocky Mountain time zone. The population of Califor­
nia increased sevenfold in the first half of the twentieth
century, which helped to yank the nation's center of mass
from the crowded grips of the East Coast. The general popu­
lation shift in the United States forms a major part of profes­
sional demographic studies.
An object's center of mass under the influence of gravity
will always try to occupy a lower position. The breakfast
cereal box translation would be, "Some settling of contents
may have occurred. " Another interpretation would be,
"Top-heavy things tend to topple . " Indeed, there is no
shortage of proverbs in the world of physics and cereal
boxes. Intuition and physics tell us that objects with low
centers of mass, like sports cars and turtles, are stable . Con­
versely, objects with high centers of mass, such as triple­
decker buses and coconut palm trees, tend to lean. Part of
the purpose of a deep hull in a seagoing ship is to place the
ship's center of mass as low as possible . In most seagoing
vessels the center of mass is below the water level. Excep­
tions include catamarans and rafts. Like an inverted pyra­
mid, a perfectly capsized ship is an extremely unstable and
unlikely configuration. This fact of physics did not seem to
be a concern to the makers of the 1972 disaster film The
Poseidon Adventure, where a tidal wave capsizes a large ocean
liner, and the survivors have to escape "up" through the
hull.
In a letter to the Westminster scholar Richard Bently in
1692, Newton reasoned that if the universe always existed
then the universe must be infinite because if it were not,
then the collective gravity would draw the matter to "fall
down into the middle of the whole space and there compose
90 SOME UNI FYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

one great spherical mass. " No need to worry about a center­

of-gravity apocalypse just yet, however. Recent evidence
suggests that not only is the universe finite in size but it did
not always exist and is likely to expand forever.
As already noted, center of gravity is a concept that is
closely related to center of mass. In everyday life, the two
terms are interchangeable, but strictly speaking they are
never in exactly the same place in your body. On a normal
day, your center of gravity is slightly offset in the direction
of Earth (or in the direction of the nearest source of strong
gravity) . Earth's gravity is stronger on your lower half be­
cause that half is closer to the center of Earth than is your
upper half. The center of gravity is therefore shifted slightly
toward Earth. Obviously, the difference in Earth gravity
across your height is small. This is why center of mass and
center of gravity are often thought to be in the same place .
There are locations in the universe, however, where your
center of mass and your center of gravity are widely sepa­
rated. If you fall feet first into a small black hole-do not try
this at home-you will notice that the force of gravity
changes quickly. Your center of gravity (formerly in your
midsection) will systematically separate from your center of
mass as it approaches your feet. It is not clear what this will
feel like . But as the difference in gravity between your head
and your toes rips you apart, your body segments will de­
scend, and be squished, until they occupy the exact spot that
is the black hole's center of mass. Your only pleasure will be
derived from realizing that rather than just reading about a
center of mass-you actually became a center of mass .
 .6.
Energy

One of the greatest triumphs of eightee nth- a nd nineteenth­

century physics was the formal u ndersta nding of heat energy
and its intercha ngeability with mecha nical e nergy. Out of these
efforts was born the bra nch of physics called "thermodynam­
ics, " which was pioneered through the efforts of ma ny scie n­
tists, i ncluding the Scottish engineer James Watt (born 1736),
who perfected the modern condensing steam engine; the Amer­
ica n physicist Be njamin Thompson (born 1753, later Cou nt
Rumford), who first proposed that heat is a form of energy; the
Fre nch e ngineer Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot (born 1796), who
provided the first a nalysis of heat e ngines; the British physicist
James Joule (born 1818), who performed careful experiments to
prove that heat is, i ndeed, a form of e nergy; a nd the British
physicist William Thompso n (born 1824, later Lord Kelvin),
who helped to formulate a consistent physical theory .
Modern society owes its industrial success primarily to the
i nve nted machines that allow work to be accomplished from
e nergy that is not supplied by the physical labor of humans or
of other a nimals. It is no accident that the nineteenth-ce ntury
industrial revolutio n coincided with the developme nt of ther­
modynamics . A curious twentieth-ce ntury a nalog is that com­
puters allow certain computatio nal tasks to be completed with­
out the intellectual labor of humans, so that society can now
substitute machines for both o ur bodies and our brains .
Meanwhile, back in the rest of the cosmos, the conversion of
one form of energy to another plays a major role in stellar
evol ution, stellar orb its, a nd in the fate of the universe itself.
b ere are many different types of energy, although not all
of them manifest themselves in everyday life . Among those
that do, there is one type of energy that kills more people
per year than any other. It is the energy you have by simply
being in motion, which is known in the world of physics as
your "kinetic" energy.
When you start your car and accelerate to 50 mph onto
the freeway and drive for a few hundred miles, you may
notice that there is less fuel in your tank than when you
started. During your trip, you converted the stored chemical
energy of the gasoline into heat energy from the friction of
the car's internal moving parts, and into the kinetic of your
entire car plus its occupants. When you apply your brakes to
return to zero miles per hour, your car's kinetic energy must
go somewhere. It transforms to heat by way of the friction
between your brake pads and your wheels, and if you skid,
between your rubber tires and the road.
In a head-on collision, you also slow, for example, from
50 mph to zero miles per hour, except that this does not
happen with the help of your brakes. The kinetic energy of
car-plus-driver at 50 mph must go somewhere. It becomes
the sole source of energy for the deafening sound of the
collision, the crunch of the car's front end, the smashed face
and skull of any unseatbelted passenger, the damaged guard
rail alongside the road, and any toppled lamp posts. The
kinetic energy wielded by an object depends on its mass and
on its velocity. But it only takes a small change in velocity to
induce a big change in the kinetic energy. More precisely
stated, the kinetic energy depends on the mass and on the
square of the velocity
94 SO ME U N I F Y I N G IDEA S IN THE PHY S I C A L U N I VERSE

Kinetic Energy = 11z x mass x velocitj

This formula, translated into a proverb, would read, "Speed

kills. " A sobering example is that at 70 mph you have nearly
twice the kinetic energy of what you had at 50 mph . In other
words, if you were to drive 70 mph rather than 50 mph, then
every aspect of a car accident would be twice as destructive.
Not only would the sounds be louder, but, on average, the
damage to your car would be twice as extensive, and you
would be twice as likely to die. Yes, speed does kill.
While departments of transportation try to help people
stay alive on the highways, the U . S . Department of Defense
tries to find ways to kill people . Using the principle that
speed kills, a rifle was invented that fires a relatively small
bullet (0. 22 caliber), but achieves a muzzle velocity of 3,250
feet per second, which is about three times the speed of
sound-you would be hit with the bullet before you could
hear the rifle shot. This weapon is the M-16 assault rifle
designed by Eugene Stoner in 1959, which was widely used
by the American forces in the Vietnam War. It replaced the
Thompson submachine gun, which was used throughout
the Korean War and which fired relatively slow-moving
"fat" (0. 45 caliber) bullets. Stoner realized that high muzzle
velocity is more important than massive bullets. This physi­
cal principle also had not escaped the Russian weapons de­
signer Mikhail Kalashnikov. His AK-47 rifle, the Russian
high-velocity counterpart to the M-16, was widely used by
the North Vietnamese. It is the kinetic energy of the bullet,
obtained from the stored energy of explosive chemicals, that
tra nsfers to the target, which in the case of human flesh can
be quite devasta ting. A letter home from Vietnam, written
by Army Corporal George Olsen in 1969, contains the follow­
ing passage:
We crawled within six feet of one group [of the North
Vietnamese Army] and then ch arged , and all hell broke
 Energy 95

loose . . . . One [of them] went down fighting; [he] shot

our point man in the ankle at fistfighting range, [but] then
was blown apart by the sergeant leading us. I won't go
into detail, but it is unbelievable what an M-16 will do to
a man-particularly at close range. The only conceivable
comparison is swatting a bug with a chain-mail glove.
Enough said-perhaps too much.
[Our point man's] wound, of itself, wasn't serious, but
the power and shock of a modern rifle bullet is absolutely
unbelievable and within two minutes of being hit he was
fighting for his life in shock.
Corporal Olsen was killed in action on March 3, 1 970. 1

Chemical energy is not the only way to set something into

motion. Gravity is well known for this ability. For example,
if you should precariously set a pan of freshly baked peach
cobbler to cool on the narrow sill of the open window of
your eighth-floor apartment, and if, by chance, the peach
cobbler should fall out, then it will increase speed (gain
kinetic energy) all the way to the ground . Unless you have
lived in the basement all your life, this airborne fate of your
peach cobbler should come as no surprise. What was the
source of energy that became the kinetic energy of the cob­
bler? It was not gasoline. We presume it was not gunpow­
der. Rather, it was you (or perhaps your elevator). You car­
ried the peaches. You carried the flour. You carried the
brown sugar. You carried the butter. You carried all these
ingredients from ground level to the eighth floor against the
will of gravity. This common consequence of a shopping trip
endows your food with the potential to recover the work
you did against gravity. In genuine terms of physics, the
food was given gravitational potential energy simply by be-

1. In Bernard Edelman, ed . , Dear America: Letters Home from Viet1111 m (New

York: Norton, 1 985), pp. 64-65.
96 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

ing lifted to some height above the ground. The higher

above the ground the food is taken, the more potential en­
ergy it gains, and the faster it will hit the ground after it flies
out the window. What then happens to the kinetic energy?
It promptly explodes the food in a manner that is commonly
described with the word "splat. " But beware-it also may
damage the ground or any unfortunate person below.
On an average day, Earth plows through about 1,000 tons
of interplanetary meteors. As they fall toward Earth's surface,
most of these meteors lose all their kinetic energy in a spectac­
ular way as shock waves and friction with the atmosphere
makes them bum . They become what we all identify as "fall­
ing" stars in the nighttime sky. Some of the larger meteors ac­
tually survive the trip through Earth's atmosphere and hit the
ground with tremendous kinetic energy. What then happens
to the kinetic energy? It blasts holes into the ground . The
25, 000-year-old Barringer crater near Coon Butte, in Cocon­
ino County, Arizona, is an impressive example of a hole
"dug" by the impact energy of an iron meteor. It is fourteen
football fields in diameter and about five hundred feet deep.
When astronauts reenter Earth's lower atmosphere from
orbit, their heat shields get hot. What is not widely appreci­
ated is that these shields are the thermal repositories for the
loss of the spacecraft's kinetic energy. Heat shields do not
simply serve as protection, they are a way of slowing down.
One might even call them "airbrakes. "
Spongy objects such a s foam, springs, and car airbags
make excellent kinetic energy absorbers. If a pole-vaulter
landed on a slab of concrete after a 20-foot vault, then the
kinetic energy of the fall would fracture bones and rupture
body tissue upon impact. This is the "splat effect" that the
peach cobbler experienced . Organizers of track and field
events wisely place soft fluffy things near the pole vault and
high jump to absorb the kinetic energy of impact. The task
 Energy 97

of absorbing the kinetic energy is then passed from the hu­

man body to these spongy oversized pillows, which is why
pillows are normally preferred to concrete. What then be­
comes of this absorbed energy? It is converted immediately
to heat within the absorbers and then dissipates to the atmo­
sphere. Springs, however, take longer to convert kinetic en­
ergy into heat. If our pole vaulter landed on springs, then
the kinetic energy would swap back and forth with the me­
chanical potential energy of the springs. You would see the
pole-vaulter bob up and down until the energy was con­
verted to heat within the springs.
Children's toys are no exception to these rules. When you
shove a jack-in-the-box clown back into its box, you provide
energy that gets stored in the inner spring. When the lid is
released and the clown pops out, the spring converts its
stored mechanical energy into the kinetic energy of the
clown. Only when the bobbing stops has the spring con­
verted all available energy into heat, which dissipates to the
atmosphere . Many toys require you to "wind up" some sort
of device that stores mechanical potential energy. The stored
energy is then converted to kinetic energy, and the result is
a truck that rolls, a robot that walks, or perhaps even a baby
doll that pees. In other toys, this mechanical potential energy
is converted to sound energy as the robot or doll speaks to
you . The only difference between toys that use batteries
and toys that need to be wound is that batteries use stored
chemical energy obtained from the battery manufacturer,
and wind-up toys use stored mechanical energy obtained
from you.
The conversion of gravitational potential energy to kinetic
energy is a fundamental ingredient in star formation and
stellar evolution . In the final collapse of a gas cloud to form
a star, there is a precipitous rise in the kinetic energy of the
individual atoms of the cloud. Because the cloud is gaseous,
98 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I CA L U N I V E R S E

the individual atoms cannot fall straight to the cloud's cen­

ter. Instead, the increase in kinetic energy is revealed
through an increase in atomic collisions and an associated
increase in temperature. Some of this kinetic energy is also
converted to photons of light, which escape into space.
Eventually, if the gas cloud contains enough mass, the core
temperature will become high enough to trigger thermonu­
clear fusion.
A similar mechanism allows us to discover the presence
of compact cosmic objects with high mass such as neutron
stars and black holes . Unlike the Sun, most stars in our
galaxy do not travel though space alone . It is not uncommon
to find binary, triple, or even quadruple star systems with
all members in mutual orbit. If one star first collapses to
become a black hole, and another star passes through the
red giant phase, then the red giant may fill its Roche lobe
and dump matter across its Lagrangian point onto the black
hole. Rather than fall straight in, the gaseous matter is likely
to spiral toward the black hole's event horizon in a manner
not unlike water that runs down a toilet bowl . Friction be­
tween the inner, fast-spinning regions and the outer slower­
spinning regions heats the gas to enormous temperatures.
As a consequence, the funneling gas emits copious quanti­
ties of ultraviolet light and X-rays, which is the calling card
of a massive yet compact object. Such high-energy emission
would be uncharacteristic of an ordinary star. Once again,
the gravitational potential energy is converted to the kinetic
energy of atomic collisions rather than to the kinetic energy
of descent.
There are many astrophysical systems where mechanical
energy is not rapidly lost to heat. In clusters of galaxies, for
exam ple where there are no galactic airbags or fluffy pillows,
galaxies orbi t the cluster center with a relatively constant
average kinetic energy . For large clusters of hundreds or
 Energy 99

thousands of galaxies, this average kinetic energy is a direct

and reliable measure of the total gravity, which remains the
primary means by which the total mass of a galaxy cluster is
determined . The same principles of energy and gravity are
also invoked to compute the total mass of the larger open
star clusters and of all globular star clusters. This method,
however, derives total masses for galaxy clusters that are
systematically higher (in some cases, by a factor of one hun­
dred) than what you get if you summed the mass of each
individual galaxy. The discrepancy was discovered in 1936
by the California Institute of Technology astrophysicist Fritz
Zwicky, and it festers to this day as the infamous "missing
mass" problem in the universe .
In the reverse of a collapsing gas cloud that gets hotter,
the entire universe cools for every moment that it expands.
The overall density of energy drops continuously. The tem­
perature of the radiation that permeates all of space, which
is the frigid remnant of a hot big bang, is now just under 3
kelvins. If the universe expands forever, then its contents
will ultimately meet a cold and dark death as all stars burn
out and as the background temperature nears absolute zero.

How much energy does it take to throw a tomato straight

up so that it never returns? It may surprise you to learn
that the adage "What goes up must come down" is more a
statement of human weakness than of the laws of physics.
There is, in fact, a particular velocity that an object must
have for it to leave Earth and never return . It is called, quite
sensibly, the escape velocity. In the absence of atmospheric
resistance, Earth's escape velocity is about seven miles per
second from the surface, which is 250 times faster than the
fastest pitches thrown in professional baseball .
With rockets, or other launch apparatus, however, if you
propel a tomato with at least Earth's escape velocity, then
100 S O M E U N I FY I N G I D E A S I N T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

you have endowed i t with sufficient kinetic energy t o leave

the force of Earth's gravity forever. Earth's gravity does man­
age to slow the tomato down somewhat, but you have given
it more kinetic energy than it would gain had it fallen to Earth
from the edge of the universe . In the genuine descriptive
terms of physics, the escaping tomato has sufficient energy
to climb out of Earth's gravitational potential "well . " On this
subject, an acquaintance once penned

Some of what goes up,

If launched with great ferocity,
Will never retum-
It reached escape velocity.

Some of what goes up,

If propelled both high and far,
Bums upon return
To become a "falling star. "

The rest of what goes up,

Tossed slowly from the ground,
Started the old saying,
"What goes up, must come down!"
Merlin of Omniscia 2

Comets that move with speeds near the local escape veloc­
ity of the solar system are only loosely bound to the Sun and
may be considered onetime events . Such comets are not
uncommon and are often more spectacular than famous ones
that are tightly bound such as Halley' s Comet. Earth is
trea ted to one or two of the one-timers per decade .
There are four types of orbits that a n object can have in a
simple gravita tional field . If all four varieties are given the
same closest a pproach to the central object, then-se-

2. From Merlin 's Tour of tire Unil't'rse ( New York: Columbia University Press,
1 989), p. 230.
 Energy 101

quenced by increasing total energy (potential plus kinetic}­

they are: the circle, the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyper­
bola. If an object's speed is less than the escape velocity,
then its orbit will be bound and assume the shape of a
circle or of an ellipse. If an object's speed equals the escape
velocity, then it will be unbound with a parabolic trajectory.
If an object's speed exceeds the escape velocity, then its
trajectory will be hyperbolic. The colloquial cool-down
phrase, "Don't get hyper!" does have genuine astrophysical
relevance . And if "Don't get hyper!" is too strong for your
needs, then you can always substitute, "Don't get para­
bolic!" or "Don't get elliptical!"
For elliptical orbits, or more generally, for any orbit where
the orbit distance varies, there is a continual exchange be­
tween an object's kinetic energy and its gravitational poten­
tial energy. As the orbiting object moves closer, gravitational
potential energy gets converted to kinetic energy-the object
moves faster. This is precisely what happened with our de­
fenestrated peach cobbler. In orbit, however, the object gets
to move farther away again as some of its kinetic energy is
converted back to gravitational potential energy. Amuse­
ment park roller coasters are actual physics experiments on
the conversion of gravitational potential energy to kinetic
energy. In a typical gravity-driven roller coaster, the con­
nected cabs are first dragged up to the highest point in
the entire ride, which supplies the requisite gravitational
potential energy to avoid getting stuck somewhere between
two hills. Now comes the physics experiment: the cabs roll
down-and-up and down-and-up and down-and-up in a con­
tinual exchange of potential energy with kinetic energy. If
there were no friction between the cabs and air and between
the cabs and the track, then the roller coaster ride would
continue forever. But the roller coaster owner depends on
this friction to convert your kinetic energy into heat. The
102 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

0
l cIRCLE I I ELLIPSE I

I PARABOLA ! I H YPERBOLA I
Figure 6.1. Four simple orbits. An object with a circular or elliptical
orbit is ''bound" to the system. Ellipses can vary in eccentricity
from extremely flattened to circular. All planets orbit in ellipses.
An object with a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit is "unbound" from
the system and is on a onetime trip. For a parabolic orbit, an
object's speed equals the escape velocity, while for an object in
hyperbolic orbit, its speed exceeds the escape velocity.
 Energy 103

Lower potential energy Higher potential energy

(closer to Sun) (far from Sun)

Higher kinetic energy Lower kinetic energy

(moves fast) (moves more slowly)

Figure 6.2. An eccentric orbit around the Sun. There is a continous

exchange between the object's gravitational potential energy and
its kinetic energy throughout the orbit. When the object is closest
to the Sun, it has lost gravitational potential energy in favor of a
gain in kinetic energy. Its speed thus increases. The opposite is
true for the object at its maximum distance.

successive hills must therefore get shorter and shorter, until

a short final hill just before the ride ends. If you are a roller
coaster enthusiast, then all other things being equal, the
roller coaster with the single highest hill will also be the
longest and the fastest in the world .

Sunlight is, perhaps, the most pervasive form of energy

on Earth . Nearly every form of energy that one encounters
on Earth can be traced back to the Sun. A car that runs on
rooftop solar panels is, in principle, no different from a car
tha t runs on potatoes . Both u se energy derived from the
Sun. Wood for your fireplace (or wood in general) can burn
because it contains a lifetime of energy that a tree absorbed
from the Sun. From the point of view of energy, sitting
104 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

before a toasty fireplace is no different from sitting before

a hearth of sunlight, except that burning logs pollute the
atmosphere. Hydroelectric plants derive their energy from
falling water, usually through ducts in a darn. They exploit
the extra gravitational potential energy that water in the
dammed lake has over water in the valley below. But how
did the water get from sea level up to the lake in the first
place? It is the Sun's energy that helps to evaporate ocean
waters, while convection in the atmosphere, which is also
caused by the Sun, brings this moisture inland, where it falls
out of the sky as rain-indeed, hydroelectric energy is really
a form of solar energy.
We can also attribute the complexity of life itself to solar
energy. There are countless organic and inorganic chemical
reactions on Earth that thrive in the presence of the Sun's
abundant energy. How else do you think an acorn becomes
an oak tree? If the Sun were to disappear tomorrow, then all
flora and fauna would eventually "wind down" until the
chemical reactions that sustain life ceased. In addition, all
motion would stop as mechanical energy irreversibly con­
verts to heat energy. With the Sun as a rather impressive
source of external energy, however, almost anything is pos­
sible. And the self-organization of complex forms of matter
is expected.
For similar reasons, there can never be an isolated "per­
petual motion machine," unless you feed it energy-in
which case it would be simply be a battery-operated "tempo­
rary motion machine ." This is not a statement of inadequate
engineering; it is a fundamental axiom of the physics of
systems that do not tap an external source of energy.
Calories are a direct measure of heat energy. This simple
fact seemed to elude the makers of a well-known peanut­
filled candy bar in the mid-1 980s. The print on the wrapper
featured the following absurd claim: "High in energy. Low
in calorics!" An equally absurd statement might be, "High
 Energy 105

in weight. Low in pounds!" The human body uses calories

derived from food as a means to maintain body temperature
and as a source of mechanical energy to do things such as
walk, talk, run, circulate blood, and climb stairs. For exam­
ple, if you just ate a T-bone steak, then the calories you
consumed came from the loin of somebody's cud-chewing
cow, and the cow was assembled from farm feed such as
grass and grain, which was grown with the Sun as a source
of energy. Credit the Sun, once again.
An underappreciated aspect of eating cold food is that its
net calorie content is always less that what is advertised on
the label. Do you want to lose a fast forty calories? Just drink
a liter of ice water. Water is often advertised to have zero
calories, but by the time it emerges from your body it will
have been heated to your body temperature at the expense
of your own stored energy. The cost? About forty calories.
You get to subtract even more calories for treats such as
frozen desserts. Ice cream, for example, is commonly con­
sumed at temperatures well below freezing. Its calorie
correction would be quite large. The only disadvantage is
that, unlike a liter of water, a tub of premium ice cream
packs two or three thousand calories. For this reason, we
should not expect the "ice cream diet" to emerge as the
latest fad.
Insight to the correspondence between mechanical energy
and heat energy was obtained experimentally by the nine­
teenth-century British physicist James Joule. He revealed
that only a small change in temperature results from the
dissipation of an enormous amount of mechanical energy. A
similar correspondence exists between the food calories that
the body consumes and the mechanical energy that is de­
rived from them. In a now famous experiment, Joule stirred
a jar of water by the action of falling weights. The gravita­
tional energy of the weights was transferred into the water.
Joule describes the experiment:
106 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

The paddle moved with great resistance i n the can of

water, so that the weights (each of four pounds) de­
scended at the slow rate of about one foot per second. The
height of the pulleys from the ground was twelve yards,
and consequently, when the weights had descended
through that distance, they had to be wound up again in
order to renew the motion of the paddle. After this opera­
tion had been repeated sixteen times, the increase of the
temperature of the water was ascertained by means of a
very sensible and accurate thermometer . . . .
I may therefore conclude that the existence of an equiv­
alent relation between heat and the ordinary forms of
mechanical power is proved . . . . If my views are correct,
the temperature of the river Niagara will be raised about
one fifth of a degree by its fall of 160 feet. 3

In a possibly more relevant example than the Niagara Falls,

the calorie content from the stored chemical energy in a
single Mcintosh apple is more than enough for a 1 50-pound
person to climb, against gravity, every step from the ground
to the top floor of the tallest building in the world . In overfed
nations such as the United States, "calorie" is often taken to
be a bad word . However you choose to view it, "calorie" still
means e nergy, even if your body stores excess quantities of
it as layers of fat on your tu mmy.
The calorie content of a n apple is not nearly as impressive
as the hea t content of the world's oceans . The ocean may
feel cold when you swim in it, but if you were to add up the
vibra tion energy of eve ry wa ter molecule, then you would
get an enormous tota l quan tity of heat. In a household exam­
ple, a standard five-gallon fish tank at room tempera ture
con ta i n s over sixty times the total heat energy that is found

3 . J a m es Joule, in a letter to the editor, Plzilosoplzical Magazi11e 27 (1845): 205;

reprintt•d in Morris H . Shamus, ed . , Great Experiments i11 Physics: Firstha11d Ac­
rmmts from Galilt-o t(l £i11st1•i11 (New York: Dover, 1959), p. 170 .
 Energy 107

in an eight-ounce cup of hot tea . Yes, the cup of tea is

hotter, but it contains many fewer water molecules. The
tremendous capacity for oceans to store heat energy and
influence the local climate is what keeps England from be­
coming a major cross-country ski resort, even though the
entire nation is farther north than the northern tip of the
state of Maine. The warm North Atlantic Drift current encir­
cles the British Isles, warms the air, and ensures a relatively
temperate climate throughout the year.
Photons of all varieties are also a form of energy. The
energy created in the core of the Sun emerges as photons
from the solar surface. These photons, however, do not
come from chemical energy, or gravitational energy. They
are the by-products of thermonuclear fusion, which converts
raw matter into energy. Four hydrogen atoms assemble un­
der high pressure and temperature to become a single he­
lium atom. The mass of the helium atom is slightly less than
the combined mass of the four hydrogen atoms. The lost
mass transforms to energy as described by Albert Einstein's
famous formula

Energy = mass x (speed of light) 2

which may be more recognizable when written with its fa­

miliar symbols

E = mc 2

where c stands for the speed of light, which we learned from

chapter 3 to be a very large number. A small amount of lost
mass, after being multiplied by the square of the speed of
light, becomes an enormous amount of energy. For example,
just one ounce of matter, converted to energy, could power
a 1 00-watt light bulb for over 800, 000 years. This simple and
profound fact is why tiny humble atoms can serve as the
108 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

energy source for nuclear power plants, nuclear bombs, and

for every living star in the universe.
There are three ways that heat energy can move from one
place to another. One is through "conduction," which is
what happens when you hold the fireplace poker too long
with the tip embedded among the burning embers . Heat
from the fireplace induces the poker's atoms to vibrate faster.
These vibrations are communicated systematically up the
poker from atom to atom until the top of the poker burns
your unsuspecting hand. Conduction is the primary way
that solid objects transfer heat.
Another method of heat transfer is "radiation, " which
simply means energy is transferred directly by photons .
Quite independent of your burning hand on the fireplace
poker, infrared photons that are emitted from the fire will
strike you directly. The human body senses this infrared
energy as heat, which is why your exposed skin feels warm
when you turn toward a raging fire, yet your skin immedi­
ately feels cooler when somebody blocks your view. Photons
also travel by radiation from the Sun to Earth along a 500-
second journey through interplanetary space. If you had a
melt-proof fireplace poker that was 93 million miles long,
then you could poke the Sun and tap solar energy by con­
duction if you felt so inclined . But it is much simpler to wait
the few moments for the Sun's photons to arrive.
A third method of heat transfer is "convection . " This is
how a gaseous or liquid fluid manages to move heat when
conduction is ineffective . Returning to our fireplace, we no­
tice that the air nearest the burning embers is at a much
higher temperature than the air anywhere else in the room .
Much of this hot air convects up the chimney as it is replaced
with cooler air along the floor of the room. Unfortunately,
the frigid outside air then seeps into your home to replace
the hot air that went up the chimney. There is no doubt that
 Energy 109

a fireplace is a cozy addition to any domicile because of the

direct infrared photons it provides. Convection, however,
ensures that it does a poor job of raising a room's air temper­
ature.
A pot of water on the stove that is being heated to boil
normally sits atop a very high flame or a very hot electrical
coil. Rather than communicate this high heat through slow
conduction from the bottom of the water to the surface,
blobs of steam and pockets of water physically move from
the bottom to the top. If this were all that happened, then
the water would jump out of the pot and float to the ceiling,
which would be in conflict with culinary experience. In fact,
blobs of water at the surface descend to the bottom to replace
the volume that was previously occupied by the rising blobs .
When water behaves this way, it is common to say that the
water is "boiling. " Raisins make excellent tracers of convect­
ing blobs. Just toss one or two into a pot of boiling water,
and you can entertain yourself for hours as you watch them
circulate up and down . If you could toss a flame-proof raisin
into the Sun, you would discover that convection is the
major means by which energy traverses the outer gaseous
layers before it is released as photons from the surface.
A few thoughts about these precious solar photons might
possibly help you through the workday without caffeine.
The next time your energy level is low, or the next time the
elevator is broken and you must walk up the steps to your
destination, remember that you possess stored chemical en­
ergy from the food you have eaten, and that the energy
content of the food owes its origin to sunlight. You thus have
permission to declare to yourself that you are (indirectly)
powered by thermonuclear fusion.
 . 7.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Astronomers extract more information from light than anybody

else. The analysis of light-visible and invisible-is the nerve
center of the discipline. We collect it, bend it, scatter it, disperse
it, reflect it, focus it, split it, image it, polarize it, filter it,
and, of course, contemplate it. Sometimes we even tell others
about it.
 The Astronomer's Family of Photons

It is not widely known that "light" is a broad term that

includes the entire family of what is called electromagnetic
radiation: radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet,
X-ray, and gamma ray. One of the triumphs of twentieth­
century astronomy has been to build specialized detectors
appropriate for each variety of light.
As noted in chapter 3, light moves through the vacuum of
space at exactly 299, 792,458 meters per second, which is just
under 186,282.4 miles per second . Light is composed of
massless particles called photons. Radio photons, microwave
photons, infrared photons, and so forth through to gamma
photons differ only in their energy content. Features such as
their wavelength and frequency also differ. But by a simple
formula, they can each be determined uniquely from the
photon's energy.
All photons behave as both waves and particles. When
we think of them as a wave, we can then ask about their
wavelength and frequency . These are two properties that
exist for any type of traveling wave such as sound waves
and water waves. It even includes the stand-up-and-sit­
down waves that crowds at baseball stadiums are known to
produce. The wavelength is, quite reasonably, the distance
between successive wave crests (or troughs) . The frequency
can be measured by counting how many wave crests move
by in a chosen time interval such as seconds, minutes, or
hours. A common unit of frequency is crests per second,
which has been named the "hertz" after Heinrich Hertz, the
nineteenth-century physicist who helped to unify the study
of the different parts of the spectrum .
114 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

Let's visit the extended photon family and see the role
they play in our pursuit of what is unknown in the cosmos.

Radio Waves
Radio wave photons have the lowest energy and the longest
wavelength of the bunch . Typically, a photon with a wave­
length greater than about a foot is a radio photon. Some
obvious examples of radio photons include short-wave, tele­
vision, AM, and FM. You detect these different energy pho­
tons by changing channels or tuning to a different station on
your receiver. In household radios, the scale on the dial
displays frequency in hertz-but it could j ust as effectively
read in units of energy.
Radio photons are emitted by a variety of cosmic phenom­
ena that include radio galaxies, regions of intense star forma­
tion, and, perhaps most importantly, ordinary hydrogen
atoms.
Radio galaxies are often elliptical galaxies that exhibit evi­
dence for violent activity or explosions at their centers. These
explosive regions tend to have strong magnetic fields and a
generous supply of free electrons that have become unbound
from their host atoms. Electrons (as well as any other
charged particle) will spiral and emit light when moving
through a magnetic field. The field strengths and the elec­
tron speeds that are typical of a radio galaxy ensure that the
spiraling electrons emit radio waves known as "synchrotron
radiation. "
I n gas-rich regions o f intense star formation, electrons are
also readily kicked loose from their host atoms. This time,
however, they are reca ptured and cascade through a series
of energy levels back toward the nucleus. This cascade emits
radio photons that readily escape the region.
A lone hydrogen atom (one proton and one electron) in
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum 115

an interstellar gas cloud will also emit radio waves . This

phenomenon was first predicted by the Dutch astronomer
H. C. Van de Hulst in 1944 and discovered in 1953 by the
American physicists H. I. Ewen and E. M. Purcell. About
once every ten million years the spin of the bound electron
will flip so that it can be measured to spin in the opposite
direction . Each time this happens, the atom loses energy and
emits a radio photon with a wavelength of 8.3 inches . In
science, of course, we use the metric system, so this is more
commonly known as the "21 centimeter radiation. " You may
wonder if astronomers get bored waiting ten million years to
detect this photon. But remember that hydrogen atoms make
up more than 90 percent of the atoms in interstellar gas
clouds and in the universe itself. There are so many atoms
that at any given moment enough electron spins are flipping
to keep radio astronomers busy .
The wavelengths o f all these radio photons are long
enough that they penetrate nearly all intervening material
that might otherwise obscure our view. For this reason they
can be used to map the star-forming regions and overall
structure of gas-rich galaxies, and they permit us to study
the structure of the galactic violence at the center and on the
outskirts of radio galaxies . In 1960 an object was discovered
that was tiny enough on a photograph to resemble an ordi­
nary star, yet it uncharacteristically emitted copious radio
waves . It was dubbed a "quasi-stellar radio source," or "qua­
sar" for short. We now know quasars to be the most distant
objects in the observable universe. And while most quasars
catalogued today are not radio emitters, the name quasar is
here to stay.
Except perhaps for bad TV sitcoms, which have been
thought to drain the brain of all existing intelligence, the
photons we call radio waves a re the most harmless form of
electromagnetic radiation.
116 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D EA S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

Microwaves
Microwave photons are historically part of the radio wave
section of the spectrum. As the "micro" in the name implies,
they were the smallest of the radio waves. Their wavelengths
range from a millimeter or two to about ten centimeters. The
microwave window to the universe forms one of our best
views of interstellar molecules: carbon dioxide, formalde­
hyde, and water are just part of a long list of molecules that
can absorb and emit microwaves. Because molecules form
most readily where atoms are densely packed and slow­
moving, we find microwaves to be the best tracer of cold
gas clouds .
Atmospheric water, such as clouds or rain, wreaks havoc
upon microwave observations. Unlike radio telescopes, mi­
crowave telescopes are best located on mountain tops above
the lowest cloud layers.
The microwave part of the spectrum also lays claim to the
peak energy output from the 15 billion-year-old remnant
radiation for the big bang. As noted in chapter 6, the ubiqui­
tous trillion-degree fireball that started the universe has now
dropped to a cool 3 kelvins . In 1965 this fireball remnant
was first measured in a Nobel Prize-winning observation
conducted with a microwave telescope at Bell Telephone
Laboratories by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson . This is
the famous "three degree microwave background radiation,"
although the name is somewhat misleading. As confirmed
by one of several famous experiments on the Cosmic Back­
ground Explorer satellite in the early 1990s, the background
temperature is actually closer to 2. 7 kelvins. And while the
energy remnant from the big bang peaks in the microwave
range, it radiates at all wavelengths.
Microwaves are harmless-or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that there is no agreement in the world scien-
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum 117

tific community about whether low-level microwaves ad­

versely affect humans at all . Microwaves are all around us.
They are used for telephone-signal transmitters, satellite re­
lays, airplane radar, walkie-talkies, and many other things,
including police "radar guns" in speed traps. Note that con­
trary to popular parlance, microwaves do not "nuke" food
in a microwave oven. As already noted, water has a special
relationship with microwave photons. In the presence of
microwaves, the water molecule (a common food additive)
literally flips. If you flip enough water molecules rapidly­
as the high-intensity microwaves in microwave ovens are
designed to d�then the friction among them heats the
food . Plates and bowls are not made of water. They will, of
course, remain cool unless they conduct heat directly from
the food.

Infrared
Infrared photons have higher energy and smaller wave­
length than microwave photons. Although they cannot be
detected by the human retina, we have all had some experi­
ence with infrared photons. They are what keeps the French
fried potatoes warm for hours before you buy them at your
favorite fast-food restaurant chain . They are what you feel
when you bring your hand near a hot iron. They are what
changes the TV channel when you sit lazily on the couch
with a "remote" in your hand .
The wavelength of an infrared photon is long enough
(as is true with microwaves and radio waves) to penetrate
obscuring clouds in the interstellar medium. Infrared is an
excellent probe of heated gaseous regions, especially those
that surround beds of star formation. An obj ect's output of
energy will peak in the infrared if its temperature is between
a few hundred kelvins and abou t a few thousand kelvins
118 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

(approximately 50° to 5,000° Fahrenheit). In other words,

objects in that temperature range emit more infrared pho­
tons than any other variety . Notice that the range includes
the human body, heated food, a warm and hot household
iron, a fireplace poker (before and after it did some fireplace
poking), and a pottery kiln.
In addition to star-formation regions, we expect to find
infrared emission from the warm, freshly collapsed disks of
material that precedes the formation of planets around a
star. This is a difficult measurement to make because usually
the host star has already formed and its light (visible and
infrared) floods the measurement of the surrounding region.
But it has been done. Several such preplanetary disks have
been found . Perhaps the most notable among them is Alpha
Lyrae, which is also known as Vega, the brightest star in the
constellation Lyra .
The surface of the beautiful planet Venus can lay claim as
one of the most inhospitable places in the solar system. Its
dense atmosphere is over 96 percent carbon dioxide, which
is the cause of a runaway greenhouse effect. Light that
reaches the planet's surface is absorbed by the rocks and
reradiated mostly as infrared . Carbon dioxide traps infrared
photons. Consequently, the surface temperature has risen to
over 900° Fahrenheit-hot enough to melt tin, lead, zinc,
and humans. The continued burning of fossil fuels on Earth
will double the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere by
the early twenty-first century.

Visible
Human retinal cells of the eye are sensitive to photons with
wavelengths from about 4 to 7 ten-thousandths of a millime­
ter. This range is commonly called visible light. We distin­
guish these wavelengths by what we call "colors" that are
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum 119

the familiar ones from the rainbow: red, orange, yellow,

green, blue, indigo, and violet. These seven siblings are
sometimes affectionately and collectively known as ROY G .
BIV. Every other color you have ever seen i s some combina­
tion of these visible light photons .
Molecules and dust in Earth' s atmosphere are quite selec­
tive about photons that come their way. The particles scatter
the shorter-wavelength BIV photons into random directions
and ignore the longer-wavelength ROY photons . This fortu­
nate fact of physics operates at all times but shows itself best
with the Sun on the horizon. It is here that sunlight passes
through the most atmosphere . During sunset or sunrise,
ROY comes straight through while BIV is scattered all over
the sky. What we get is a photogenic red-orange sun draped
within a deep blue-violet sky.
Unlike several soon-to-be-discussed parts of the electro­
magnetic spectrum, Earth's atmosphere is transparent to vis­
ible light. The most widely used tool of astronomers is and
has always been the visible light telescopes . Stars such as the
Sun have their peak output of energy conveniently placed in
the visible part of the spectrum. Actually, any white star
such as the Sun emits roughly equal intensity of each color
in ROY G. BIV. It then requires a prism or well-placed rain
drops to separate the different color photons for the eye to
see . As will be detailed in chapter 8, even blue stars (which
peak in the ultraviolet) and red stars (which peak in the
infrared) emit substantial quantities of visible photons, so
that visible light telescopes are overall the best detectors
of starlight.
In spite of all this, it is important to realize that visible
photons compose a tiny range of all possible photons in the
electromagnetic spectrum . As useful as our vision is to life
on Earth, we are compa ratively blind .
The hydrogen atom, with its lone electron, can produce
120 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

features in the visible spectrum of a star that indicate where

the electron has been and where it went. Reworded in al­
most-astrophysical terms, the electron of the hydrogen atom
can jump between energy levels that surround the nucleus.
Along the way, photons are absorbed (the atom gains en­
ergy) or photons are emitted (the atom loses energy) . If
the surface temperature of a star is near 10,000 kelvins, the
hydrogen atoms are primed for eating visible photons. Spec­
tra of these stars show discrete missing parts, or "spectral
lines," where photons were absorbed by hydrogen's elec­
tron. The pattern of these absorption features in a star's
spectrum is the unique signature of hydrogen.
Every element in the Periodic Table of the Elements and
every molecule also has a unique signature, which can ap­
pear in other parts of the spectrum. Major branches of astro­
physics depend on our ability to interpret these spectral
features. From the spectral features of a star, we can deduce
directly or indirectly its chemical composition, whether it is
a binary system, whether it approaches or recedes from
Earth, the speed with which it approaches or recedes from
Earth, the surface temperature, the mass, the velocity of
expansion or contraction (if it pulsates by changing size), the
rotation rate, its approximate size, and the strength of its
surface gravity.

Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light is composed of photons with higher energy
and shorter wavelengths than visible light. Many insects that
fly in the evening hours have their visual range shifted from
that of humans . They have trouble detecting red light, but
they are quite sensitive to violet and ultraviolet. This is why
red-ligh t "bug bulbs" over your outdoor dinner table will not
attract bugs . It is also why the bug electrocutors (available at
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum 121

Electromagnetic Spectrum
"Light"

Gamma Rays

• High Energy
• High Frequency X-Rays
• Short Wavelength

Ultraviolet violet

4
indigo
blue
Visible green
yellow
orange
red
Infrared

• Low Energy Microwaves

• Low Frequency
• Long Wavelength

Radio Waves

Figure 7.1

your local hardware store) have violet bulbs in them. The

innocent, unsuspecting bugs fly toward the violet light,
make contact with a cleverly placed electrified wire mesh,
and are promptly zapped to death.
In the cosmic realm, we find high-mass stars whose sur­
face temperature is hot enough for their energy output to
peak in the ultraviolet. Ultraviolet telescopes spot these stars
quite readily when interstellar dust does not obscure them.
For example, a red star and a blue star might have the same
brightness in the yellow part of the spectrum. But the blue
star is likely to be many tens of times brighter in the ultra­
violet.
122 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

Other objects that emit ultraviolet photons include close

binary star systems that transfer their gaseous material, no­
vae, supernovae, starburst galaxies, and quasars . In short,
ultraviolet astronomers tend to specialize in exotic and ener­
getic phenomena .
Ultraviolet from the Sun is mostly blocked by atmospheric
ozone. The small fraction of ultraviolet photons that reach
Earth's surface is enough to provide sun worshipers with
body tans-and, of course, skin cancer.

X-Rays
While ultraviolet photons are only "skin deep," X-ray pho­
tons go right to the bone . Excess exposure to X-rays can
induce assorted cancers of your internal organs . This is why
the X-ray technician at your doctor's office promptly leaves
the room and closes the door while you are being X-rayed.
The phenomena in the universe that produce X-ray pho­
tons are even more energetic and exotic than those which
produce ultraviolet photons . X-rays are also blocked by at­
mospheric ozone. Special orbiting satellites detect X-rays
from the 5-million-degree tenuous corona of the outer solar
atmosphere, the disks of friction-heated gas that spiral in­
ward to the surface of a pulsar or a black hole, the hot
intergalactic medium of galaxy superclusters, and of course
supernovae and their remnants. (Actually, supernovae are
such titanic and energetic explosions that they release a full
range of photons for everybody . ) There is also a smooth
background flux of X-rays that is detected everywhere we
look. It is rationally termed the "X-ray background. " There
is still no agreement in the research community about its
origin.
The first Nobel Prize ever awarded in physics went to
Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays .
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum 123

Gamma Rays
Our slide through the electromagnetic spectrum now takes
us to the variety of light with the shortest wavelength and
highest energy of all types. These are the deadly gamma ray
photons. Exposure to high-intensity gamma rays, when it
does not result in death, nearly always triggers genetic de­
fects. The famed Hulk of Marvel comic books is big, green,
and ugly because of excessive exposure to gamma rays.
For a star's peak energy output to be in gamma rays
requires a surface temperature of over a billion degrees. This
is far beyond what we find for the surface temperature of
any known star. The thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into
helium in stellar cores, however, releases copious quantities
of X-ray and gamma ray photons. Unfortunately for these
photons, there is no free trip out of the Sun. Their journey
from the core to the surface involves about ten million years
of getting absorbed and reemitted and scattered by the atoms
and electrons along the way. The photon path is not unlike
the random walk that drunk people exhibit upon exiting a
bar. But unlike drunk people who can die in car wrecks
before they reach home, the energy of the gamma photons
emerges safely from the Sun. The form of this energy, how­
ever, was transformed from X-ray and gamma ray photons
near the core to mostly lower-energy visible photons at the
surface. A single gamma photon can spawn-at the cost of
its own existence-more than 100, 000 visible photons.
Gamma rays photons are almost entirely absorbed by
Earth's atmosphere. Nearly all gamma ray astronomy occurs
with the help of orbiting gamma ray detectors. The first of
their kind were the American Vela satellites that were
launched to monitor Earth-based nuclear explosions in the
late 1960s. They promptly detected strong, short gamma ray
bursts of cosmic origin . Strong bursts occurred and still occur
124 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

about four to five times per year and come from all direc­
tions. The source of these bursts remains a mystery.
Emitters of gamma rays include supernovae and their
remnants, the center of the Milky Way galaxy-and, of
course, the Hulk when he is angry.
It is common for astronomers to devote entire careers to a
single part of the electromagnetic spectrum . Indeed we are
labeled that way . There are X-ray astronomers who have
never looked through a visible light telescope, and there are
radio astronomers who will never need to worry about lifting
their telescopes into orbit . All astronomers know, however,
that the deepest understanding of cosmic phenomena can
only be achieved with the synthesis of knowledge that all
photons in the family can provide . This is how we help to
push forward the crests (and the troughs) of human under­
standing of the universe .
 .8.
Shapes of Radiation

Stars come in a staggering variety of sizes, luminosities,

masses, temperatures, and densities, but they do not come in
every color. Nobody has ever seen a lime green star, a chocolate
brown star, or a star that was bubble-gum pink. A conspiracy
of neurophysiology and astrophysical law mandates that stars
come in only three basic colors: reddish, white, and bluish.
Unfortunately, this fact is not revealed by simply looking up at
the nighttime sky. As seen from Earth with the unaided eye,
most visible stars are not bright enough to trigger the color­
sensitive "cones" of the human retina. With the help of a tele­
scope, however, the red, white, and blueness of stars can be
quite striking. The John Philip Sousa tune that has the lyric,
"Three cheers for the red, white, and blue," might well be
adopted to honor stars in the universe.
here is much to explore among the photons of light that
emerge from objects that glow. Of the several properties that
a photon can have, the correlated triad of energy, frequency,
and wavelength is paramount. Photons of high energy al­
ways have a high frequency and a short wavelength, while
all photons of low energy have a small frequency and a long
wavelength. It is not widely appreciated that humans have
many more measurable properties than photons and other
particles, which renders human behavior to be much more
complicated than particle physics. A correlated triad of prop­
erties among humans might be height, weight, and the num­
ber of walking strides per block. Taller people, on average,
weigh more than shorter people, and they generally take
fewer steps to get to where they are going. Of these three
properties, height is most fundamental because it does not
fluctuate with eating habits, nor does it lengthen when you
are in a hurry.

The Shape of Height

There are various ways that we can investigate the height of

the world's humans. One is to line up everybody in size­
place. (Incidentally, this line would be 2 million miles long
as it wrapped about eighty times around Earth. ) While this
would make an interesting international activity, it would
not be as informative as if you simply grouped people of
similar height and counted them. You could begin by using
12-foot intervals, but then nearly everybody would be col­
lected into the 0 to 12-foot ca tegory. A slightly better choice
would be to use 3-foot intervals. Most adults would fall into
128 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S I N T H E P H Y S I CA L U N I V E R S E

,-- one fat bin of 12 feet

0 12

�
four bins of 3 feet
'3 c
� gs
.....
.c
0 u
t &l
'S= .5
z

0 3 6
1 9 12

24 bins of 6 inches

0 I 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Height in Feet
Figure 8.1. Three bar charts that show what happens when you
change the bin size . Intelligently chosen bins will allow a bar chart
to reveal more information about the sample .

the 3 to 6-foot category. The 6 to 9-foot category would have

relatively few people although it would contain nearly all the
players in the National Basketball Association.
A more sensible division might be six inches . This would
give us twenty-four smaller bins in which to place people
from 0 to 1 2 feet . If we look only at a sample of American
adults, then we will discover that the 5-foot 6-inch to 6-foot
bin holds the largest n u mber. We would expect the bins on
either side to have somewhat fewer people, and we would
expect this downward trend to continue . Having carefully
 Shapes of Radiation 129

studied the heights of a large number of American adults, I

can say with confidence that the four bins up to 2 feet and
the four bins between 10 and 12 feet each contain very few
people.
If you were to plot the number of people in each bin,
then the graph would resemble what is known in scientific
parlance as a "distribution function. " A less oppressive and
possibly more familiar term is a "histogram. " If you prefer
words that sound as though they were born together, then
the most user-friendly term is probably the "bar chart,"
which has as a culinary cousin called the "pie chart. " It is
the peak and the shape of our bar chart (the relative number
of people in each bin) that excites the person whose task it is
to study height trends. For example, the bar chart for the
height of American adults will look different from the bar
chart for players in the NBA, and both will look different
from the bar chart for female Olympic gymnasts. A compari­
son of these three populations reveals some obvious distinc­
tions. The bin with the most NBA players is found at a larger
height than that of the general population. And the bin with
the most female gymnasts is found at a smaller height than
that of the general population . Additionally, the range of
occupied bins is broader for the general population than for
either the basketball players or the gymnasts .
Of course, there is much more to learn from bar charts
than the width and the location of the peak bin. A basic yet
informative datum that can be extracted is the total number
of people that are plotted. You get it when you simply add
together the number of people in each bin. One can also ask
whether the range of heights is symmetric on either side of
the peak; or whether the average height equals the height
that corresponds to the peak bin; or whether there are multi­
ple peaks . Rest comfortably knowing there is an untold num­
ber of statistical tests that have been invented to analyze and
compare the shapes of bar charts .
130 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

=
al NBA
-= Players

J3
.5
.8
E
"
z
4 5 6 7 8 9

=
al Female

]
tl.l
Olympic Gymnasts

.5
.8
E
"
z
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Height in Feet

Figure 8.2. Schematic bar charts for the height of American adults,
NBA players, and female Olympic gymnasts . Notice that the three
charts peak at very different locations in height.

If your bar chart contains a very large number of people,

then you have permission to use even skinnier bins (such as
one-half inch). This will more finely subdivide the sample
and ultimately force the bar chart to lose its steplike appear­
ance in favor of what is best represented by a smooth curve.
A convenient consequence is that smooth curves often lead
to a mathema tical model a nd then to physical insight.
 Shapes of Radiation 131

The Shape of Light

In a discussion that is precisely analogous to drawing a bar

chart for height, we may draw a bar chart for the energy of
photons that emerge from an object that emits light. There is
normally no shortage of photons for this exercise, so photon
bar charts can be plotted with extremely narrow bins and are
typically drawn as smooth curves. If we plot the photon
energies emitted by a bright household incandescent (tung­
sten) light bulb, then we will reveal the component colors of
what the eye detects and what the brain interprets to be
white light. Some photons will be red, others will be yellow,
green, and blue. If human eyes were sensitive to infrared
light, then you would also notice infrared photons that
emerge from the light bulb. In fact, most of the "wattage" of
an incandescent bulb is wasted on these invisible photons.

The Sliding Peak

If you had unlimited control of the current that passes
through the tungsten filament, you could do some amazing
experiments. For now, however, a household wall dimmer­
switch will do. As you increase the brightness, you should
also realize that you are increasing the temperature of the
filament as it receives more and more current. You may
notice, along the way, that the bulb first glows with a deep
reddish amber before it becomes white. If you were
equipped with a super-dimmer and a tungsten filament that
could carry a very high current (a quarter-million-watt light
bulb, for example), then you could tum the dimmer until the
light bulb glowed blue. As you adjusted the super-dimmer
the tungsten would not only emit more and more photons,
but the bin that contained the largest number of photons
would shift from infrared to red and then across the spec-
132 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

trum of familiar colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue,

indigo, and violet), before it moved off to ultraviolet. This
behavior leads to three basic scenarios for what the human
eye sees:

1. Peak in the Infrared. At a temperature of 1,000 to 3,000

kelvins, the tungsten is cool. This assessment comes from
the point of view of glowing objects, not from the point of
view of your refrigerator. The interval of the bar chart that
falls in the visible part of the spectrum is highest in the red
and lowest in the blue-violet. When it is bright enough to
excite the cones of the retina, this mixture of photons always
appears reddish-orange to the human eye. These relatively
cool temperatures are normally the hottest that an average
person will ever encounter from everyday contact with
household objects such as fireplace embers, "space" heaters,
and heating elements of an electric stove-all of which is
what started (and continues to feed) the rumor that red-hot
is hot.

2. Peak in or near the Visible. At a temperature of 3,000 to

10,000 kelvins, the tungsten filament is much hotter than
before (actually, the filament melts at 3,500 kelvins, but we
will ignore that complication for now), and the bulb is much
brighter. In fact, the bulb is brighter at every photon energy,
including the red . If the peak photon bin falls anywhere near
or between red and violet, then the filament will look white.
For most glowing objects, including tungsten, the breadth of
the bar chart near the peak is greater than the entire range
of visible light. (You might even say that visible light has
"bad breadth . " )
A well-respected and often-worshipped example o f a
whi te glowing object is the Sun, whose surface temperature
is nearly 6, 000 kelvins. Our toasty neighbor is sometimes
 Shapes of Radiation 133

Three Temperature Scales

1 8,000,000 1 0,000 ,000

Onset of Thermonuclear Fusion
1 0,000 ,000
in Stars: ( H -+ He )

1 0,000 5,800 6,000 Surface of the Sun

212 373 1 00 Water Boils

98 . 6 3 10 37
Human Body
(one that is alive)

72 295 22 Room Temperature

32 273 0 Water Freezes

-360 55 -2 1 8 Oxygen Liquefies

-462 0 -273 Coldest possihle temperature

Fahrenheit Kelvin Celsius

(Absolute) (Centigrade)

Figure 8.3. The Fahrenheit scale is used in the United States, the
Kelvin absolute scale (with degree units called kelvins) is used by
the scientific community, and the Celsius scale is used by the rest
of the inhabited civilized world.

claimed to be a yellow star. But this is only because the

Sun's energy output peaks in the greenish-yellow part of the
visible spectrum; with similar reasoning, you could, with
equal aplomb, declare the Sun to be green . In the reality of
your eyeball, however, your retina could testify that the
color of the midday Sun has never resembled that of parsley,
134 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

Three Black Body Curves

Visible Light --., i--­

Pcak

ULTRAVIOLET

Energy ---­

Frequency

Wavel e ngth
Figure 8.4 Black body curves for an object hea ted to three different
temperatures. These schematic curves may be thought of as
smoothed-out bar charts for the energy of photons that are emitted
by glowing objects . The infra red, visible, and ultraviolet parts are
noted along the botto m . The visible spectrum is further divided
into ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and vio­
let) . Notice how the coolest curve passes through visible light
higher in the red than in the violet, and the hottest curve intersects
visible light higher in the violet than in the red . For intermediate
temperatures, the curve is broad enough to contribute nearly equal
quantities of red through violet, which will look white to the hu­
man eye . Also notice that the peak of each curve slides to higher
energy (from in fra red , through visible, to ultraviolet) as the tem­
peratu re ri ses.
 Shapes of Radiation 135

or of lemons, unless you live near the sulfurous outgassing

of an active volcano. Indeed, there are enough visible pho­
tons emitted on either side of the greenish-yellow peak to
excite equally your red, green, and blue retinal cones. It is
this combined stimulus that allows the photon mixture from
the Sun and from the tungsten filament to appear white . If
the Sun were indeed yellow, then everything on Earth that
normally looks white in daylight would look yellow-snow
included . Although if you have ever actually seen yellow
snow in the daytime, then it was probably near a fire hy­
drant.
For a star to look green to the eye it would have to emit
most of its energy in the very narrow subset of the visible
spectrum that we call green-there can be very little red­
orange and blue-violet light to "contaminate" what you see.
One must realize, however, that this would be a very un­
physical thing for a star to do.

3 . Peak in the Ultraviolet. At temperatures greater than

10,000 kelvins, the tungsten filament is extremely hot (the
filament has, in fact, vaporized, but we will ignore that
complication for now), and the bulb is very much brighter
than before-not only to the eye but over all photon energ­
ies . Ultraviolet photons are invisible, but among the emitted
visible photons the bin with the largest number is violet,
while the bin with the least number is red . When bright
enough to excite the cones of the retina, this mixture of
photons always looks bluish-violet to the human eye, in
spite of the fact that a blue-hot filament emits more red
light than a red-hot filament. Perhaps astrophysicists and
industrial welders are the only people on the planet who
maintain a daily awareness that blue-hot is hotter than red­
hot.
136 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

Wilhelm Wien, a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century physicist

who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 191 1 , first formu­
lated the relation that describes the slide of the peak photon
bin as the temperature rises. This is now known as Wien's
displacement law and can be written quite simply as

Surface Temperature oc Energy of Photons in Peak Bin

It reveals that the surface temperature of an object (tungsten,

in the case of our filament) is directly proportional to the
energy of the photons at the peak of the curve. The squiggle
that resembles a goldfish is the international "proportional
to" symbol. For example, if you increase the temperature of
an object by a factor of three, then you can fully expect the
energy of the peak bin to increase by a factor of three . Wien' s
law can similarly be written as
1
Surface Temperature oc . .
Wavelength of Photons m Peak Bm

which declares that the surface temperature of an object is

inversely proportional to the wavelength of photons in the
peak bin. This follows naturally when we remember that
every photon can be identified with a particular wavelength
that decreases with increasing energy.

The Totals
The total number of people in our bar charts could be ob­
tained simply by adding up the contents of each bin for all
heights . A similar proced ure also allows us to compute the
total emission rate for photons of all energies from each
curve . For a proper comparison between objects of different
size, all tha t we require is that the total emission rate be
computed over the same-sized patch for each object. Fortu­
na tely, this has already been done for us. It is represented
 Shapes of Radiation 137

by what is known as the Stefan-Boltzmann law from the

pioneering efforts of the nineteenth-century physicists Josef
Stefan and Ludwig Boltzmann. The law reveals that for an
object that maintains its temperature, the total emission rate
of photons is proportional to the third power of the temper­
ature.
Total Emission Rate of Photons oc (Temperature) 3
What makes this statement remarkable is that the total emis­
sion rate of photons from an object is unrelated to everything
else about the object, such as its composition, its shape, or
even its state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma)-which
is why our tungsten superfilament worked for our earlier
example, even though it melted and then vaporized.
Sometimes (in fact, most times) it is easier to measure the
total emission rate of energy in photons rather than the total
emission rate of photons themselves. When this is done,
then the Stefan-Boltzmann law takes the form
Total Emission Rate of Energy in Photons oc (Temperature) 4
With temperature raised to the fourth power, it boggles the
senses to realize how much extra energy is emitted with a
small change in temperature. For example, a blue star that is
the same size as a red star, yet five times as hot on its
surface, will radiate at a rate that is 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 625 =

times larger than that of the red star.

What stars and tungsten filaments have in common is that
the peak and total energy of their emitted photons can each
be described by the same basic laws. But these basic laws
emerged from a simpler concept of an ideal black absorber.

The Shape
The term "black body" is simultaneously a nomer and a
misnomer. It is well known that perfectly black objects ab-
138 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I CA L U N I V E R S E

sorb all photons that hit their surface. But it is not frequently
discussed at dinner parties that the absorption of photons
cannot continue without various thermal consequences-­
black bodies also emit photons. If more photons are ab­
sorbed than emitted, then the object's temperature will rise,
and its total output of photons will increase until the emis­
sion rate equals the absorption rate. Anybody who wears a
bathing suit and unwittingly sits on the upholstered black
vinyl seat of a car with closed windows that has been parked
several hours in the midday summer sun will testify nicely
to this fact. Even if you live in the Arctic and have never
conducted this butt-burning science experiment, then trust
me: the car seat will be much hotter than the outside air
temperature-indeed, it will be aglow (though invisibly)
with infrared photons.
What makes an even better absorber than a black vinyl car
seat is a small hole in an otherwise enclosed box that has a
painted black interior. You can kiss good-bye all photons
that enter the hole. They are likely to be absorbed-even
those photons that manage to reflect off the interior walls a
few times. We already learned from the Wien and Stefan­
Boltzmann laws that the energy of the peak photon bin, and
the total emission rate of photons, is only related to the
temperature. An impressive property of this hole-in-the-box
experiment is that no matter what quantity or assortment of
photons you send into the hole, the box's cavity will reradi­
ate a specific ensemble of photons whose detailed shape in a
bar chart is also related only to the temperature of the cavity.
The shape of such a bar chart is formally cailed a "black
body spectrum," which is a powerful analytic tool that also
applies, with excellent accuracy, to such diverse objects as
ou r tungsten light bulbs, the gaseous surface of the Sun, and
almost anything else that maintains its temperature as it
 Shapes of Radiation 139

glows (visibly or invisibly) from being heated-black vinyl

car seats included .
If tungsten, the Sun, and black vinyl car seats do not make
a complete enough list for you, then consider the biggest
black body of them all: the cooled remains from the primeval
fireball of the big bang. This omnipresent radiation field of
the universe is extremely well-fitted by a black body spec­
trum whose temperature is a mere 3 kelvins, which is why a
single temperature can be assigned to the entire universe.
As noted in chapter 7, this is the famous "3 degree back­
ground" that peaks in the microwave part of the spectrum.
A physical understanding of the black body spectrum was
first realized through the efforts of Max Planck, a German
physicist and the 1918 Nobel Laureate in physics. On De­
cember 14, 1900, Planck presented a derivation of the Black
Body Radiation law at a meeting of the German Physical
Society in Berlin, which assumed that heated (and thus vi­
brating) matter emits photons with discrete and quantized
energies. This new "quantum" concept provided one of the
earliest hints that the new branch of physics, which grew to
be known as quantum mechanics, was fast-approaching. So
as not to slight Planck in favor of Wien, Stefan, and Boltz­
mann, I present Planck's radiation formula. It precisely de­
scribes the energy (shape) of black body radiation at every
location on a plot, which heralded a new fundamental con­
stant, h, that now bears his name, if not his initial:

I 1
E(A, n s X
ex:
A e<hc!AkT) _ 1

The classical "11A 5 " part was known to Wien and others, but
Planck's quantum adjustment of "l/(e(hc/AkD _ J)" was brand
new. The symbol E represents the energy emission rate in
photons, A is the Greek letter lambda that represents the
140 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

photon wavelength, T is the temperature of the object, e is

the exponential constant 2. 71828 . . . , c is the speed of light,
and k is a constant named after Boltzmann that allows the
conversion of temperature units into energy units.
With some basic and some flashy calculus, you can actu­
ally derive Wien's law and the Stefan-Boltzmann law from
Planck's radiation formula, but we will not do that here.

Reflections

There is no need to be upset that glowing, heated objects

can only appear red, white, or blue. In the cool world of
reflected light, one can be quite choosy about the colors of
objects. When selecting paint for your house, or when select­
ing a flavor of Jell-0, there is (or seems to be) an uncountable
number of colors from which to choose. Surface texture,
pigments, and dyes all act selectively to reflect back a partic­
ular set of photons that you identify as a unique color. Pars­
ley looks green only because the light that shines on it con­
tains green photons (such as green light or white light) that
are reflected back to you. If you illuminated parsley with
light that contained no green photons (such as pure red or
blue light), then the parsley would simply appear black.
Ordinary white surfaces look white simply because they
reflect all visible photons. Approximately equal intensities of
red, orange, green, blue, indigo, and violet light will always
be perceived as white. This reflective fact also means that
white objects will assume the color of the light that shines
upon them . One night a few years ago, I was collecting data
on the universe from a telescope dome whose interior was
illuminated with deep red night-lights. When I took a lunch
break around midnight, I spotted a soft-drink can that was
leaning against one of the computers. The can occupied the
next twenty minutes of my attention because it had posi-
 Shapes of Radiation 141

lively no writing on it, not even a picture of a person, place,

or thing. It just looked red . At the end of the night, when I
finally turned on the white lights, I noticed that my midnight
mystery was simply a Coca-Cola can with its familiar red­
and-white design. Since red reflects red, and white reflects
red, and the can was illuminated with a red light, then
the entire can looked red with no written features to distin­
guish it.
While we are on the subject, it is possible to use the
principles of the mysterious soft-drink can to one's own
advantage. When I was a freshman in college, my physics
professor allowed everybody to bring into the final exam a
single 3112 x 5-inch file card that could contain anything we
chose to write on it--equations, notes from class, solved
homework problems, and so forth . A friend of mine, frus­
trated by the tiny area upon which to put her helpful hints,
filled both sides with tiny writing in blue ink . She then filled
both sides again, writing in red ink directly over what was
previously written. She entered the final exam with one red
filter (that transmits only red light) and one blue filter (that
transmits only blue light) with which she proceeded to ex­
tract all information that had been etched upon this other­
wise unreadable puddle of red and blue scribble. While us­
ing the blue filter, the white file card turns blue, the blue
writing remains blue, and the red ink looks black and read­
able. Similarly, while using the red filter, the white file card
turns red, the red writing remains red, and the blue ink
looks black and readable. I do not know what score my
classmate earned on the final exam, but the color-coded crib
sheet was brilliant.
If you were to mix red, orange, yellow, green, blue, in­
digo, and violet paints together you would get a color that
closely resembles that of urba n sewage . Clearly, colors of
pigment do not add in the same way as do colors of light.
142 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S I N T H E P H Y S I CA L U N I V E R S E

But this is not the only place where art deviates from physi­
cal reality. The "warm" paints are typically those one might
choose for an artist' s rendition of Hell; they include red,
orange, and yellow. The "cool" paints are typically those
one might choose to depict an Arctic igloo; they include
violet and blue. You now know that among visibly glowing
objects in the universe, the reverse of the artist's rendition is
true-it is the coolest stars that are red, and the hottest stars
that are blue. This cosmic awareness is so deeply etched in
my mind that I do not know how much of my life I have
wasted while staring at color-coded red and blue faucets as I
attempted to deduce which knob would give me cold water.
Out of concern for my repeated confusion, my dependable
acquaintance once wrote
On canvas with paint
In the Artist's school
It is red that is hot
And blue that is cool .

But in science we show

As the heat gets high er
That a star will glow red
Like the coals of a fire.

Raise the heat some more

And what is in sigh t?
It's no longer red
It has turned bright white .

Yet the hottest of all,

Merlin says u nto you,
Is neither white nor red
When the star has turned blue.
Merlin of Om11 iscia 1

I . From Merlin's T1111 r of the U11i1>ase (New York: Columbia University Press,
1 989) , p. 1 60 .
 Shapes of Radiation 143

Colorful poetry notwithstanding, if you ever see a mo­

tionless thirsty person who appears befuddled by the red
and the blue spigots of an office water cooler, then say
hell{}-it's probably me .
 .9.
The Hertzsp rung-Russell Diagram

Not since Mendeleev's Periodic Table of the Elements has such

a simple arrangement of data been so revealing as to how the
universe is assembled. In the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, the
cosmic crucibles of fusion that we call stars are coherently orga­
nized in a way that allows astronomers to probe stellar evolu­
tion with dazzling detail. As important a discovery to astrono­
mers as Darwin's theory of evolution is to biologists, the Hertz­
sprung-Russell diagram remains one of the twentieth century's
greatest achievements in astrophysics.
b e range of luminosities among stars in the universe is
staggering. Not only is this range large-it spans a factor
of hundreds of millions-but every measurable interval of
luminosity between the extremes is represented somewhere
by some star. The range of stellar surface temperatures is
also impressive, although not as staggering-it spans about
a factor of about fifty. What sort of questions must be asked
to begin to understand this? Will the answer be complicated
or simple? Stars also exhibit a mind-boggling range of sizes
and densities. Can any organized understanding possibly
emerge from stellar properties with such breadth? I once
asked the Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg a similar ques­
tion about the state of particle physics: "In the interest of
simplicity and elegance, shouldn't we be concerned that na­
ture harbors such a zoo of subatomic particles?" to which he
responded, "I don't care how many particles there are, just
so long as they are described by only a few ideas."
As discussed in chapter 2, the greatest scientific ideas tend
to be conceptually simple while they simultaneously create
order out of confusion. In search of such a great idea, the
Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung and the American
astronomer Henry Norris Russell independently organized
the luminosities and temperatures of stars in the diagram
that bears their names, although it is often affectionately
called the "H-R" Diagram. Actually, Hertzsprung and Rus­
sell could not measure a star's temperature, only its color.
But temperature and color are physically related, so knowl­
edge of the color is often just as useful. Their diagram serves
a tremendously simple function. It displays the luminosity
versus surface temperature for stars in the universe. When
148 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

we consider the inherent range of these two stellar proper­

ties, one might expect the entire graphed plane to become
filled with points-perhaps all combinations of luminosity
and temperature are possible. Actually, such a result would
be scientifically useless because it would not lay bare the
hand of universal law. In one sweep of plotted data, how­
ever, Hertzsprung in 1905, and Russell in 1913, each deter­
mined that all combinations are not possible and that these
stellar properties are clumped in regions on their diagram
that reveal the existence of entire stellar families.

Stellar Families

As organized on the H-R Diagram, most stars in the uni­

verse, including the Sun, fall along a diagonal sequence from
hot and luminous down to cool and dim . In the typical
naming fashion among astronomers, this main sequence of
stars is officially called the "main sequence. " Another assem­
bly appears at relatively high temperature yet has a very low
luminosity. The region is cleanly delineated below the mid­
dle region of the main sequence . Two other regions are
also relatively well defined . One set is a band of extremely
luminous objects that spans a large range in temperature,
and another set forms a collection of very luminous red
objects above the main sequence to the middle-right of the
diagram. All other regions are relatively empty.
That all stars assemble in families when plotted in a tem­
perature-luminosity diagram is not unlike dishes that fit in a
dishwasher. A sinkful of dinner dishes gets systematically
sorted as you load them into the machine. All the silverware
goes together in the silverware holder, all the drinking
glasses assemble neatly on the upper rack, and all the plates
form a tidy row on the bottom . Most people (I presume) take
for granted the cosmic significance of this domestic task.
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 149

H-R Diagram

Looks Bluish Looks White Looks Reddish

100,000
I I
10,000 c--.--
-. ---i-
- -;- ==>
��
I Super Giants I

1 1 ,000
I

1 00
c
:>-. bl
.-:: a.J 10
Cll .c
0 ...
c: g
GJ
E .::::
·-

::s ...
..J � 0. 1
�

O.D l

0.001

0.000 1

0 B A F G K M. . .
} "SPECTRAL"
CLASS

30,000 10,000 3,000 1 ,000

Surface Temperature
(in kel vins)
Figure 9.1. Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram. The locations and
names of the principal stages of stellar evolution are noted . By
tradition, the surface temperature i ncreases to the left.

Consider that if no two items to be loaded in a dishwasher

were alike, then there would be no pattern to reveal itself
among the presized racks . This could happen, for example,
if you had aliens from several different planets over for
dinner, and they brought their own dishes .
It is always the task of a research scientist to find ways to
150 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

look at data that will reveal trends or patterns. In this effort,

Hertzsprung and Russell were triumphant.

Stellar Sizes

It is well known, from the study of radiating objects, that if

you measure the rate that energy emerges from a chosen
area on the surface of a hot star, then it will be much greater
than the rate of energy that emerges from an equal-sized
area on the surface of a cool star. This physical principle was
expressed formally in chapter 8 in what is known as the
Stefan-Boltzmann law. The law, which makes sense when
you think about it, arms you with a veritable treasure map
as you amble among the stellar clumps of the H-R Diagram.
With no information other than an H-R Diagram in one
pocket and the Stefan-Boltzmann law in the other, you can
decipher the exact relative sizes of stars in the universe. For
example, the blob of stars that lurks in the lower-middle of
the H-R Diagram falls at the same temperature as many of
the stars on the main sequence. But the stars of the lurking
blob are about 10,000 times dimmer. The only way for this to
be true is if the radiating area of each of these stars is 10,000
times smaller. Using simple formulae for the geometry of
spheres (all stars are conveniently spherical), one discovers
that our lurking stars are each about as small as Earth. Most
of them being white, and all of them being dwarf-ish, astron­
omers figured that "white dwarf" would be an appropriate
official name for them.
Somewhat above the "cool" region of the main sequence,
we find a blob of stars whose luminosity ranges from 100 to
10, 000 times that of the main sequence stars below it. The
only way cool stars can become this luminous is if the surface
area over which they radiate is 100 to 10,000 times larger.
Most of them being red, and all of them being giant-size,
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 151

astronomers figured that the name "red giant" might be ap­

propriate.
Perched above the red giants is yet another blob of stars
that are one hundred times more luminous than the red
giants themselves. Stars in this group are found to be red,
white, and blue. The coolest among them have the same
temperature as the red giants and must therefore radiate
with one hundred times the surface area . I do not mean to
shout, but THESE STARS ARE ENORMOUS. If you put one
of them at the location of the Sun (about 93 million miles
from Earth), it would be large enough to engulf our entire
planetary orbit-and, of course, it would vaporize Earth.
Astronomers were left with no choice: being bigger than
the "normal" giants, these super-big stars that compose our
superluminous blob are simply called "supergiants," with
an occasional reference to their color, as appropriate. The
constellation Orion is fortunate enough to contain, as its
two brightest stars, the red supergiant Betelgeuse (Alpha
Orionis) appearing as Orion's right armpit, and the blue
supergiant Rigel (Beta Orionis) appearing as Orion's left
kneecap.
We just "sized-up" the principal regions of the H-R Dia­
gram without ever traveling through space to see them up
close. We succeeded, however, with the assistance of spe­
cially constructed scales . For convenience, and to save trees,
the H-R Diagram is normally plotted with both its luminosity
and temperature scales in logarithmic form. This simply
means that the scale gets very big, very quickly, so that you
can fit everything on one sheet of paper. In this case, the
distance on the temperature scale between 300 and 1 ,000
kelvins is the same as that between 3,000 and 10,000 kelvins.
And the distance on the luminosity scale between 1 and 1 00
is the same as the distance between 1 ,000 and 1 00,000. With­
out a logarithmic scale, our H-R Diagram would require a
152 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

foldout insert that measured five miles high and one yard
wide-to the disgust of my publisher.
In an attempt to classify the sizes of stars, the American
astronomers William Wilson Morgan, Philip Childs Keenan,
and Edith Kellman pioneered the use of "Luminosity
Classes" for all stellar groups in the H-R Diagram with the
1943 publication of a major atlas of stellar spectra . The su­
pergiants were labeled Class I, the red giants were labeled
Class III, the entire main sequence was labeled Class V, and
the degenerate white dwarfo were labeled Class VII. The
remaining intermediate Roman numerals refer to stars that
occupy underpopulated regions of the diagram. They are:
Class II (the bright giants); Class IV (the subgiants); and
Class VI (the sub-[main sequence]-dwarfs) . As a main se­
quence star, the Sun is simply luminosity Class V.
But before anybody knew about luminosity classes, before
anybody knew the relative sizes of stars in the universe,
before anybody knew how to measure the temperatures of
stars, indeed almost before anybody knew much of any­
thing-there were spectral classes.

Spectral Classes

A star's spectrum, if you photographed it with color film,

would typically show the colors of the rainbow. Upon very
close view, however, you would also notice many places
where slices of the spectrum are missing. These slices, or
spectral lines, are where the atoms in a star's atmosphere
absorbed photons of their choice. The element hydrogen,
which comprises over 90 percent of the Sun's atoms, has a
photon-absorbing signature that shows up nicely in the visi­
ble spectra of most stars. Between 1918 and 1924, Annie
Jump Cannon, the Curator of Astronomical Photographs at
the Harvard College Observatory, with unmatched visual
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 153

acumen used the prominence of this hydrogen absorption to

classify the spectra of over 225,000 stars for the Henry Draper
Catalogue. Through her continued efforts, subsequent cata­
logue supplements brought the total to over 350, 000. These
spectral classes were organized by letter, beginning with A:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S
prom inent hydrogen feature weak hydrogen feature

With the discovery of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, a

theoretical basis emerged for the variation in spectral fea­
tures. What was previously a descriptive "botanical" classi­
fication now found a conceptual anchor: hydrogen atoms
that tend to absorb emerging photons share the same
worldview as that expressed in the fairy tale Goldilocks and
the Three Bears. To assist your memory of the story, here is
my synopsis of the relevant part:

Hungry and tired, Goldilocks, upon stumbling across the

Three Bears' empty cottage in the woods, found three
bowls of porridge (whatever that is) . The porridge in one
bowl was too hot, that in another bowl was too cold. But
the third bowl of porridge was "just right, " so she ate it.
The Three Bears came home later.

Quantum mechanics showed that hydrogen atoms in stellar

atmospheres are as choosy about p ho to ns as Goldilocks was
with o ther people's porridge . It is possible for a star to dis­
play a weak hydrogen feature in the visible spectrum from
being too hot or from being too cold. This hu mble discovery
was the birth of modern astrophysics . The hydrogen signa­
ture is most prevalent when a star' s surface tempera ture· is
"j us t right, " which i s abo ut 1 0,000 kelvi ns. While we pre­
sume this to be somewhat hotter than Goldilocks' preferred
po rri d ge, it is neither the hottest nor the coldest of stellar
a tmosphere s . Armed with th is p hysica l understa nding of
154 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

the process, it became more sensible to catalogue stars as a

sequence of surface temperature. Some classifications were
dropped, and others were consolidated . What remains are
some leftover letters which, when arranged from hottest to
coldest, look like
0 B A F G K M
hottest coolest

Three other letters, R, N, and S, are not formally included in

the temperature sequence because they identify subsets of K
and M stars that display peculiar features. The letters 0 and
M are far from A in the alphabet. As already noted, this
implies weak hydrogen features as a spectral class-notice
that both 0 and M fall at the extremes of the temperature
scale.
This new and improved sequence of letters is world fa­
mous because it has become the darling of mnemonic writ­
ers. Henry Norris Russell unwittingly started the mnemonic
movement after he suggested, "Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me. "
Those astronomers who did not want t o alienate the R , N,
and S categories soon added to the original: "Oh Be A Fine
Girl, Kiss Me Right Now; Smack!" It is not clear whether the
Smack! was intended to be the sound of a kiss or the sound
of a male astronomer getting punched in the nose for making
such a request, but the mnemonic was widely celebrated . As
astronomy got more complicated in the latter part of the
twentieth century, frightened college freshmen devised,
"Oh Boy, [my] Astronomy Final's Gonna Kill Me. " And a
recent mnemonic, donated by a frustrated male freshman,
gets the award for licentiousness: "Obvious Bulges Always
Frighten Girls Kissing Me. " You will probably never see that
one in a textbook.
One does not automatically obtain a temperature from
the presence or absence of hydrogen features. Typically, a
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 155

temperature is derived from a star's color, which can be

quantified with impressive precision if you measure a star's
emission through specially chosen sets of colored filters. The
proportions in which the different colors appear, when com­
pared with what you would expect from a perfect black
body, allows an accurate assessment of a star's surface tem­
perature. This extra precision permitted each lettered spec­
tral class to be reliably subdivided into ten parts. The spectral
class "G," for example, runs from 0 to 9 before the onset of
class "K. " Our beloved Sun finds itself at spectral class G,
subclass 2. When combined with its luminosity class, the
Sun, in shorthand, becomes a G2V star. This corresponds to
a main sequence "dwarf" with a surface temperature of
5,800 kelvins. At 10,000 kelvins, the bright main sequence
star Vega (Alpha Lyrae), in the constellation Lyra, is desig­
nated AOV. And at 27,000 kelvins, Alkaid (Eta Ursa Majoris),
the star at the tip of the handle in the Big Dipper, checks in
at B3V.

Stellar Evolution

A naive view of the stellar groups in the composite H-R

Diagram may lead you to suspect that there are four types of
stars that are born and die as you see them. Or maybe that
stars are born as hot 0 stars, and when they age, they cool,
as they slide down the main sequence to become an M
star. Or maybe stars begin as bloated supergiants and then
collapse in sudden jumps to become giants, main sequence
stars, and then white dwarfs. Or maybe stars are born as
white dwarfs and somehow get swollen over time to become
giants. Or maybe none of the above.
An equivalent glimpse of the general human population
would raise similar questions to our alien dinner guests (the
ones who brought the mismatched dishes) . Are people born
156 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

large, and over time shrink to become babies? Are people

born with dark skin that lightens over time? Are people born
with wrinkled skin and then expand on the inside when
they get older? Are people born in the dirt, wrapped in
wooden boxes, and then pop up out of the ground fully
grown? Some (or all) of these questions sound completely
stupid. But it is only because you, a human being, have
the enviable status of already knowing the correct answer.
Scientific pursuit at the perimeter of discovery is not always
graced with such benefits.
Unquestionably, the greatest utility of an H-R Diagram is
what it can reveal about a cluster of stars that were all born
at about the same time. Astronomers officially call these
clusters of stars "star clusters. " The H-R Diagram for a star
cluster is a mere snapshot in time--and none of us will live
long enough to make an interesting motion picture of it.
Actually, a star cluster that had been filmed continuously
since the dawn of Homo sapiens would not show much
either. The next best thing we can do is to assemble as many
H-R Diagrams of star clusters as we can find . Indeed, this
exercise tells a remarkable story of stellar evolution. When
combined with mathematical models of stellar structure, the
life cycle of a star is revealed .
When a protostellar gas cloud collapses under its own
force of gravity, then the temperature of its core rises. In this
stage the cloud is large, and most of its luminosity is emitted
in the infrared . If you were to plot this unborn star on
the H-R Diagram, it would incubate in the region of high
luminosity and very cool temperature. If our nascent pro­
tostar has sufficient mass, then the core temperature will rise
high enough (10 million kelvins) to spark thermonuclear
fusion. Not only is hydrogen transmutated into helium, but
matter is converted to energy. When this happens . . . a star
is born.
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 157

The highest-luminosity stars are born with high mass (up

to one hundred times the mass of the Sun) and are extremely
rare in any volume of space . Their impressive luminosity,
however, allows plenty of them to be noticed out to great
distances. The lowest-luminosity stars are born with low
mass (as little as one-tenth the mass of the Sun) . They are the
most common variety of stars in space-although it would be
hard to convince yourself of this from a list of the brightest
stars of the nighttime sky. Typically only 1/lOOOth of the
birth mass of a star is consumed through thermonuclear
fusion over its entire life on the main sequence, which is a
luminous testament to the power of nuclear fusion.
While hydrogen is being converted to helium in its core,
the luminosity and temperature of a star will always place it
within the main sequence of the H-R Diagram. So when the
moment is right, the surface temperature of our infrared­
emitting protostar will rise as it vaults across the diagram to
land on the main sequence . A star spends 90 percent of its
life there, so it is no coincidence that 90 percent of all stars
are found on the main sequence . But what does it do next?
A montage of cluster diagrams shows that the high-mass,
high-luminosity stars are terribly short-lived . They evolve
from the main sequence in less than ten million years to
become supergiants, which last only for a cosmic moment or
tw o-about one hundred thousand years. The rarity of high­
mass stars is only partly related to their short life span . In a
freshly born cluster, the low-mass stars can outnumber the
high-mass stars by thousands to one . The revenge of the
high-mass stars, however, is realized through their blazing
luminosity. In any new cluster, it is always the handful of
high-mass stars that completely dominates the total light. In
the end, those supergiants that do not collapse and disap­
pear to form a black hole will die a violent death as a super­
nova explosion. All factors considered, if I were a high-
158 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

YOUNG OLDER OLDEST

t . .
.
. . .. I I

o11 '· 4Nt·"•

I I
. .
. .
. . . . I
•.• r:

,
. . I I •••
. .. I '
.. :. . :. :. . '"
•

�!t �,..
.

'
.

. -��· '1· ·
.
. '· ' .....
.. :
,.

Temperature
Figure 9.2. Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of a star duster at three
evolutionary stages . The stars of a young duster, when plotted in
the luminosity and temperature axis of the H-R Diagram, will lie
along the main sequence. When somewhat older, the highest mass
stars (the most luminous) will peel away from the main sequence
to become the supergiants. At old age, the main sequence has
peeled some more. Intermediate mass stars are now becoming red
giants, while stars that had already been red giants have died to
become the underlumious white dwarfs . For the oldest duster, the
underpopulated "instability strip" is drawn (dotted lines) where
one is likely to find periodic variable stars . For all known dusters,
there are always more stars born to the lower main sequence (with
low mass) than to the upper main sequence (with high mass) .

mass star, I would rather die as a supernova because your

exploded corpse entertains astronomers on Earth and you
remain in the observable universe.
Higher-ma ss stars have more mass (fuel) in their core,
but they exha ust it inexcusably fast, like the oversized, gas­
guzzling A merican cars of the 1 950s and 1960s . These auto­
motive monsters creations had big fuel tanks, but their gas
mileage was so poor that you needed the big tank j ust to
drive you rself to the next gas station .
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 159

After several billion years, all the stars from the high-mass
end of the main sequence have become giants. With a life
expectancy of several billion years, intermediate-mass stars
are now observed to peel from the main sequence. This "a­
peeling" transition happens relatively quickly, but if a cluster
has many stars (thousands) then you will almost always
catch one at every step of the transformation. As was true
for the supergiants, the red giant phase lasts only about 10
percent of a star's life span. For the intermediate-mass stars,
this amounts to several hundred million years.
When all usable nuclear fuel is exhausted, the red giants
gently lose their atmospheric envelope to interstellar space
and lay bare a hot, dense, degenerate core of compacted
protons and electrons that is otherwise known as a white
dwarf. The lost envelope becomes a planetary nebula. White
dwarfs (some of which are hot enough to look blue) have no
energy source. They are dead . All they can do is sit there in
space and cool off. As their temperature drops, so does their
luminosity. The double drop is what takes them diagonally
down the H-R Diagram, like a sinking dirigible . They ulti­
mately become red, and then invisible, as their luminosity
slides into optical oblivion. Again, we do not actually watch
this happen. We do not live long enough. Our conclu­
sions are drawn from carefully compared H-R Diagrams of
clusters and from mathematical models of dense matter as
it cools.
After several more billion years, we have exceeded the
age of the universe, for which there is clearly no example of
such a cluster. But if we could find one, then we would
expect the lowest-mass stars to still be chugging along. They
have the least amount of fuel, yet they use it very, very,
very slowly. Indeed, low-mass stars are the envy of the
automotive industry, with a fuel efficiency that grants them
a life expectancy that is hundreds of times greater than the
160 S O M E UNIFYING I D EAS I N T H E PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

age of the universe. One might call that eternal life-but I'd
still rather be a supernova.

Stellar Distances

A glowing light bulb, with a particular wattage stamped on

top, will remain that wattage no matter where in the uni­
verse you put it, as long as you keep the lamp plugged in.
The bulb will, however, appear dimmer or brighter de­
pending on its distance from you. The Sun, as a light bulb,
would have 400 yottawatts (4 x 1026 watts) stamped on top.
But is Polaris (the North Star) only the forty-ninth brightest
star in the nighttime sky because it is extremely luminous
and far away, or because it is underluminous and nearby?
You get the brightness for free; it is easily measured with a
light meter. But the luminosity-the wattage stamped on
top--remains uncertain. This converts directly to an uncer­
tainty in distance, which constitutes one of the greatest intel­
lectual obstacles that an astronomer faces in the line of duty.
Let it be known that there is surely a Nobel Prize that awaits
the person who devises a way to measure directly the dis­
tances to everything in the universe.
One method to infer luminosity, which allows you to
bypass the distance dilemma and which is reasonably accu­
rate for main sequence stars, requires that you first estimate
the star's temperature. One can straightforwardly obtain this
from the measured color, which will be more precise than the
color estimated by simply looking at the star with the un­
aided eye. Next, simply locate this temperature on the tem­
perature axis of the H-R Diagram and slide upward until you
intersect the main sequence . From that spot, all you need do
is slide sideways and read the appropriate tick-mark from
the luminosity axis. The diagonal property of the main se­
quence ensures that every temperature is accompanied by a
 The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 161

unique luminosity, although the inherent thickness of the

main sequence introduces some unavoidable uncertainty.
The distance now follows readily from a simple and widely
invoked formula that uses the measured brightness and the
newly found luminosity:
L uminos ity
Brightness ( "
.

D 1stance)2
oc

This basic formula can be used for stars in the galaxy and for
galaxies in the universe . It will even work with your well­
traveled light bulb.
An improved distance indicator would somehow use the
giants, because you can detect them at greater distances than
main sequence stars. Fortunately for astronomers, there are
specific combinations of luminosity and temperature among
the giants that are somewhat upsetting to their structure.
This region is dubbed the "instability strip" because it is
where a star becomes-you guessed it-unstable.
Most of these stars pulsate as their outer gaseous enve­
lopes expand and contract. Two famous varieties of unstable
giants are the "RR Lyrae" variables and the "Cepheid" vari­
ables. Their instability leads to predictable and periodic fluc­
tuations in brightness, which correlates well with their true
(average) luminosity. Nearly every star passes through the
instability strip at least once in its life. In spite of this, vari­
able stars remain relatively uncommon because they do not
spend much time being unstable. Similarly, a snapshot taken
of you at a random time of day will likely show you at work,
or asleep, but not in the bathroom . This is true even though
you presumably go the bathroom at least once a day; you
simply do not spend much time there (unless, of course,
you have gastrointestinal problems that prevent you from
leaving) . Such is the way with the rapidly evolving stars in
the instability strip of the H-R diagram.
162 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

The RR Lyrae and Cepheid variables together represent a

key step in the ladder of methods that allows us to derive
distances within the Milky Way and beyond .

Your Ex-Lover

We have chosen the scale of our H-R Diagram to display

the major categories of known stars, inclusive of the un­
born and the postdead . But in principle, anything that
radiates can have its temperature and luminosity plotted.
You could even plot your ex-lover. This person probably
wasn't so hot-about 310 kelvins sounds correct. This tem­
perature falls off-scale to the right on the H-R Diagram.
Your ex-lover probably wasn't so bright, either; about
1/4,000,000, 000, 000,000,000,000,000th the luminosity of the
Sun is likely to be correct 1 • This luminosity falls far off-scale
downward on the H-R Diagram. Actually, regardless of how
you feel about your ex-spouse, most other (living) people on
Earth would fall near your ex-spouse in the plane of the H-R
Diagram, including you .
The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram now serves as the bed­
rock of our understanding of stellar evolution . It is an indis­
pensable tool to nearly every professional astronomer. And
since the most basic constituents of the universe are stars,
one can make a strong claim that the progress of twentieth­
century astronomy would have been severely retarded in the
absence Hertzsprung's and Russell's a-peeling contribution.

1. This is "one four-septillionth" of the Sun's luminosity, which is about equal

to the luminosity of a 1 00-watt light bulb. The absolute temperature of 310
kelvins equals the average human body temperature of 98.6° Fahrenheit .
 · 10 ·
Highlights from the Periodic Table
of the Elements

Second only to the multiplication table, or perhaps King AI­

thur' s Round Table, the Periodic Table of the Elements is the
most famous table in the world .
h e Periodic Table of the Elements, you may remember, is
that mysterious chart of boxes with cryptic letters in them
that hung in the front of your high school chemistry class­
room. The Table is packed with information that excites the
chemist, intrigues the lay person, and bores the poet. It
contains the ninety-four elements found naturally in the uni­
verse and fifteen elements that are not.
You may also remember the subatomic particle trinity­
electrons, protons, and neutrons. Atoms normally contain
protons and neutrons in their nucleus surrounded by clouds
of electrons in quantum orbits. The Periodic Table displays a
sequence of atoms whose identities are defined by the num­
ber of protons they contain. By this simple scheme, the table
"starts" with atomic number 1 , the element with one proton
in its nucleus. And it ends (for now) with atomic number
109, the element with one hundred and nine protons in its
nucleus. The Periodic Table of the Elements is complete from
1 to 109. Over this interval, we will not one day discover an
element that has to be inserted somewhere between two
consecutive elements. The table contains all known elements
that have ever existed in the universe or in our laboratories .
You might ask, "If the Periodic Table is just one long
sequence, then why isn't it displayed horizontally in the
classroom the way the alphabet is displayed in elementary
school?" The ordered beauty of the Periodic Table is found
in its grouping of elements with similar chemical properties.
In a normal, undisturbed atom, we find that as the number
of protons rises from 1 to 1 09, so does the number of elec­
trons. They surround the nucleus in larger and larger pat­
terns of clouds that contain up to 2, 8, 1 8, and 32 electrons .
166 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

The exact number of electrons per cloud along with the

cloud's size and orientation is determined from the quantum
mechanics branch of twentieth-century physics (no relation
to auto mechanics) . Notice that rows one through six down
of the table contain 2, 8, 8, 18, 18, and 32 elements. Row
seven still awaits the discovery of atomic numbers 110
through 118 for it to be a complete row of 32 elements.
The chemical properties of an element (such as the list of
elements with which it can bond to form a molecule) are
determined primarily by the behavior of its outermost elec­
trons. Elements found vertically in columns have their outer
electrons similarly configured and thus tend to form com­
pounds with the same elements . Since these chemical prop­
erties repeat row after row, we find that what might have
been named "The Element Table" has earned the more lofty
title "The Periodic Table of the Elements . "
Since a n element is defined by the number of protons in
its nucleus, we conclude that neutrons can come and go
without altering the element's identity. In nature (this in­
cludes Earth and the rest of the universe) there is a well­
researched number of neutrons that the nucleus of each
element is most likely to have. For some elements, however,
there are isotopes where their neutron count renders them
unstable . In response, such an element will transform into
the same element, but with fewer neutrons, or in other cases
it will decay into a lighter, completely different element.
Each time such a transmutation occurs, energy is released
that can, at times, be enormous. This is not magic. These are
elements following well-understood laws of nuclear physics.
The versions of elements that readily decay are termed "un­
stable," although some elements are unstable no matter
how many neutrons you give them. These are the famous
"radioactive" elements such as radon, uranium, and plu­
tonium.
 Periodic Table of the Elements
I 2

H He
H,._ -
SYMBOL
, 4 5 6 7 • 9 10

Li Be c B c N 0 F Ne
NAME
u..,;... ...,_ - c.llao N� °"""" - -

II 12 IJ 14 15 16 17 ••

Na Mg
�- Al Si p s Cl Ar
-- ....... - - ....... s- Cdorioo Alp
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 :16 27 21 29 JO JI J2 JJ J4 J5 J6

K Ca Sc Ti v Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr
- c.ia.. -- 1illlmi.. v..- c-;- Maoa- ... Oilioll N'icbl � - -- - - - - """""

17 JI J9 40 41 42 4J 44 45 46 47 ... 49 JO 51 52 5J 54

Rb Sr y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
...... -- y- -- N-.. Maly- T-. ......... - ....... sa... Cadmium ....... T• -...,. T- lodiDo -

" " 72 7J 74 75 76 77 71 79 IO " 12 n 14 15 16

!
Cs Ba l Hf Ta w Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
c- ·- - T- ,._ ....... - lridiom ....... Oalol .......
.. I.ad - - - ......
I _,
17 II 104 103 ICl6 107 ... 109 1 10 Ill
I
I
Fr Ra I Unq Unp Unh Uns Uno Unn ? ? . . .
- .._ ._ u..ilpooli- u..ilbni- u..;....... - u.--
I
·· · · · · · ···· · · · · · ···· · · · · · ···· · · ·
. . . .. . . .: .. . . . . . .... . . . . . .... .
. - -·
. . .. . .
57 ,. 59 60 61 62 6J 64 65 66 67 61 69 70 71

La Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho Er Tm Yb Lu
.._._ c..;.., -- -..,.... - s-.. l!mupiam - T- DUpnioWm - -... n..uam y-- ..-....

19 90 91 92 9J 94 ,,, 96 97 91 99 100 101 ICl2 IOJ

Ac Th Pa u Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
Actimi- nan.. - Unoi- ""'""'"'"' - Ammiciono Carium .......
. .. c- &mlMi... ....... - N-... Lawrmciwn
168 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

Of the 109 elements, only twenty-eight were known i n

the year 1 800. In 1814 the Swedish chemist J . ] . Berzelius
introduced the "initial letter" scheme by which element
names are abbreviated . By 1 850 another thirty-one had been
discovered, which prompted worldwide interest in a means
by which the elements could be ordered. The basic form of
the Periodic Table as we know it today was first published in
1869 by the Soviet chemist Dimitri lvanovich Mendeleev. Of
course, there were some blank spaces, but by 1925 almost all
the naturally occurring elements had been discovered .
Element names are normally assigned by their discover­
ers . These names form a rich collection of references to indi­
vidual scientists, mythology, astrology, alchemy, geogra­
phy, and chemical history. Most chemical symbols are de­
rived from Latin, Greek, and German, which in nearly all
cases resembles the common English usage . Among these
109 elements are some that deserve special attention here
owing to their unusual properties, their relevance to human
exi stence, or their importance in astronomy.
Let' s meet these members of this not-so-exclusive table .

Hydrogen (1H). With only one proton in its nucleus, hydro­

gen is the lightest of all elemen ts. It is the only element that,
in i ts most common form, contains no neutrons . In other
words, if you ever see a proton all by itself, it's just the
nucleus of a hyd ro gen a tom . Over 90 percent of all the atoms
in th e universe a nd in the Sun are hydrogen . It should be no
s u r pris e that it is also the mo st abundant element in life
on Earth .
In our dynamic universe, electrons come a n d go . At cooler
temperatures it is normal fo r atoms to contain their full com­
plement of electrons (the same number as protons) and are
thus declared neutra l . Under higher temperatures, an atom
can lose one or more of its electrons and thu s become "ion-
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 169

ized . " Ionized hydrogen would, of course, be found inside

stars (in the form of hydrogen plasma), but it is also com­
monly found in gas clouds that are in the vicinity of blue­
hot high-luminosity stars whose high-energy radiation kicks
loose the lone electron.
"Neutral" hydrogen is probably the most common form
of hydrogen in interstellar space. As noted in chapter 7,
radio photons are occasionally emitted by neutral hydrogen
atoms at a wavelength of 21 centimeters. These precious
photons allow us to detect and map the gas content in gas­
rich spiral and irregular galaxies .
In the coldest and densest of the gas clouds you are likely
to find hydrogen chemically bound to itself to form "molecu­
lar hydrogen. " These clouds of molecules are the homes of
star formation that is soon to begin.
On Earth, hydrogen gas is isolated easily from the water
molecule. It is lighter than air, which made it a popular filler
for the early generations of blimps. But hydrogen is also
extremely flammable. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg, a
hydrogen-filled German dirigible (a blimp with ribbing),
caught fire over Lakehurst, New Jersey. The heavier-than-air
gondola could no longer enjoy the buoyancy of an attached
blimp. Thirty-five died out of the ninety-seven passengers
and crew. Hydrogen is no longer used to fill blimps.
Hydrogen under pressure exhibits properties that render
it indistinguishable from a metal. This "metallic" fo rm of
hydrogen was first produced in 1972 at the Lawrence Liv­
ermore Laboratories in California . It is believed to be the
primary component of Jupiter's core and is considered to be
the source of Jupiter's treme n d ou s magnetic field .
Beca us e h y dro gen is the simplest element, it forms the
n a t u ra l s t arti ng point for thermonuclear fu sion . A t a mere
20 million d egrees Fahrenheit ("thermo" ) , hydrogen nuclei
("nuclear" ) will combine ("fusion") to form helium, the next
170 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

heaviest element. The core of the Sun does this to about

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hydro­
gen atoms (1038) per second. This mass (con)fusion releases
energy that supports the gaseous Sun against gravitational
collapse and, of course, bathes Earth with life-sustaining
light. In a remarkable duplication of this hydrogen fusion,
humans have created life-annihilating hydrogen bombs that
are the bulwark of today's nuclear arsenals.

Helium (2He) . It has been known to astronomers for nearly

one and a half centuries that the presence of elements can be
inferred from their telltale features in the spectrum of certain
stars. In 1868 there was an element discovered in the spec­
trum of the Sun which nobody could readily identify from
Earth-based experiments . This new element was named "he­
lium" from helios, the Greek work for Sun. On Earth, helium
was discovered twenty-seven years later.
Helium is the second lightest element, with two protons
in its nucleus. It is a distant second in the universe's abun­
dance list. No more than 8 percent of all atoms are helium .
The atomic physics o f the early, hot big bang i s expected to
have produced about 6 percent helium. The extra 2 percent
of the helium was forged in the cores of stars over the last
ten billion years of stellar evolution. Like hydrogen, helium
can fuse to form heavier elements. But once a star has ex­
hausted its core hydrogen supply (leaving helium as the
residue), it may find that it is not massive enough to provide
a high enough core temperature to fuse helium. Such a star
will become a red giant and eventually lose its tenuous outer
shells, thus exposing a small, hot helium core. This is the
helium white dwarf.
Helium is lighter than air, and it is inert. Since it does not
react chemically to anything, it is nonflammable. Helium
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 171

became the immediate replacement gas for all blimps and

dirigibles after the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. Life on Earth
has no use for inert elements-the human body is 0.00 per­
cent helium. But if you ever want to sound like a Munchkin
from The Wizard of Oz, just inhale some helium and say hello
to somebody. The fact that helium is inert means it won't
harm you (unless that is the only gas you ever choose to
breathe) . And the fact that it is lighter (less dense) than air
means your vocal chords will vibrate such that you produce
a higher pitched sound. Incidentally, your voice would be
even higher pitched if you inhaled some hydrogen, but if
somebody lit a match near your mouth you would probably
explode.

Lithium (3Li). Lithium is a fragile element that is not favored

in the thermonuclear fusion sequence. A little bit was pro­
duced in the big bang, but only moderately high tempera­
tures and a spare proton are required to break apart lithium's
three protons to form two helium nuclei. For this reason
the cosmic abundance of lithium puts a strong constraint
on the details of the high-temperature physics of the early
universe.
Lithium on Earth is a very soft metal-you can cut it with
a butter knife-that reacts explosively with water or water
vapor. You have probably never seen it outside of a chemis­
try lab. In small doses lithium has a tranquilizing effect on
the nervous system, which is why it is often prescribed in
the treatment of manic-depressive illness.
Skipping a few elements brings us to . . .

Carbon (6C) . Carbon is a "sticky" element in the sense that it

bonds strongly with many different elements (including it­
self), and it can be bound in many different ways. Some
172 S O M E U N I FY I N G I D E A S I N T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

familiar forms of pure carbon include graphite (commonly

found in "lead" pencils and charcoal briquettes), diamond,
and the jumbo molecule buckminsterfullerine (or "bucky­
ball")-named in honor of R. Buckminster Fuller for the
similarity between this molecular form of carbon and Fuller's
famous geodesic domes .
Life on Earth owes its diversity to the chemical properties
of this single element. In short, life is carbon-based. You can
prove this to yourself. Take any life form at all (which in­
cludes all the food you eat) and leave it in the oven too
long. The heat will eventually break the molecular bonds
and expose the black charred carbon remains. If you do this
to a rock or a wrench, they will get hot, but they won't turn
black. Carbon atoms comprise one-fourth of all the atoms in
the universe that are not hydrogen or helium. It is an excel­
lent bet that if life exists elsewhere in the universe, then it is
carbon-based as well .
Carbon is created quite readily in high-mass stars that
have converted their core supply of hydrogen into helium.
The helium, when brought to over two hundred million
degrees Fahrenheit, will form the very simple reaction

2He + 2He + 2 He = 6C + Energy

You will notice that the three helium atoms provide the
required total of six protons to make carbon. Stars that un­
dergo this reaction are in their red giant phase. A lower
mass subset of these red giants will stop their thermonuclear
fusion with carbon in their core. In time, the star's red outer
shell will float off into space, laying bare its hot, dense core
of carbon . This is a carbon white dwarf. White dwarfs do not
make their own energy, so they cool continuously as they
radiate into space . Carbon white dwarfs are affectionately
called interstellar "charcoal briquettes" by some researchers
in the field .
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 173

Nitrogen (7N). It may be a surprise to some people that the

air we breathe is composed of mostly nitrogen (about 78
percent). Nitrogen combines easily with three hydrogen
atoms to make household ammonia (NH3) . Ammonia, as
well as many other nitrogen and carbon-based molecules
such as acetylene, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, and
methanol, are detected in cold interstellar gas clouds. These
molecules tend to emit microwaves, which we detect on
Earth with special microwave telescopes that look very much
like cable television satellite dishes. Thus we have a way to
map the cold gas component of a galaxy's structure.

Oxygen (80). Oxygen constitutes nearly two-thirds of all the

atoms in Earth's crust. When bound to silicon it makes sili­
con dioxide (Si02), which is the active ingredient in sand,
glass, and quartz. Oxygen is also the third most abundant
element in the Sun and the universe. It is forged in th e cores
of massive red giant stars.
Contrary to popular belief, this element is not flammable.
If you don't believe me, you can perform a simple test. Light
a match. See if all the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere bursts
into flame s--of course this won't happen. However, oxygen
promotes combustion while not being itself flammable. This
is why the match burns and not the atmosphere. If Earth's
atmosphere were 100 percent oxygen (it is only 21 perce nt
oxygen), then when you lit the match the flame would
spread rapidly to your body, and you would combust almost
as fast as the matchtip. This is precisely what happened in
January 1967 to Edward White, Roger Chaffee, and Vi rgil
Grissom in the first Apollo space mission. While performing
tests in their closed command module (filled with 1 00 per­
cen t oxygen) at their Cape Kennedy launch pad, a spark
acciden tally appeared . Everything burnable burned . The
three astronauts were dead within seconds . The subsequent
174 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

Apollo missions were delayed so that the command mod­

ule could be redesigned to contain combustion-resistant
components and be closer to atmospheric percentages of
oxygen.
That oxygen promotes combustion is not entirely unre­
lated to the utility of oxygen in the human body. Oxygen is
the basis of animal metabolism-the ability to convert food
into energy-which is not to be confused with animal mag­
netism.
Atmospheric oxygen is normally found with two atoms
bound to each other, which is commonly written 02 . When a
source of energy such as lightning is provided, atmospheric
oxygen can add a third atom to become 03 . This form of
oxygen is better known as ozone. The ozone layer resides in
the upper atmosphere of Earth where it absorbs over 99
percent of the harmful ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma
rays from the Sun.

Neon (10Ne) . This inert element is most commonly seen in

those skinny glass tubes that are used to advertise a product
or service. The neon in these tubes glows orange. The enter­
tainment and gambling mecca Las Vegas would be the city
of Dark Shadows without it.

Sodium (11Na) . Symbol from the Latin Natrium. Like lithium

(directly above it on the Periodic Table), sodium is a soft
metal that will react violently with water.
Astronomers have met sodium in other ways. The biggest
form of pollution to the mountaintop observational astrono­
mer is not toxic waste or automobile fumes. It is street light.
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, most American
cities swapped the old-fashioned, dim, incandescent light
bulbs for the bright, energy-efficient, high-pressure sodium
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 175

vapor lamps. The sky is now brighter (more polluted) than

ever before. One of the most heavily used observatory com­
plexes in the world, the Kitt Peak National Observatory, is
about sixty miles from Tucson, Arizona, and 7,000 feet above
sea level. In an extraordinary response to this problem of
light pollution, the entire city of Tucson agreed to use a
special variety of low-pressure sodium street light that is
far less polluting to sensitive astronomical measurements of
stellar spectra. Only three thousand cities to go.

Silicon (14Si). Silicon is a "kissing cousin" of carbon . Notice

it immediately below carbon in the Periodic Table. The ar­
rangement of silicon's outer electrons resembles those of
carbon . For this reason, silicon and carbon are chemically
similar. There is an entire branch of chemistry that investi­
gates what happens when carbon atoms are replaced with
silicon atoms in the panoply of molecules of the carbon rep­
ertoire.
One of silicon's many uses is that it is the ideal material in
which to embed microcircuitry and electronics-hence the
thought-provoking concept that modern computers are sili­
con-based life.
A minor revolution in astronomy began in the 1980s when
ultra light-sensitive silicon-based detectors called charged
coupled devices (CCDs) began to be used in place of older
photographic detection methods. Astronomers now rely
heavily upon CCD technology to detect the faintest of stars
and galaxies out to the farthest reaches of the universe.
During the Vietnam War, early versions of ultra light-sensi­
tive detectors were used to assist military operations. Some
American soldiers were equipped with specialized spotting
scopes on nighttime "search and kill" missions. The search­
ing part was aided by starlight.
176 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S IN T H E P H Y S I C A L U N I V E R S E

Titanium ( 22Ti) . As strong as steel yet weighs only half as

much, titanium is used in expensive bicycles and expensive
airplanes. In astrophysics, most stars have more oxygen
atoms than carbon atoms in their atmosphere. If the star also
happens to be cool and red, then its visual spectrum is
dominated by features that are attributed to the molecule tita­
nium oxide (Ti02) . Note that the appearance of elements or
molecules in a star's spectrum is a property of the star's
composition and surface temperature . A hot blue star may
also have titanium, but blue stars are too hot to make Ti02,
and titanium itself does not produce spectral features that
are detected easily .

Iron (26Fe) . Symbol from the Latin Ferrum. Human blood

chemistry is based on iron. Unbeknownst to the ancient
Romans, blood is red for exactly the same reason that the
planet Mars is red-the existence of iron-oxygen com­
pounds. To associate the blood-red planet after their god of
war was not only visually but chemically appropriate.
Even apart from its role in blood chemistry, iron may well
be the most important element in the universe. The inward
gravitational pressures of the highest-mass stars have no
trouble raising their core temperature to fuse, in sequence,
hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, carbon to oxygen,
and so forth up the Periodic Table. This cosmic transmuta­
tion from element to element is an alchemist's dream. At
each stage, energy is released outward to support the gas­
eous star against further collapse. As a direct consequence,
the star's core gets hotter and hotter, and at each stage a
cooler shell of the previous nuclear fuel is left that surrounds
the core . At the same time, for a variety of other complicated
reasons, the outer layers of the star expand and cool so that
the star becomes what is commonly called a red giant.
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 177

Eventually, the core fusion reactions arrive at iron sur­

rounded by an "onion skin" shell structure of the cooler,
previous fuel sources.
Up to now, the fusion of elements in the core has released
energy and provided a sense of outward stability for the
star. Stars are in the business of making energy. They know
nothing else. But the energy that binds iron is less than the
energy that binds any other element. If you fuse iron, the
reaction will absorb energy. The star can no longer resist
collapse, which occurs in just a matter of hours. All onion
skin layers of the star spontaneously descend to an inner
region. In a response not unlike a titanic bounce, these layers
(formerly cool and safe) now undergo total and uncon­
strained thermonuclear fusion. The entire star blows its guts
all over interstellar space in a supernova explosion. The lu­
minosity of the star will increase a billion fold in a matter of
hours . During the explosion, elements heavier than iron are
formed. From this enrichment comes planets, asteroids, ex­
otic molecules, and life itself. Yes, we are all stardust from
some distant cosmic catastrophe. Blame it on iron.

Nickel (28Ni) . Ordinary nickel is the stuff that one might

suppose to be the contents of the U.S. five-cent piece. But
there is a more astrophysically interesting version of nickel
that contains two fewer neutrons than everyday nickel. This
neutron-deficient nickel is unstable . During a supernova ex­
plosion, there is a phase where the luminosity of the super­
nova is driven entirely by the energy that is liberated when
nickel decays to cobalt.
Nickel is magnetic, as are iron (Fe) and cobalt (Co), to its
left in the Periodic Table . Note that the U . S . coin known as
the "nickel" does not even quiver when a household magnet
is brought near it. These elements, when alloyed with alumi-
178 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

num (Al), make what are called "alnico" magnets, which are
among the strongest in the world.

Copper (29Cu) . Symbol from the Latin Cuprum. In the Star

Trek television and movie series, the blood of Mr. Spock
(the pointy-eared, emotionless halfbreed Vulcan) is based on
copper. Since copper turns green when mixed with oxygen,
Mr. Spock has green blood . Copper is also cheap, and it
conducts electricity very well, so electrical wires are mostly
copper.

Zinc (3oZn) . One of those "minerals" that are supposed to be

part of a healthy diet for humans, its presence aids in the
digestion of proteins and the removal of carbon dioxide
(C02) from the blood. It is also a major ingredient in U.S.
coins, pennies included.

Arsenic (33As) . One of those "minerals" that could kill you

posthaste, this used to be an active ingredient in murder
mysteries.

Bromine (35Br) . Bromine is of no special astrophysical inter­

est. Linguists, however, may appreciate that the name is
from the Greek bromos, which translates to "evil-smelling. "

Krypton (36Kr) . A n inert, stable gas that, o f course, resists

combining with all other elements . Don't tell anyone, but
there is no chemical reason why krypton-ite, even if it really
existed, should trigger bad reactions in Superman.

Strontium (38Sr) . There is a radioactive version of strontium

(the notorious strontium 90, with 38 protons and 52 elec­
trons) that is one of the "waste" products of the atmospheric
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 179

atomic bomb tests of the late 1940s and the 1950s. When
farm animals grazed the contaminated grass in the vicinity
of these test sites, their bodies absorbed the strontium in
place of calcium. Notice that these two elements appear
above and below each other in the Periodic Table; they are
chemically similar. Hence, all the calcium-rich food products
derived from these farm animals (milk, cheese, bone meal,
and so on) were contaminated by radioactive strontium. Hu­
mans aren't farm animals, but chemistry is chemistry. The
human body can't tell the difference between calcium and
strontium either.

Yttrium (39Y). One of those elements that looks hard to pro­

nounce, Yttrium, along with Terbium (65Tb), Erbium (68Er),
and Ytterbium (70Yb) are elements named for Ytterby, a
sleepy village near Stockholm, Sweden. The town has a
quarry of unusual minerals that holds deposits of these pre­
viously unidentified elements.

Molybdenum (42Mo) . When this element is combined with

manganese, you get the tongue-twister manganese-molyb­
denum. This is a very light, rigid steel alloy that is a favorite
of bicycle frame builders .

Technetium (43Tc) . If you look up the prefix "tech-" in the

dictionary, you will see synonyms such as "artificial" or
"man-made. " Technetium is radioactive and is not found
naturally anywhere on Earth. It was the first element to be
artificially produced . In spite of its nonexistence on Earth,
technetium has appeared in the spectra of certain cool red
stars. But technetium is unstable-if you have time to watch
a pile of it, you will notice that half of it will decay within
200,000 years . We readily conclude that technetium was not
180 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

present when the star was born typically millions or billions

of years ago. It must have recently come from the interstellar
medium or, more likely, it must have formed near the star's
surface . To use unstable elements for this kind of deduction
forms a very powerful tool to constrain theoretical models of
stellar composition and evolution.

Silver (47Ag). Symbol from the Latin Argentum. Silver is an

even better conductor of electricity than copper. To keep
most people from digging up the streets to steal power lines,
electric companies wisely use copper instead .

Tin (50Sn) . Symbol from the Latin Stannum. "Tin" cans are
actually made of steel (with a micro-thin layer of tin on the
inside) . Household "tin" foil is, of course, made of alu­
minum .

Iodine (531) . Yes, this is the active ingredient in the antiseptic

reddish stuff that your parents may have put on your bruises
and made your injury look twenty times worse . But ad­
vances in medicine are such that if you were born after 1965
your childhood injuries were probably treated with topical
antibiotics rather than iodine .

Tungsten (74 W) . Symbol from the German Wolfram. Tungsten

has the highest melting point of any element: 6, 170° Fahren­
heit. Thus, there is no better choice for the filament of an
ordinary light bulb . It is also used in the contact points of a
car's distributor cap and in armor-piercing bullets.

Osmium (760s) . Here is the densest element on the entire

Periodic Table . A cube of it tha t measures one foot on each
side weighs about two thousand pounds. Osmium would,
of cou rse, make an ideal gift as a paperweight.
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 181

Iridium (771r) . Another dense element, a cubic foot of iridium

would weigh only a few pounds less than a cubic foot of
osmium .

Platinum (78Pt) . Osmium, iridium, and platinum are the

three densest elements. They fall consecutively in the Peri­
odic Table, as do iron, cobalt, and nickel, the magnetic three­
some two rows above.
The international standard meter used to be the length of
a 90 percent platinum-1 0 percent iridium alloy bar held at
constant temperature in the International Bureau of Weights
and Measures in Sevre, France . In 1960, however, the meter
was redefined (so that you cannot look at it or touch it) by
international agreement to be 1 , 650, 763. 73 wavelengths of
an orange-red spectral feature in the element krypton-86.
With this definition, the length of the meter could be repro­
duced in any appropriately equipped laboratory. But now
that the speed of light has been set, the exact length of the
meter (as noted in chapter 3) becomes the distance light
travels in 1/299792458th second-although this definition is
somewhat less practical for use in the laboratory.

Gold (79Au). Symbol from the Latin Aurum. The last I

checked it was several hundreds of dollars per ounce . Gold
is remarkably resistant to corrosion. It was the metal of
choice for the engraved information plaque that was
attached to the interplanetary space probe Pioneer 1 0 . The
gold plaque uses symbols to convey among other things the
point of origin of the space probe, the number of planets in
the solar system, and the relative size of humans to the
probe's antenna . Incidentally, Pioneer 1 0, launched in March
1973, has now passed the orbit of Pluto and is on its way to
the depths of interstellar space .
Gold is also quite dense. If you managed to toss a stan-
182 S O M E U N I F Y I N G I D E A S I N T H E P H Y S I CA L U N I V E R S E

dard Fort Knox-style gold brick at your best friend's chest,

you would probably break some ribs.

Mercury (80Hg) . Symbol from the Greek Hydrargyrum. Mer­

cury is a liquid at room temperature. It is quite fun to play
with because it balls up and rolls around the floor like little
liquid BB's from a BB gun . But mercury can be dangerous. If
it enters your blood stream it can induce, among other
things, severe personality changes. Senility is inevitable in
advanced stages of mercury poisoning. Sir Isaac Newton
liked to play with mercury. (Actually, he spent a big part of
his life playing with chemical elements. ) Some historians
have hypothesized that mercury poisoning led to Sir Isaac's
reduced scientific output in his later years. We should be
grateful that he did not play with mercury until after he
invented calculus, discovered the laws of gravity and optics,
and invented the reflecting telescope. This should be a les­
son to all of us.

Lead (82Pb). Symbol from the Latin Plumbum. Lead appears

in the chapter on Venus in many introductory astronomy
textbooks . At 900° Fahrenheit, the surface of the beautiful
planet Venus is well above the temperature required to melt
lead. Lead is also poisonous which is why it is no longer
found in household paint and why it is no longer used
in America as an octane-boosting gasoline additive. Lead
poisoning in a pregnant woman can lead to birth defects,
and if lead is ingested by a growing child then physical and
intellectual growth may be stunted .

Radon (86Rn) . Like other radioactive elements, this inert, un­

stable, radioactive gas wants to decay and release high-en­
ergy gamma rays. These are the kind of rays that can induce
leukemia and muta te your genes. Radon emerges naturally
 Highlights from the Periodic Table 183

from soil and is therefore common in the environment. It

can thus pose health hazards for people who live in super­
insulated homes, where radon gets trapped as it emanates
from the earth beneath the house .

Uranium (92U) . Named for the planet Uranus, the seventh

planet from the Sun . An unstable isotope of uranium with
143 neutrons was used by the United States in 1945 to kill
over 50,000 Japanese residents of Hiroshima in the first
atomic fission bomb ever dropped in warfare. Another
50,000 died later .-from delayed physiological reactions to
high-energy radiation exposure . If you collide free neutrons
with uranium, the nucleus will break apart into several
lighter elements and liberate more free neutrons that serve
to break apart other uranium atoms. In a specially designed
enclosure, a chain reaction ensues, which releases an enor­
mous amount of energy. This is called "fission", which is
the basis of all twentieth-century nuclear power plants.
The energy liberated in a fission reaction was originally
postulated as a possible energy source for the Sun . But the
rarity of uranium and other large elements, and the availabil­
ity of hydrogen and helium, has led to the more realistic and
correct view that thermonuclear hydrogen fusion powers the
Sun rather than fission.

Neptunium (93Np). Named for the planet Neptune, the

eighth planet from the Sun. All versions of this element are
unstable, but it can be found in trace amounts in uranium
ores.

Plutonium (94Pu) . Named for the planet Pluto, the ninth

planet from the Sun. Plu tonium, like neptunium, can be
found in trace amounts in uranium ores. Plu tonium may
also be considered the largest naturally occurring element.
184 SOME UNIFYING IDEAS I N THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

Apparently, once was not enough. The second and last

atomic bomb ever used in warfare was in 1945---three days
after the Hiroshima bomb-when the United States dropped
a plutonium fission bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing about
20, 000 residents. This death toll, as in Hiroshima, nearly
doubled after deaths from radiation exposure were tabu­
lated . Many descendants from the survivors of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki were born mutated and disfigured . The casual­
ties of war extended to the unborn.

Americium (95Am) . If there had been a known tenth planet,

this element might have been named for it.

Mendelevium (101Md). It took 101 elements but Mendeleev,

the "father" of the Periodic Table, was finally honored with
this unstable element.

Unnilquadium (104Unq), Unnilpentium (105Unp), Unnilhexium

(106Unh), Unnilseptium (107Uns) , Unniloctium (108Uno) and
Unnilnonium (109Unn) . None of these heaviest and most re­
cently isolated elements "live" for longer than about a mi­
nute (give or take a moment or two) . They are created out of
atomic curiosity in nuclear laboratories . I give their names
primarily because they sound funny. After some suggestions
are put forth by their discoverers, these elements will ulti­
mately be renamed for a person, place, or thing by the Inter­
national Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
The truly great ideas of science tend to be both aestheti­
cally beau tiful and profound . It is no surprise that these are
attributes shared by the great works of poetry. If you are a
poet and you have read this far, then perhaps you will
confess that the Periodic Table of the Elements is no less
inspired than your periodic lines of words.
PART T H RE E
•

Astronomy Is
Looking Up
 11· ·

Menagerie

There are eighty-eight keys in a piano, and there are eighty­

eight constellations in the sky. The eighty-eight piano keys
make music. The eighty-eight constellations make a zoo com­
posed of one insect, one crustacean, one angry arachnid, five
fishes (with a pair among them), five reptiles, nine birds, three
women, twelve men (with a set of twins among them), five
canines (inclusive of a hunting duo), fourteen other mammals,
five mythical-magical creatures, and thirty inanimate objects
that include three boat parts, ten scientific instruments, one
musical instrument, two crowns, a flat-topped mountain, some­
body's hair, and a river.
L supplement your nighttime viewing, here is some un­
derpublicized information that a well-informed stargazer
should know.
From a species point of view, the following constellations
are in the record-book of celestial creatures:
Tallest: Camelopardalis, the Giraffe .
Heaviest: Hydra, the Whale
Smallest/Lightest: Musca, the Fly
Most Poisonous: Scorpius, the Scorpion
Fastest: Pegasus, the Winged Horse
Strongest: Hercules
Prettiest: Pavo, the Peacock
Ugliest: Medusa's snake-ensnarled bloody sev­
ered head, as displayed by Perseus

From a connect-the-dots point of view, the constellation

Orion has the rare combination of large size, bright stars,
and an outline that resembles the hunter he is purported to
be. His neck, shoulders, waist (belt), knees, sword, and
shield are all clearly defined . Unfortunately, he hasn't much
of a head-there is a big empty space above his neck. There
is some controversy about whether Orion is left-handed or
right-handed . Early drawings and woodcuts from the fif­
teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries show the back
of Orion's head, his rear end, and the rest of his loin-cloth­
draped body facing away. The star pattern requires that he
wield his wooden battle-dub with his left hand, which
makes Orion the world's largest and most famous lefty.
Illustrated globes of the celestial sphere from the same pe­
riod (an excellent collection may be found at the Musee
190 ASTRONOMY Is LOOKING UP

National des Techniques in Paris) also depict Orion from the

rear, even though the constellations are intended to be
viewed from the "other side" of the sky and thus should be
drawn in reverse . More recent sketches of Orion (probably
drawn by righties) show him face on as he wields his club in
his right hand.
Orion's sword is commonly illustrated over a short string
of stars that hangs from his belt and dangles between his
legs. I have never hunted with a sword and club, but of all
the places on my anatomy that I might carry a sword, it
seems to me that between the legs would be low on my list.
Such is the cost of connecting the dots.
The stars in Pegasus, the flying horse, are not quite as
bright as those in Orion, but they are just as majestic. Clearly
visible are four stars of the "Great Square" that form the
horse's body. Front legs drape below it. Extending forward
is a slightly bent line of stars that resembles the curve of a
horse's neck and head. You must rely on your imagination
for its wings. It is not commonly discussed that Pegasus is
only a half a horse. You must also invoke your imagination
if you wish to picture Pegasus's rear end, because the con­
stellation Andromeda occupies the region that would other­
wise complete the horse. By coincidence of configuration,
the interior of the Great Square of Pegasus is remarkably
devoid of visible stars-the square is as impressive for its
near-square geometry as it is for its emptiness. And unbe­
knownst to our empty-bellied winged steed, Pegasus flies
through the sky upside down as viewed by residents of the
Northern Hemisphere. I am convinced that if constellations
had been first identified by Americans of the late twentieth
century rather than by ancient civilizations, the the Great
Square of Pegasus would be known as the the "Great Televi­
sion" in the sky.
The award for the most exotic star names must go to the
 Menagerie 191

otherwise undistinguished constellation Libra, the Scales. Its

two brightest stars are officially named Zubenelgenubi and
Zubeneschamali.
The most boring constellation in the sky is no doubt Trian­
gulum Australis, the Southern Triangle. A detailed photo­
graph of its three brightest stars shows-you guessed it-a
triangle . Since nearly any three stars in the sky form a trian­
gle, Triangulum gets the award for the most unimaginative
constellation name. To be fair to Triangulum, there are sev­
eral dimmer stars in and around the triangle. But since the
constellation is simply the "Southern Triangle," these stars
do not participate in the designated pattern.
The greatest stretch of the imagination occurs with Apus,
in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a constellation with three
prominent stars near the South Celestial Pole that is sup­
posed to be a fully plumed bird-of-paradise.
Some stars grow in the mind. The most famous of these is
Polaris, the North Star. In an informal poll, I once asked
passers-by, "What is the brightest star in the nighttime sky?"
Three-fourths of them unwittingly proclaimed, "The North
Star!" Let it be known that the North Star is not even in the
celestial top forty. In addition, its reputation puts it at the
point in the sky that is directly over the Earth's North Pole.
In the real sky, however, Polaris is nearly one degree from
the North Celestial Pole-about twice the width of the full
moon. I do not wish to upset anybody, but in 1 2, 000 years,
due to the wobbling of Earth's axis, Polaris will be over forty­
five degrees from the celestial pole. Perhaps our North Star
should be renamed Somewhere-Near-the-North-Pole-Aris.
In spite of all this, residents of the Northern Hemisphere
should not complain. Currently, the region of sky that sur­
rounds the South Celestial Pole is practically blank. The
nearest star with a brightness similar to that of Polaris is over
twelve degrees away.
192 A S TR O N O M Y I s L O O KING UP

For the record, the brightest star of the nighttime sky is

Sirius (Alpha Canis Majoris) in Canis Major, the Big Dog. It
is nearly thirty times brighter than the North Star and com­
monly depicted as the gleam in the Big Dog's eyeball. In­
deed, Sirius is affectionately known as the "Dog Star. " Sirius
is quite recognizable as it lurks below and to the left of
Orion. Sirius is also visible from nearly the entire inhabited
Earth during one season or another, but it is best viewed in
December and January when it rises at sunset and sets at
sunrise. A Sirius joke between stargazing astronomers oc­
curs when, after hearing an unbelievable story, one declares
to the other, "You can't be serious!" The response: "No, I
am not Sirius, I am Zubenelgenubi!" At the end of July,
Sirius rises just before the morning Sun, as though the Sun
were walking its dog into the summer sky. This annual
celestial ritual thus heralds the onset of the hot-and-steamy
"dog days" of August.
The appearance of Sirius just before sunrise was histori­
cally well-timed with the annual rise of the Nile River
through Egypt and thus became a harbinger of a renewed
agricultural cycle. So important was (and is) the rising Nile
to life in Egypt that the 5,000-year-old Egyptian calendar
uses the appearance of Sirius just before sunrise as the first
day of the year.
Sirius is actually a double star system. The dimmer of the
pair, now called "Sirius B, " is an extremely dim degenerate
white dwarf. Its existence was not telescopically confirmed
until 1 862, when Alvan G . Clarke, an ace observational as­
tronomer, revealed its presence buried within the glare of
"Sirius A . "
The nearest star to Earth, a s conclusively established by
extensive astronomical resea rch, is the Sun. It is often de­
clared tha t the nearest star to the Sun is Alpha Centauri, the
brightest star in the southern constellation Centaurus and
 Menagerie 193

the third brightest star in the night sky. Alpha Centauri is,
however, a double star system, and neither star in the pair
is the closest star to the Sun. That privilege goes to the dim
star Proxima Centauri, which is near enough to the Alpha
Centauri pair to complete an orbiting triple star system. All
three stars compose the front hoof of the Centaur as he
straddles the Southern Cross. At one hundred times dimmer
than the detection limit of the naked eye, Proxima Centuri
makes a rather demure nearest neighbor.
The constellation with the greatest hype is Crux Australis,
the Southern Cross. There are songs written about it, and it
appears on the national flags of Australia, New Zealand,
Western Samoa, and Papua New Guinea. What they do not
tell you is that the constellation is small-it is the smallest of
all the eighty-eight. Indeed, your fist at arms length would
eclipse it entirely. Its four brightest stars outline the corners
of a crooked square, or a kite . In geometric terms it is nearly
a rhombus, although "Southern Cross" does convey more
romance than "Southern Rhombus . " There is not even a star
in its middle that could represent the center of a cross. The
Southern Cross is best used as a signpost to find other, more
interesting celestial objects. For example, the Southern Cross
is thirty degrees north of the star-starved South Celestial
Pole, and ten degrees southwest of the titanic naked-eye
globular cluster Omega Centauri. And the Galactic equator,
also known as the Milky Way, passes directly through its
middle.
Two relatively recent additions to the celestial menagerie
are the southern constellations Telescopium and Microscop­
ium, the Telescope and the Microscope. Unlike Triangulum
Australis, which is simply boring, each of these two constel­
lations are boring and undistinguished . The brightest stars in
Telescopium and Microscopium are over one hundred times
dimmer than Sirius. These constellations date not from the
194 A S T R O N O M Y Is L O O K I N G U P

ancients but from Abbe Nicolas Louis de la Caille of the

middle eighteenth century. With decidedly less imagination
than the ancients, La Caille identified fourteen new groups
of stars from the poorly charted southern celestial sphere.
He honorably named them for the principal instruments
(hardware) of the arts and sciences . As noble as all this
sounds, La Caille had no excuse, and thus is never to be
forgiven, for naming two of the least distinguished constella­
tions in the heavens after two of the most important scientific
instruments of our times.
A constellation that was simply too big for its neighbor­
hood was the sprawling Southern Hemisphere constellation
Argo Navis, or Argo the Ship . Its length spanned nearly
one-fifth of the entire sky. Mythology holds that this is the
same ship made famous by Jason and his fifty Argonauts,
who set sail from Iolchis in Thessaly to Aea in Colchis to
search for the golden fleece. The disproportionate size of
Argo Navis led our friend Abbe Nicolas Louis de La Caille
to cut up the constellation into four smaller patterns while
preserving the boat theme . Thus was born Carina the Keel,
Puppis the Stem, Pyxis the Compass, and Vela the Sail .
Enduring favorites for the three quarters of the world's
population who live in Earth's Northern Hemisphere are
the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. They are officially
"asterisms," which simply means that they are interesting
subsets of otherwise uninteresting constellations. The Big
Dipper's seven stars form a convincing kitchen saucepan in
the sky: three stars form the slightly curved handle, four
stars form the pot. Incidentally, the two stars of the sauce­
pan's front edge are reputed to point toward Polaris, but
they miss their target by nearly three degrees. Hanging off
Polaris is the Little Dipper. Its handle is curved the other
way when compared with the Big Dipper. It looks very much
like a cauldron ladle with Polaris at the handle's tip .
 Menagerie 195

The Big and Little Dippers are actually parts of the constel­
lations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Big and Little Bear.
They are reported to be rather chubby bears (as bears are
wont to be) with long bushy tails that also form the handles
of the saucepan and ladle. But these long tails are actually
part of cosmic tales because tails of terrestrial bears are only
nubby stubs.
Keeping with the kitchen theme, we go to an asterism in
the constellation Sagittarius. Sagittarius is a centaur-archer
who is part man and part horse (the front end is the half
man). In spite of this legendary description, the brightest
stars bear a remarkable resemblance to a stove-top tea kettle.
It is short and stout-complete with a handle and a spout.
This asterism is especially revered in England because the
band of light from our Milky Way galaxy appears to pass
through the tea kettle's spout. In England, they always take
a spot of milk in their tea . In China, however, milk was
never a popular beverage . The Chinese know the Milky Way
as "Yin-hur, " or Silver River. Aside from its kitchen-acces­
sory status, Sagittarius is deservedly famous because it con­
tains the center of the Milky Way galaxy-located about
three degrees west of the spout.
The most misidentified asterism in the sky is the Pleiades.
This little bunch of seven stars has a vague resemblance to a
dipper. Since it is little (your thumb held at arm's distance
would cover all visible stars), many people mistakenly call it
the Little Dipper. The Pleiades may be found above and to
the right of Orion's missing head. In Greek legend the seven
stars of the Pleiades represent the seven daughters of Atlas:
Alcyone, Maja, Merope, Taygete, Asterope, Electra, and Cel­
eno. While a simple telescope shows dozens of stars, the
naked eye sees only six . Celeno is missing. To reconcile
this numerical error the fourth-century Alexandrian-Greek
commentator Theon the Younger surmised that Celeno,
196 A S T R O N O M Y I s L o o KING UP

which i s the dimmest o f the group, must have been struck

by lightning.
To experienced stargazers, the constellation with the most
convincing resemblance to a letter of the alphabet is Cassio­
peia, queen of Ethiopia. She owes her celestial existence to
five bright stars in the sky that form a W, which according to
some legends is her throne. The W is somewhat lopsided,
like a chair that is ready to collapse-so it is rumored that
she gained weight in her later years. Cassiopeia is near
enough to the "pole" star Polaris that for most of the North­
ern Hemisphere she never sets. At various times of the night
and at various times of the year, she can be found above,
below, and to each side of Polaris. The W will sometimes be
an I (the upper case Greek letter sigma), sometimes an M,
and sometimes a 3 . This merry-go-round behavior is not a
fitting fate for a queen, but Cassiopeia once said she was
more beautiful than the Nereids (the Water Nymphs) . The
gods did not take kindly to this boasting and (among other
things) condemned her to swing eternally around the pole.
As detailed in the next chapter, the constellations with the
greatest irrational following are the twelve of the zodiac:
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio,
Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. One is often
led to believe that the zodiacal constellations are prominent
in the nighttime sky . But astrologers do not tell you that
Aries, Cancer, Virgo, Libra, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces
are underwhelming constella tions that are barely recogniz­
able as coherent patterns in the nighttime sky. Astrologers
also do not tell you that the constellations are not the same
size, so that the Sun does not move across them at equal
one-month intervals. Astrologers fu rther fail to tell you that
the correspondence of the zodiac with calendar months is
shifted backwa rd by an entire constellation due to Earth's
ongoing precession on its axis. And finally, astrologers do
 Menagerie 197

not tell you how much money they make from gullible
people.
The fact remains: all you ever see in a clear night sky is a
few thousand dots of light. If you would like to see a real
menagerie, and you cannot hallucinate like the ancients,
then visit your nearest zoo. You will see real (tailless) bears,
real (wingless) horses, real scorpions-but, alas, no cen­
taurs. These animals will look exactly as nature intended.
And the zookeeper will not give you advice about your fi­
nancial life, your home life, or your love life.
 Orion' �
club • • � Orion' s
missing head

• •
•
•

Orion' s - • •
shoulders

t
Orion' s
shield
•
Orion' s - •
belt •
•

Orion' s - •

dangling sword :

Orion' s _... •
knee-caps •

•
"""- Sirius
(Dog Star)
I Orion, the Hunter I

Figure 11.1
 Front legs of
Pegasus

•
• •
•
•
Great Square of .
Pegasus __..

• •

• •

Missing wings
& rear-end
Neck and head of
Pegasus

Pegasus, the Upside Down Flying Half a Horse

Figure 11.2
 • Zubeneschamali

• e Zubenelgenubi

•
•

I Libra, the Scales

Note the striki ng

•
resemblance to a
.,,,,,,..- triangle

•
•

Triangulum Austral is, the Southern Tri angle

Figure 1 1 . 3
 •

•
•
•

�
Less affectionately known
as the "Southern Rhombus" •

I Crux Australis, the Southern Cross

• Note the striking

resemblance to a fully
plumed Bird of Paradise

•
•

•
•

I Apus, the Bird of Paradise

Figure 11.4
 � Polaris near the
•
)( North Celestial
N.C.P . Pole (NCP)

•
•

Pointer stars of the Big •

Dipper miss Polaris and the ---:
North Celestial Pole

•
•• •

I Big & Little Di ppers I

Figure 1 1 . 5
 There is not a bright star
within twelve degrees of the
South Celestial Pole (SCP).

Note: The 'X' has been

added for your convenience.

X S.C.P.

I South Celestial Pole

Thumb at
arms-distance
Missing .--
Sister?
••
•
\ . 0
•
•

--=
-=-

I Pleiades + Thu mb I

Figure 11.6
 Lid Center of
� Milley Way Galaxy

Handle
•
�
-...... • x
•
•
• •

Spout
•

Sagittarius, the Archer Who Resembles a Tea Pot

• •
•

/ •
Cassiopeia's throne
appears to have lost some
stabi lity i n her later years

Cassiopeia, the Queen of Egypt on Her Throne

Figure 1 1 . 7
 · 12 ·
Horrorscope

The Sun is among hundreds of billions of stars in the disk of

our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. The stars in the Sun's vicinity
comprise what is politely called the solar neighborhood . Some
stars emit copious amounts of light while others emit much
less. Some are near and some are far. Yet all stars present the
illusion that they are firmly embedded in the "dome" of the
night sky. Any two stars form a line. Any three stars form a
triangle. Imagine the endless shapes and patterns that can be
envisioned among the six thousand stars visible to the unaided
eye .
More than five millennia ago, in the days before evening
television, the Babylonians and Chaldeans kept accurate re­
cords of the night sky. They assigned icons of the local
mythology to the planets and the various star patterns. Be­
tween A . O . 127 and A . O . 150, the Greek philosopher Ptolemy
catalogued many of the familiar names upon these skeletal
star patterns that are otherwise known as constellations.
Thrust upon these patterns were not only the names of
animals and gods but their quirky behavioral traits as well.
More than two millennia after Ptolemy, in the days of
space travel, recombinant DNA, and microwave popcorn,
there are people who believe that planets and star patterns
influence their life's events in ways derivable from the my­
thology of sleepless and TV-less Babylonians.
The basis for modern-day astrology is quite simple. Its
premise is that the relative positions of the Sun, Moon,
planets, and constellations affect you and the events in your
life-especially your social and financial life. Note that in a
free, capitalistic society these aspects can be the totality of
one's life. All planets of the solar system orbit the Sun in
roughly the same plane. Consequently, it makes sense that
when viewed from Earth, the motion of the planets, Moon,
and Sun appear to be restricted to a relatively narrow band
across the entire sky. The exact path of the Sun is centered
in this band and is known as the ''ecliptic. " As Earth orbits
the Sun, we see the Sun travel eastward along this ecliptic
until one year has passed when the Sun returns to its initial
position. If Earth's rotational axis were not tilted, the ecliptic
would coincide with the projection of Earth's equator on the
celestial sphere. Our 23 1h-degree tilt, however, creates what
208 ASTRONO M Y I s L o o KING U P

is tongue-twistingly called the "obliquity o f the ecliptic. "

This obliquity grants two special points t o the Sun's yearly
journey across the sky-both occur where the ecliptic crosses
the projection of Earth's equator. They are commonly called
the first day of spring (the vernal equinox) and the first day
of autumn (the autumnal equinox) . The first day of spring is
referred to by astrologers as the "first point of Aries, " which
officially begins the Sun's j ourney through the twelve con­
stellations of the zodiac. If your astrological sign is Aries,
this means the Sun was passing through the constellation
Aries when you were born. Following Aries on the calendar
are Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius,
Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces.
Many astrologers say they can predict your behavior and
personality based on your sign in conjunction with the signs
that the planets and Moon happen to be in when you were
born. It would be wrong to say that the planetary positions
in the sky have no effect on human behavior. Planets do
reflect light from the Sun and do have gravitational forces.
Both factors (the only quantities measurable from Earth)
have the potential to affect objects at a distance. You should
know, however, that if we calculate the force of gravity of,
say, Mars on you when you were born, you will discover
that the force of gravity from the obstetrician or midwife
who delivered you was 1 50 times greater than that of Mars.
This leaves light as a last hope for the effects of Mars on
your birth . I f we presume optimum conditions: you were
born on a clear ni gh t by an open window in a hospital that
happened to have Mars in the sky and in view from the
delivery table, then we may discuss the effects of its light.
We discover here that the six high intensity lamps over your
delivery table prod uced 1 60 billio11 times more light on you
than the light from Mars. It is not clear why national cults
have never emerged that would predict your fate based
 Horrorscope 209

on how the obstetrician was positioned at your birth, or

whether GE bulbs were used instead of Westinghouse
bulbs.
Astrologers generally agree that the most important astro­
logical effect is the Sun's location on the zodiac at your time
of birth inasmuch as it defines your "sign. " But those who
believe in the Sun's positional influences will have to con­
tend with a sobering fact: the first point of Aries today no
longer coincides with the first day of spring. This is a far­
reaching twist of the same magnitude as if Alex Haley, au­
thor of his well-known genealogy Roots, had later discovered
that he was an adopted child. The Sun at the vernal equinox
is currently in the constellation Pisces and will soon be in
Aquarius. Among people who read their daily horoscope, it
is not widely known that Earth wobbles on its axis. This is
normal behavior for any oblate, spinning, tilted top under
the influence of an external gravity, so we should not be
surprised that the spinning tilted Earth also wobbles on its
axis under the influence of the Sun and Moon. The time for
one complete Earth wobble is about 25,700 years, and its
effects are manifested by the drift of the vernal equinox
through the entire zodiac over a 25, 700-year period . Ptolemy
named the constellations about two thousand years ago. We
see that, since then, the equinox has traveled nearly one­
twelfth the way around the zodiac-or one complete sign.
What this means is that if you thought you were an Aries,
you are really a Pisces; if you thought you were a Pisces, you
are really an Aquarius, and so forth. Matters are worsened
upon learning that the boundaries of the constellations do
not split the zodiac evenly-some astrological signs "last"
longer than others. Matters are worsened further upon rec­
ognizing that seven of the twelve constellations are feeble
skeletal excuses for the animals and objects they are pur­
ported to be.
210 ASTR O N O M Y Is L O O K I N G U P

A n amusing addition t o the above high jinks i s that the

zodiac contains fourteen constellations, not twelve. The Sun,
after leaving the constellation Scorpius, enters the constella­
tion Ophiuchus. It then stays in Ophiuchus for a longer pe­
riod of time than Scorpius, the sign that is advertised to
precede Sagittarius. The confusing conclusion is that most
Scorpions are actually Ophiuchans, and all Scorpions and
Ophiuchans are currently Librans. The fourteenth constella­
tion in the set is Cetus. It is a large constellation that dips
into Pisces . The Sun passes through Cetus briefly as it
ambles through Pisces, but you are not normally informed
of this in the horoscope pages .
Some astrologers (typically the expensive ones) are actu­
ally aware of these astronomical truths . A common re­
sponse, when confronted with the facts, is the assertion that
the effects of the stars were set two thousand years ago and
still apply today. I once tested a daily (syndicated) horoscope
from a local newspaper on the fifty students in one of my
introductory astronomy classes . Rather than have the stu­
dents read their own horoscope and decide whether it ap­
plied to that day's dilemmas, I picked one of the twelve
horoscopes at random and read it to the class. I then asked
all students to declare whether it was "unlikely, " "possible,"
or "likely" that I had just read their own horoscope. Fully
one third (seventeen) of the class declared that the horoscope
was "likely" to be theirs . The class was astonished to learn
that the horoscope I read belonged to none of these people.
Of the ten people who responded "unlikely, " the horoscope
actually belonged to three of them . Controlled experiments
such as this one consistently demonstrate that daily horo­
scopes would do no worse if they were laid on the page at
ra ndom, yet horoscope casting in the United States remains
the most lucra tive industry among the pseudosciences.
 Horrorscope 211

A subject of fascination and confusion for many people is

the effect of the full Moon on human behavior. It is com­
monly thought that more babies are born during full moons
than during any other phase . It is also thought by many
people that the full moon has some mystical effect on the
human psyche that forces people to behave strangely, to
commit crimes, or to transmutate into a howling and hairy
canine. Literature abounds with stories of werewolves and
other moon-induced human behavior. I have even heard
some people explain these phenomena with the tidal effects
of the Moon on the brain: "Since the oceans are water and
are duly influenced by the lunar tides, then the large water
content of the human body should also be affected . "
Before w e jump t o cosmic conclusions, consider the fol­
lowing: (1) If the oceans were 100 percent nitroglycerin (or
100 percent anything else), they would still exhibit tides. (2)
Tidal forces of the Moon are indeed large during full moon .
But they are also large two weeks later during the new
moon. This phase of the moon cannot be observed . Nobody
sees it. Nobody writes lycanthropic stories about it. (3) Tidal
forces of the Moon are measured by the difference in gravity
between the side of Earth closest to the Moon and the side
of Earth farthest from the Moon. If your skull were 7,000
miles across (the size of Earth), then the lunar tides would
indeed give you an oblong-shaped head, with untold conse­
quences on your mental facilities. But since your skull is only
about eight inches across, the tidal force that you "feel" is
quite small. Indeed, the weight of a down-filled bed pillow
placed upon your head will produce a force that is seven
trillion times larger than that of the Moon's tidal force on
your head. So the next time somebody tries to blame a bio­
cosmic-lunar connection for their irresponsible behavior,
perhaps we should first blame the influence of creative litera­
ture-and then possibly the pillow.
212 ASTRONOMY I s LOOKING UP

Let's return to the subject of birth rates during the full

moon . The average human gestation period is about 267
days, 1 which happens to be an excellent match with the
2651/i days in nine cycles of lunar phases. What this means
is that babies who are born during a full moon are very likely
to have been conceived during a full moon-and nobody will
argue the romantic effects of a moonlit evening.
In a free society, intellectual enlightenment is your best
defense against misguided claims in the name of science.
Only then can society, as a whole, cultivate a scientifically
literate public.

I . You c.m gl'l t h i s fro m <l com monly invoked yet convoluted formula: Add
se v e n d ;1 y s to tht• first d.1 y o f yl1ur last menstrual cycle before becoming preg­
n.m t . Cou n t bJckw.ud t h n•t• months, a nd then add a year. If we assume a 28-
d .i y m l' n s t ru a l <·ycle, a n d co nct' p t i o n d ur i ng ovulation, then this formula will
giVl' you 2o7 d .i v s .
 · 13 ·
Celestial Windings

I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but

when I trace, at my pleasure, the windings to and fro of
the heavenly bodies I no longer touch earth with my feet:
I stand in the presence of Zeus, himself, and take my fill
of ambrosia .
-Claudius Ptolemy
University astronomy departments and planetariums, es­
pecially those near large population centers, typically receive
hundreds, sometimes thousands, of daytime telephone calls
per year from the general public with questions about cosmic
phenomena. Some of the calls are induced by heavily publi­
cized events such as lunar and solar eclipses, or planet-moon
conjunctions, while other telephone calls are simply the con­
sequence of people with curious minds who should have
otherwise been busy at their jobs. In all cases, however,
the array of questions reveals a genuine interest in celestial
happenings that serves as a daily reminder to professional
astronomers that in the absence of telescopes and computers
and theories, one can still be awed by just looking up.

Earth

It is often said that Earth's axis is tipped in space. But in

space there is no uniform up or down, so being tipped can
only have relative meaning. We can draw on a sheet of paper
the slightly flattened circle of Earth's eccentric orbit and ask
whether Earth's axis points straight out of the page. It does
not. Earth's axis is tipped slightly more than one-fourth of
the way toward the plane of the page. When measured in
angle, it amounts to about 231/2 degrees . That the round
Earth rotates on a tipped axis and revolves around the Sun
required millennia of the world's greatest thinkers to un­
ravel. So there is no need to get upset if this circus of motion
has ever left you confused.
It is sometimes convenient to think of the sky above you
216 A S T R O N O M Y Is L O O K I N G U P

as the inner surface of an inverted salad bowl, which forms

what is otherwise known as a hemisphere . Following this
analogy, the entire sky as seen from Earth is known as the
celestial sphere . By helpful coincidence, the North Pole of
Earth's axis points near a star "on" the sky, which is, of
course, called the North Star. The South Pole points to a big
empty area that is not too far from the Southern Cross. If we
continue this cosmic correspondence, we can also project
Earth's equator onto the sky. With this simple exercise, we
have identified three places: the North Celestial Pole, the
South Celestial Pole, and the Celestial Equator. In a layout
that is analogous to Earth's longitude and latitude, there
exists coordinates for the sky called "right ascension" and
"declination . "
Contrary t o popular belief, Earth rotates o n its axis once
in 23 hours and 56 minutes, not 24 hours. In other words, a
star, or any other spot on the sky, will return to the same
location above you every 23 hours, 56 minutes . On average,
however, the Sun reaches its highest spot on the sky every
24 hours . For daily scheduling, people tend to respect,
honor, and obey the Sun-not the rest of the stars in the
sky. Most of human civilization has therefore chosen to set
clocks against the 24 hours of the Sun. Astronomers, how­
ever, conduct business in star time . All timekeeping devices
that are set to the stars are called sidereal clocks, where
midnight sidereal time equals midnight Sun time only once
a year-on the first day of autumn, which falls on or near
Se pte mbe r 21 . Thereafter, for every day of the year, the
sidereal clock will gain four minutes against the Sun clock
because Earth must rotate an extra four minutes just to re­
turn th e Sun to the same location as the day before .
Earth's orbi tal motion ensures that day to day the Sun's
p o si t i o n in the sky will migrate across the background of
 Celestial Windings 217

stars. 1 There is nothing complex about this. If your name

were Fido, and you were tethered to a pole, and if you
decided to run in circles around it, then you would systemat­
ically observe the pole to appear in front of every part of
your surroundings. Earth is tethered to the Sun by gravity,
and Earth moves in unending circles around the Sun. The
only important difference is that Earth is not likely to stran­
gle itself.
Longitude on Earth is measured in degrees, yet right as­
cension, the corresponding cosmic coordinate, is measured
in hours . Where does right ascension begin? In the same
place that longitude begins, at the Royal Greenwich Obser­
vatory in Greenwich, England . Using an accurate clock­
sidereal, of course-the time in Greenwich is the right ascen­
sion of the star that happens to be crossing a line through
the zenith that connects due north and due south. For any­
body in the world, this line is called a meridian, but for
Greenwich it is exaltedly known as the Prime Meridian-not
by cosmic mandate but by international convention . Zero
degrees longitude, the Earth boundary between east and
west, is also defined to go through Greenwich. Incidentally,
there is no cosmic reason why the Prime Meridian could not
have been Eddie's Steak House in Kalamazoo, Michigan­
except that Eddie would be obligated to supply right ascen­
sions to the world astronomical community for all stars in
the sky. He could, however, start a catchy ad campaign,
"Enjoy your Prime Rib on the Prime Meridian!"
Sometimes simple longitudes, latitudes, and meridians
are not enough. I once received a telephone call at my office
from a practicing Muslim who was new to the New York
City area. The caller needed to know the exact direction that

1 . Or, at least, that is how astronomers look at it. To most other people, it is
the stars that migrate systematically in the opposite direction behind the Sun .
218 ASTRO N O M Y I s LOOKING UP

points toward the shortest distance to the sacred Kaaba in

Mecca, Saudi Arabia (not to be confused with Mecca, Califor­
nia, or Mecca, Indiana). It is this direction that Muslims use
when it is time to pray toward Mecca . The solution is a
nontrivial problem in spherical trigonometry that begins
with a straight line that connects New York City to Mecca
through Earth and then projects the line up to Earth's surface.
The result is what is called a "great circle," which is normally
the most desirous path for airplanes to fly. I computed the
direction and told the caller. And like the proverbial boy
scout who helps old ladies cross the street, I logged it as a
public service deed for the day.
As you might expect, the annual path that the Sun ap­
pears to take against the background stars is obliquely tilted
from the celestial equator at the same 231/2-degree angle as
the tilt of Earth's axis from a direction that is straight out of
its plane of orbit. A solar or lunar eclipse can happen only
when the Moon is very near the Sun's path. Reflecting this
requirement, the Sun's path has been officially named the
"ecliptic. " The ecliptic and the celestial equator form tilted
rings across the entire sky that intersect at two nodes . The
angle of the tilt is called the "obliquity of the ecliptic," a
decidedly mouth-filling phrase.
The Sun is south of the celestial equator for half the year
and north of the celestial equator for the other half. Therein
lies the origin of the variation in daylight throughout the
year and the origin of the seasons. By definition, spring
begins when the center of the Sun's disk crosses the celestial
equator from south to north-the "ascending node. " This is
why newspapers report the particular minute of the day
when spring begins. They could, if they felt so inclined,
report the beginning of spring to the fraction of a second . By
definition, su mmer begins when the Sun has climbed the
fa rthest north of the celestial equator. This is where the two
 Celestial Windings 219

NORTH
POLE

Tropic of Cancer o
------ 23 1 12 north

Equator

Tropic of Capricorn 0
23 112 south

SOUTH
POLE

Figure 13. 1 . Earth's principal latitude zones

tilted rings have their greatest separation. As is true with

spring, summer occurs at a particular moment that could be
reported to the fraction of a second if there were public
demand for such precision.
The important spots along the rest of the Sun's path can
be readily deduced . The first moment of autumn is when the
Sun crosses the celestial equator going south-the "descend­
ing node"-and the first moment of winter is when the Sun
has descended the farthest south of the celestial equator
before it resumes its journey northward . Two thousand
years ago, on the first day of every summer, the Sun was
superimposed on the constellation Cancer. The first day of
220 ASTRONOMY I s LOOKING UP

summer is the only day of the year where the people on

Earth who live at a latitude of 231/2 degrees north get to have
the noonday sun directly overhead. Not surprisingly, this
band on Earth's surface can be identified on most maps and
on all globes as the Tropic of Cancer. Equivalently, the first
day of winter historically found the Sun to be superimposed
on the constellation Capricorn. Only then can the residents
along 23112 degrees south latitude enjoy a midday sun that is
directly overhead. On Earth, this latitude is identified as the
Tropic of Capricorn. At no time of any day in the year do Earth
residents outside the region between 231/2 degrees south and
23112 degrees north have a midday sun that is directly over­
head. More bluntly stated, most of the population of the
world has never seen the Sun directly overhead . They can
only envy those who have traveled to the "tropics" or who
just happen to live there.
The Sun begins its journey north along the ecliptic toward
the celestial equator after the first day of winter. It begins to
make larger and larger arcs across the daily sky, and thus
stays in the sky longer and longer for Northern Hemisphere
dwellers . If you have ever paid attention to the daytime sky,
then you might have noticed that the winter sun rises far
south of east and sets far south of west. The daily path is a
low arc across the sky. In the summer, the Sun rises far
north of east and sets far north of west. The daily path is a
relatively high arc across the sky. During your lunch break,
you can discover this for yourself if you measure the height
of your shadow at noon on the first day of winter, and again
at noon on the first day of summer.
A more revealing experiment, if you have nothing better
to do for every one of your lunch breaks over the next year,
is to stand in the same place every day at exactly 12 noon
and put a mark on the ground where the top of your shadow
 Celestial Windings 221

EQUINOX
Autumn (north)
Spring (south)

SOLSTICE SOLSTICE
Winter (north) Summer (north)
Summer (south) Wi nter (south)

EQUINOX
Spring (north)
Autumn (south)

Figure 13.2. The illuminated Earth and its tipped axis is shown, in
its orbit, at the first days of the four seasons. For the summer
solstice in the north, the Tropic of Cancer receives direct sunlight
at 12 noon. Notice that, at the same time, no part of the south polar
cap will be rotated into sunlight; it remains in complete darkness.
For the summer solstice in the south, it is the Tropic of Capricorn
that receives direct sunlight at 12 noon, while at the same time, the
entire northern Arctic cap remains in darkness. At the equinoxes,
all parts of Earth, including the polar caps, receive exactly twelve
hours of sunlight and twelve hours of darkness. Note: The Sun,
and Earth's distance to it, are definitely not drawn to scale.
222 ASTRONOMY Is LOOKING Ur

2
falls. After a year of missed lunches, you will notice that
your marks on the ground will grow longer and longer as
December 21 approaches . The length of your shadow will
pause for a day or two, and then by Christmas you will see
it get shorter and shorter again for the six months up to June
21 . Beginning June 21, your shadow's length will once again
pause for a day or two before it begins to get longer and
longer for the six months that lead back to December 21 . You
already know June 21 to be the first day of summer and
December 21 to be the first day of winter. Your experiment
showed that for each of these days the change in the length
of your noon shadow stopped . If we deduce the Sun's be­
havior from your markings on the ground, we conclude that
the noonday Sun reached its highest point on June 21 and
its lowest point on December 21 . In each case, before the
Sun turned around, it appeared to stop for a day or two.
This phenomenon is endowed with its own name: "solstice"
(from the Latin sol for sun and stitium for stationary) . The
terms "summer solstice" and "winter solstice" are no less
common than the "first day of summer" and the "first day
of winter. "
Had the descent of the Sun not stopped on December 21 ,
then each day your shadow would continue to lengthen as
the noon Sun gets lower. Eventually, the length of your
shadow would become infinite-just before the noon Sun
fails to appear above the horizon and you are abandoned in
eternal darkness-one could make a horror movie about this.
In the days of pagan rituals, the rebound of the Sun after
December 21 was heralded as a joyous occasion . There were
celebrations and festivities . When Christianity began to
2. Note t ha t you ca nn o t freeze you r standing shadow in its place while you
mark the ground. If your shadow behaves as it ought to, then it will follow you
as you bl•nd-so you may wish to solicit help from a friend . This shadow
problem is a varia nt on t h e mirror problem, where your reflection does exactly
wh,1t you do . The conseque nce: you can only kiss your reflection on the lips.
 Celestial Windings 223

spread, and the uncertain birth date of Jesus Christ needed

to be set, a time near this pagan Sun ritual (December 25)
was selected to help promote the new religion with a mini­
mum of resistance.
If you were extraordinarily precise during your year-long
adventure in shadow etchings, so that each measurement
was taken at exactly 12 noon, then you should notice that
your marks on the ground have traced a figure 8 1 1 Because
" .

Earth's speed in its eccentric, oval-shaped orbit is not con­

stant, and because the Sun seasonally finds itself above and
below the celestial equator, the 24 hours of Earth's rotation
does not always return the Sun to its highest spot on the
sky. Sometimes the Sun gets there in a few minutes less than
24 hours, and other times it gets there in a few minutes more
than 24 hours. This alternating speedy and tardy Sun is what
causes the figure 118 . 1 1 On average, the Sun gets to its highest
point in 24 hours, which is why household clocks needn't
worry about such antics, even though sundials do. The fig­
ure 11 8 11 is also known as an "analemma, 11 which occasionally
makes a guest appearance-sideways and afloat-in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean as drawn by globe makers. Per­
haps there is no place else for them to put it.
The longer and shorter daytime arcs of the Sun are the
cause of longer and shorter days. When I was a child, how­
ever, I was terribly confused . I knew that a solar day was
always 24 hours, and that the rotation rate of Earth could be
trusted, so I did not understand what people meant when
they declared, "In the summer the days get longer. 11 When I
finally figured out that people were referring to the duration
of daylight, I was still confused . Daylight hours begin to
grow just after the first day of winter (the shortest day of the
year) . And they continue to grow through all of winter and
all of spring until the first day of summer (the longest day of
the year), at which time daylight begins to shorten again. So
224 ASTRONOMY Is LOOKING UP

Top o f shadow a t twelve-

.,,. .,,. .,,. o

noon on June 2 1
1

�
1
1
Top of shadow at twelve-
noon on December 2 1 /

� ,,,, .,,.
,,
,
I
I
,/

Figure 13.3. The stick figure with big feet is explaining that the
length of your shadow at 12 noon on each day of the year will trace
a figure "8. " The tallest shadow will correspond to the low Sun
during the winter solstice, near December 21 . The shortest shadow
will correspond to the high Sun during the summer solstice, near
June 21 . Because Earth' s speed in its orbit is not constant, and
because the Sun ambles above and below the celestial equator, the
24 hours of Earth's rotation does not always return the Sun to its
highest spot in the sky. The Sun can be "fast" or "slow," which
traces an "8" over the year. This famous figure "8" is known as
an "analemma . "

let i t b e known among the confused children o f the land that

winter is the season where days get longer and summer is the
season where days get shorter. Perhaps British children are
less li kely to get confused since the first day of summer in
the Uni ted Kingdom is called "midsu mmer, " and the first
day of winter is called "midwinter . "
O n the first day of spring and o f autumn, the Sun crosses
the celestial equator. These are the only days of the year
where every Earth resident experiences daylight of equal
d u ration to the night. These two days are more commonly
 Celestial Windings 225

EAST

Figure 13.4. Path of the Sun through the daytime sky on the first
day of each season when viewed from an intermediate latitude in
the Northern Hemisphere, which is appropriate for most of the
world's population. Notice that only on the first day of spring and
of autumn does the Sun rise due east and set due west. The low
arc of the Sun in December and surrounding months provides
much less than twelve hours of light, while in June and its sur­
rounding months the high arc provides much more than twelve
hours of light. Only near the spring and autumn equinoxes does
the duration of daylight and the duration of night each equal
twelve hours .

called the vernal (spring) and the autumnal (autumn) "equi­

nox," from the Latin Cf!qui for equal and noct for night.
The lengthening of the daytime hours from winter to
spring is accompanied by sunlight that is more direct, and
consequently more intense, on Earth's surface. The slow and
continued day-to-day increase in sunlight heats the hemi­
sphere as the season changes from winter to spring. At any
moment of the year, the opposite transition is happening in
the Southern Hemisphere. What does this say for the equa-
226 A S T R O N O M Y Is L O O K I N G U P

1.....
M
_ arc
_ h _2_1_&
_s_e_
p_1e_
m_be
_r_2_.
1 I ""'
-I June 2 1 I
December 2 1 I

WEST

EAST

Figure 13.5. Path of the Sun through the daytime sky for equato­
rial residents. Only along the equator does every day contain
twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness . There are no
seasons and nobody hibernates .

tor? Being caught exactly in the middle, its residents experi­

ence no seasons. On the equator, every day is equivalent to
an equinox. There are also no deciduous trees, no hibernat­
ing animals, and no canceled school days from snowstorms.
What does this say about the poles? Beginning at 661/2 de­
grees latitude (which, by the way, is the 90-degree latitude
of the pole minus the 231/2-degree tilt of Earth's axis) and
heading toward the pole, there will always be at least one
day where the arc of the Sun is so broad that it is, in effect,
broader than the entire horizon, with the result that the Sun
does not set . The 661'2-degree north latitude is unimagina­
tively called the "Arctic Circle" while the 661/2-degree south
 Celestial Windings 227

North
Pole
•

Path of the S un along the

SOUTH horizon on the first day of
Spring and of Autumn

Path of the Sun below

the horizon on the first
day of Winter

Figure 13.6. Path of the Sun through the sky on the first day of
each of the four seasons as viewed from the North Pole. In the
summer the Sun never sets. A "day" lasts six months while the
Sun's path spirals slowly toward the horizon. Near the equinoxes,
the Sun's disk remains half up and half down along the horizon as
sunset (or sunrise) lasts for many days. The winter path of the Sun
remains completely below the horizon for six months. If you travel
in any direction from the North Pole, you can only head south . A
diagram for the South Pole would appear identical, except that the
arrows would point in the opposite direction, and all roads would
lead north.

latitude is called the "Antarctic Circl e . " Nearer and nearer to

the poles, the number of days in a year grows for which the
Sun does not set. This event is known as the "midnight sun"
in many places, but they could j ust as accurately, though
less romantically, call it the " 1 1 :30 P . M . Sun" or the "1 A.M.
Sun . " By the time you get to the poles, you will notice that
228 ASTRONOMY I s LooKING U P

the Sun rises just once a year and, of course, sets just once a
year. The consequence: a six-month day and a six-month
night.
I once received a telephone call from an orthodox Jew
who was planning a summer trip to Alaska . He needed to
know the exact time of the setting Sun for the Fridays of
his trip, which signals the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. 3 I
told him he had better keep out of the Arctic Circle, and
I gave the caller sunset times for more southern latitudes
in Alaska .
From the point of view of an observer perched "above"
the solar system, summer in the Northern Hemisphere is
where the north pole of Earth's axis is tipped toward the
Sun. Six months later, with Earth on the other side of the
Sun, the same tilt of the axis now points away from the Sun .
As noted in chapter 12, just as a spinning and tilted top will
wobble, so does the spinning and tilted Earth . Since a full
wobble takes about 25,700 years to complete, you need not
worry about getting tossed off the surface of the Earth. One
of several cosmic consequences is that one-half a wobble
from now (the year A . D . 15000) Earth will be tipped the other
way. Polaris, the North Star, will become Polaris, the ex­
North Star. The constellations that are normally identified
with the nighttime winter sky will have shifted to become
summer constellations, and the summer constellations will
have shifted to become visible in the winter. In other words,
the celestial grid-complete with its celestial equator, the
path of the Sun, their nodes of intersection, and the celestial
poles-will be projected onto a backdrop of stars that is
offset from before .
Indeed, Earth has wobbled enough already so that the
position of the Sun against the backdrop of stars on the first

3. The Jewish Sabbath lasts from su nset Friday to sunset Saturday.

 Celestial Windings 229

day of summer no longer falls in the constellation Cancer­

so that the name "Tropic of Cancer" is technically no longer
appropriate. The current backdrop is the constellation Gem­
ini. Additionally, the Sun on the first day of winter now has
the constellation Sagittarius as a backdrop, not Capricorn­
so that the name "Tropic of Capricorn" is also no longer
appropriate. Either by tradition or perhaps a mandate from
frustrated map and globe makers, the Tropic of Cancer and
the Tropic of Capricorn have retained their names in spite of
this early-breaking news . Two thousand years from now,
perhaps you can lobby the mapmakers to introduce the
names of the next relevant constellations: the Tropic of Taurus
and the Tropic of Scorpius.
After its 500-second journey, light from the Sun must
cross from the vacuum of interplanetary space to Earth's
atmosphere . Upon traversing the boundary between these
two regions of different density, the speed of light will drop,
which beacons an underunappreciated fact of physics: the
speed of light through anything other than a vacuum will
always be less than it is in a vacuum. When light penetrates
at oblique angles, then the direction of motion changes as
well. This phenomenon is known as refraction and is the
principle that allows lenses, and of course eyeballs, to focus
light. The deeper into Earth's atmosphere the light travels,
the more it refracts as the atmosphere gets denser an denser.
What all this means is that the Sun is not where you think it
is in the sky. At sunset, as our precious orb of glowing
hydrogen poses prettily upon the horizon, the refraction of
its light is greatest. Indeed, the unrefracted Sun has already
set. Don't tell your lover, but every romantic memory of a
sunset (or sunrise) in your life is the consequence of a re­
fracted image of the Sun, and not the Sun itself. Of course,
the same is true for the Moon since its light also originates
from outside of Earth's atmosphere . The song that contains
230 ASTRO N O M Y I s LOOKING UP

the lyric "It's only a paper moon" could easily b e reworded

to "It's only a refracted image"-with no loss of relevance to
the song's content.
People who go fishing with a bow and arrow know all
about refraction . Do not aim where you see the fish-you
will miss. The fish you see is a refracted image formed as the
light from the real fish bends upon crossing the boundary
from water to air. Those who are experienced know that to
nab the fish you must aim at the correct angle beneath it. In
honor of this talent, maybe people who fish with a bow and
arrow should be called "anglers . "

Moon

Earth's moon holds a special place in my heart. It was a view

of the first quarter Moon (the phase that many people call
"half") through binoculars at age eleven that triggered my
career path to study the universe. The mountains and valleys
and craters were revealed in detail that I could not have
imagined from a simple glance with the unaided eye. With
greater academic sophistication, I soon began to appreciate
other aspects of the Moon that are just as ogle-worthy: (1)
the Moon is the only satellite in the solar system that has no
name; (2) the Moon is in predictable gravitational orbit
around Earth; (3) the orbit of the Moon sometimes gets in
the way of our view of the Sun, which spawns one of na­
ture's greatest spectacles-a total solar eclipse; (4) on occa­
sion, the Moon ambles into Earth's shadow, which extends
nearly a million miles in to space, and spawns yet another
spectacle-a total lunar eclipse; (5) the Moon is in a gravita­
tional "tidal lock" with Earth, which prevents the far side of
the Moon from ever facing Earth; and (6) the Moon is made
of rocks and not some variety of smelly exotic cheese.
You can actually observe the Moon's motion in orbit
 Celestial Windings 231

around Earth, even though it is about as exciting as watching

the hour hand on a clock. The next time you spot the Moon
at night, take notice of the pattern of stars that surround it
and of the Moon's position relative to them. Go back inside
for about three hours and then return to see the Moon. You
will see that it moved east relative to the background stars
by an amount equal to its own diameter. The cumulative
effect of this daily orbital motion is for the Moon to rise
about 52 minutes later and set about 52 minutes earlier each
day. This slow, steady, and systematic motion continuously
changes our view of the illuminated Moon relative to the
Sun. We see the Moon "wax" (grow) from a thin crescent,
which sets shortly after the Sun, to a first quarter, commonly
known as a "half moon, " which sets at about midnight. The
Moon phase continues to wax until it is full. Full moons rise
just after sunset and set just before sunrise. The portion of
the Moon's illuminated surface that faces Earth next wanes
to last quarter, which sets at 12 noon, and then to crescent,
which sets just before sunset. The phase between the wan­
ing and waxing crescents is called the "new moon . " It is the
only unobservable phase because the entire far side of the
Moon receives complete illumination.
In a clash of terminology, I once received a telephone call
from someone who wanted to know when the next new
moon was to occur. This is, of course, a single moment in
time as the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth . I gave
the caller the information, but then the caller asked when
this new moon would be visible from New York City. I
knew, at the time, that Ramadan was near. This is the ninth
month of the Muslim calendar that is traditionally a period
of daily fasting-it begins and ends with the sighting of what
is called the new moon . But what the Muslims-and almost
any other religious or social culture-refer to as the "first
sighting of the new moon" is actually the first sighting of the
232 ASTRONOMY Is L O O KING UP

waxing crescent in the early evening sky toward the west,

just after sunset. For this to happen, the Moon must emerge
from its new phase to be far enough away from the Sun in
the sky so that you obtain a crescent-shaped glimpse of the
illuminated half. This normally takes a day or two beyond
the new moon.
The phases of the Moon (as well as tons of other informa-

LAST QUARTER
"Half Moon"
(A) WANING
GIBBOUS

0 Sun

Moon
 Celestial Windings 233

tion) are tabulated in a book called the Astronomical Almanac,

formerly the Astronomical Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac,
which is published annually by the nautical almanac offices
of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington,
D.C. , and of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Green­
wich, England . The word "almanac" also appears in the
title of the annually published reference, The Old Farmer's
Almanac, where weather predictions were traditionally made
from a secret formula-devised by the founder-which is
contained in a black tin box located in Dublin, New Hamp­
shire. One particular occasion, a caller to my office wanted
to plan a honeymoon vacation around the full moon. When
I told the caller that my source for the Moon's phases is the
Astronomical Almanac, the response was, "Then predicting
the phase of the Moon must be like predicting the weather,
you really cannot know for sure what it will be the next
day . " I did not know whether to compliment the caller on
such healthy skepticism of the weather predictions from The
Old Farmer's Almanac or whether to chide the caller for never
having noticed the daily, predictable changes of the Moon.

Figure 13.7. The Sun, Moon, and Earth . (A) the Moon's orbit
around Earth as it would appear if we were to look down on the
North Pole. Note: The Sun and relative distances are definitely not
drawn to scale. Half the Moon is always illuminated by the Sun.
The part of this illuminated surface that happens to fall inside the
orbit is what is visible to people on Earth. This Ferris-wheel of
angles is the origin of the Moon' s phases. (B) On occasion (once
every couple of years), the tip of the dark cone of the Moon's
shadow sweeps across Earth's surface during new moon. Only the
people who happened to live in the shadow's path, or who are rich
enough to travel to it, will actually see a total eclipse. A half month
later, when the Moon's orbit takes it to the other side of Earth, the
Moon will e n ter Earth's shadow and display a total lunar eclipse,
which is visible for everyone on the nighttime side of Earth.
-----
234 ASTRONOMY Is LOOKING UP

Actually, I did both and then explained that, with the excep­
tion of rare typographical errors, the Astronomical Almanac is
100 percent correct, every day of every year. And that it
contains no horoscopes, folk remedies, or cute human-inter­
est stories.
For many people in the world, the rising full moon is one
of the top wonders of nature-especially if the horizon is
dotted with trees or buildings as the Moon emerges from
behind . This wonderment often includes a full case of the
"Moon on horizon illusion," where the orb appears unnatu­
rally large as it rises or sets. While there is still no agreement
among Moon-on-horizon experts, it is almost certainly re­
lated to a confusion in your depth perception induced by
familiar objects on your horizon . A full moon, and the pres­
ence of identifiable buildings or trees, adds considerably to
the illusion. Sales brochures for romantic cruises notwith­
standing, moonrise over an expanse of ocean-where there
are few horizon depth cues-provides a relatively poor
moon-on-horizon moment. It is rumored that if you observe
the rising moon through your legs while bent over, then the
moon-on-horizon illusion will also be significantly lessened
because the trees and buildings are no longer registered as
recognizable icons . Feel free to attempt the experiment when
nobody is looking.
The human fascination with the Moon on the horizon is
powerful. On yet another occasion, I once received a phone
call from a cinematographer of a film in production by Fran­
cis Ford Coppola. The cinematographer wanted to obtain
genuine footage of the full moon as it rose over the Manhat­
ta n skyline . The film clip would be spliced into the film to
e sta bl ish the urban "night mood . " I was asked to provide
the best time, date, and location for this task. Only after
th e telephone call did it occur to me that the full moon's
photogeneity is what gets it artificially selected for appear-
 Celestial Windings 235

ances in feature films. The other moon phases, which are

also cosmically legitimate, tend to be neglected .
I was also concerned that Coppola's clip was going to feed
the misconception that the Moon only comes out at night.
Please tell your friends that the Moon is v\sible in broad
daylight on about twenty-four of the 29112-day cycle of
phases. The film clip may also feed the idea that the full
moon is common . But the Moon spends ten days of its 29112-
day cycle being a crescent and another ten days being that
funny-looking intermediate phase between quarter and full,
which is officially called "gibbous. "
Perhaps I a m biased, but nights with full moons are the
most avoided nights of the year among the world's profes­
sional astronomers. The full moon is so bright (it is over
five times brighter than the combined light of two side­
illuminated "half" moons) that the number of detectable
objects in the night sky drops precipitously. The full moon is
not even interesting through binoculars . Being front illumi­
nated as seen from Earth, the Moon has no shadows among
its mountains, hills, and valleys that would otherwise reveal
surface texture and depth. A professional portrait photogra­
pher would never illuminate someone from directly in front
because the person's face would then look flat, dull, and
lifeless. Lights are typically placed at some oblique angle to
provide shadows among the facial features. Although, if the
person has a serious case of acne, then detailed facial texture
may not be what is sought.
It is not fully appreciated that the Apollo astronauts on
the Moon's surface could always communicate with mission
control. As seen from the near side of the Moon, Earth is
always in the sky, which can only be true if the Moon rotates
on its axis in exactly the same amount of time that it takes
for the Moon to orbit Earth. Indeed, the Moon is in a "tidal
lock" with Earth such that it always shows the same face.
236 ASTRONOMY Is L o o K I N G U P

Face-Front

Face-Away

Figure 13.8. Moon's orbit in tidal lock. In the upper panel, the
head must rotate continuously in its orbit to show the same face
toward Earth. As is also true for the real Earth and Moon, there is
a perfect match between the rotation period and the time for one
complete orbit. This "tidal lock" ensures that observers on Earth
will never see the far side of the Moon. If the head did not rotate,
as pictured in the lower panel's set of orbs, then it would always
face the same direction and observers on Earth would get to view
all sides of the head during a full orbit.
 Celestial Windings 237

Yes, there is a near side and a far side of the Moon, but since
all parts of the Moon receive sunlight at different times in its
monthly orbit, there is actually no such concept as the dark side of
the Moon. It may require a century of effort among astronomy
educators to undo the influence of the popular rock group
Pink Floyd, whose 1973 album entitled "The Dark Side of
the Moon" misled an entire generation of Americans.
The Earth-Moon tidal lock is not a cosmic coincidence . It
is the natural consequence of strong tidal forces on a nearby
rotating object. A similar condition exists for the large plan­
ets ( Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) with their inner
satellites and for the Sun with Mercury. The Moon's tidal
forces are at work on Earth, which, among other things, act
to slow Earth's rotation rate. Eventually, the rotation rate of
Earth itself will equal the time it will take for the Moon to
complete one orbit. The result: Earth will show only one face
toward the Moon the way the Moon shows only one face
toward Earth. This will take several hundred billion years,
so you needn't worry about it just yet. In the meantime, you
can "watch" it happen as the occasional leap seconds are
introduced to the calendar year by the International Earth
Rotation Service .

Eclipses

The Moon's orbit around Earth is tipped about five degrees

from the path of the Sun against the background stars . As a
consequence, the Moon crosses the ecliptic twice for each
complete orbit. If the Moon's phase is new when it crosses
the ecliptic, then Earth, Moon, and Sun are aligned in syz­
ygy, and earthlings are treated to a total solar eclipse . No,
not all earthlings. Just the ones who are lucky enough to
have the Moon's narrow shadow pass over their town, or
the ones who are rich enough to travel to the shadow's path .
238 ASTRONOMY Is Loo KING UP

The dark cone o f the Moon's shadow, the umbra, just barely
reaches Earth in a fast-moving dark circle that is typically
one hundred miles wide . The range among eclipses extends
from zero to about two hundred miles. In what would other­
wise be broad daylight, the Sun disappears behind the
Moon . Strictly speaking, any time one cosmic object passes
in front of another, as in a total solar eclipse, the event is
known as an "occultation. "
On Earth, the Moon and Sun appear roughly the same
size in the sky. They are each about one-half degree in angle.
An excellent protractor, for those emergencies when you
must measure an angle in the sky, is your fist at arms length.
It spans about ten degrees for the average human. If you
align the bottom of your fist with the horizon, then nine fists
(your left and right fist alternatively stacked) should leave
you straight overhead at a 90-degree angle from where you
started . If you have big fists, then you probably also have
long arms, which ensures that your fist still spans ten de­
grees at arms length. (For this method to fail, you would
need the arm-to-fist proportions of an orangutan. ) At one­
half degree, the Sun and Moon each spans less than one­
fourth the width of your finger at arms length .
The near-match in angular size between the Sun and
Moon allows the outer atmosphere of the Sun, known by
the poetic term "corona," to be revealed during the few
minutes of totality. If you know which way the Moon's
umbra will approach, then a glance toward the horizon in
that direction during the few seconds before totality will
reveal a fast-moving column of darkness that looks as
though the sky were being parted . In the precious few mi­
nutes of totality, the entire sky darkens, the stars become
visible, the solar corona glows with gentle radiance, the air
temperature d rops, and animals behave strangely-espe­
cially humans . Humans temporarily leave their job to spend
 Celestial Windings 239

Sun New Moon

- - � - -

- - - -

- - - - � - - -

/ Solar Corona

- - - - - � - -

Figure 13.9. A total solar eclipse, where the Moon is large enough
to cover the Sun completely. As drawn, the Moon moves in its
orbit around Earth from right to left.
240 ASTRONOMY I s LooKING U P

wads o f money traveling to exotic spots o n Earth's surface

via car, plane, and ocean liner. They spend millions of dol­
lars on eclipse memorabilia . And they suffer great mental
trauma if clouds appear on the day of the eclipse.
I was one of these strangely behaving humans when I saw
the seven-minute total solar eclipse of June 30, 1973---o ne of
the longest on record, with a moon shadow on Earth that
was 185 miles wide . I was on board a large ocean liner that
sailed into the path of the Moon's shadow in the Atlantic
Ocean, off the coast of northwest Africa. Ocean liners give
you the option to sail to a spot with a good weather forecast
so I did not risk mental trauma . There was one woman on
the ship, however, who did not act strangely. What was
shocking about her behavior was that she seemed to function
in an alternative reality-only by not acting strangely did her
behavior look strange. During totality, everybody else on the
ship (myself included) rattled off dozens of photographs
while grunting assorted primitive syllables such as ooooh and
aaahhhh. Meanwhile, in a vision equally as surreal as the total
eclipse, this woman was knitting a sweater while comfort­
ably seated on a deck chair. This was my first lesson that
perhaps the marvels of universe do not induce awe in ev­
eryone.
The eccentric orbit of the Moon around Earth brings it
within 220,000 miles and takes it as far away as 255,000
miles . Similarly, the eccentric orbit of Earth around the Sun
brings it as close as 91,500,000 miles and as far as 94,500,000
miles. The apparent size of the Sun and the Moon in the sky
changes accordingly. There are some solar eclipses where
not only is the Earth-Moon distance larger than average, but
the Earth-Sun distance is smaller than average. Under these
circum sta nces, the dark cone of the Moon's shadow does not
reach Earth's surface . From Earth's point of view, the
Moon's size in the sky is not large enough to cover the Sun
 Celestial Windings 241

Sun New Moon

- - � - -

- - - - ..

- - - - ---- - - -

_ _ _ _ _ .......,. _ _ _

Figure 13. 10. An annular solar eclipse, where the Moon does not
happen to be big enough in the sky to cover the Sun completely.
The Sun appears to enclose the Moon the way an amoeba encloses
its dinner. As drawn, the Moon moves in its orbit around Earth
from right to left.
242 ASTRONOMY Is L o o KING U P

completely, s o that a s the eclipse proceeds, a ring o f sunlight

encloses the Moon the way a hungry amoeba encloses its
dinner. These eclipses have been dubbed "annular eclipses"
for the annulus of sunlight that remains during mid-eclipse.
During all solar eclipses, the Moon's shadow blazes across
Earth's surface between two and three thousand miles per
hour-it will most certainly outrun you. As lyrical as it may
otherwise sound, you will never be casually followed by a
moon shadow .
If the Moon's phase is full when it crosses the ecliptic,
then once again Earth, Moon, and the Sun are in syzygy,
but earthlings are now treated to a total lunar eclipse. The
Moon, in its orbit, crosses the 850,000-mile-long shadow
cone of Earth's umbra. At the distance to the Moon, Earth's
umbra is over three times as wide as the full moon, so the
entire eclipse takes many hours. An unsuspecting glance
at the eclipse in progress looks as though the Moon had
spontaneously decided to cycle through phases, with Earth's
u mbra taking bigger and bigger bites. During totality, when
the Moon has completely entered Earth's umbra, the Moon
all but disappears without much spectacle or fanfare. Unlike
the narrow path of a total solar eclipse, nearly everyone on
the same side of Earth as the full moon will bear witness to a
lunar eclipse . So while they are not more common than solar
eclipses, far more people get to view lunar eclipses from
their own backyard or roof. Compared with total solar
eclipses, total lunar eclipses are long and, quite frankly,
boring.
Nights during or near the full moon (known as "bright
time" by astronomers) are the least desirable nights to ob­
serve the universe because the sky is hopelessly contami­
na ted with moonlight. To the unaided eye, the number of
detectable stars drops from over three thousand during new
moon to about three hundred during full moon. And nebu-
 Celestial Windings 243

lous extended objects such as galaxies are decidedly less

impressive. Nearly all discoveries of dim galaxies at the edge
of the universe have occurred during or near new moon
(known as "dark time" by astronomers) at the world's major
observatories. On May 25, 1975, there was a total lunar
eclipse, which a group of astronomers at the California Insti­
tute of Technology in Pasadena, California, deemed enough
of an excuse to hold an evening party. When the eclipse
began, it was noticed that a particular astronomer did not
show up for the gathering. One of those in attendance re­
called that the missing astronomer had suspiciously re­
quested time on the 200-inch Palomar telescope during the
full moon to observe a very dim object. By mid-eclipse it
simultaneously occurred to all assembled that the missing
astronomer was clever enough to request observing time
during the full moon-knowing that it was to be eclipsed
and knowing that the observing conditions during a totally
eclipsed full moon rival the darkest skies of a new moon.

Planets

If there exists a cosmic ballet, it is among the solar system's

planets as they wander against the background stars with
orbits and paths that are choreographed by the forces of
gravity. With an occasional cameo appearance by the Moon,
the planets (especially the five visible to the unaided eye:
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter) assemble in dif­
ferent combinations at different times of the year to create
striking photo opportunities. The planets, in their orbits,
have enchanted stargazers for centuries . In the days before
computer simulations, people even built orreries, which are
mechanical working models of the solar system. They served
as a teaching tool and as toys to play with on a cloudy nights.
As noted in chapter 1 2, all planets in the solar system
244 ASTRO N O M Y I s L O O KI N G U P

orbit the Sun i n roughly the same plane. The observational

consequence is that the ecliptic is shared by all other planets.
It is a veritable planetary freeway of the sky. Perhaps it
should, instead, be called a highway. One should expect
many occasions each year where several of these objects are
found in the same region of the sky. Indeed, when two or
more objects can fit within the field of view of ordinary
binoculars, then we say they are in "conjunction." In my
opinion, which many share, the most photogenic conjunc­
tions occur when one or more planets assemble with the
crescent moon against the deeply colored curtain of the twi­
light sky. This can happen during dusk with the waxing
crescent moon, or as those who work the "graveyard shift"
know, it can happen during the early dawn with the Moon
as a waning crescent.
If Earth's lower atmosphere is more turbulent than usual,
then the path of starlight becomes severely disrupted as it
refracts unpredictably across the different air densities.
When this happens, stars begin to "twinkle. " When atmo­
spheric turbulence really gets bad, even planets will twinkle.
All this twinkling may sound poetic and may look pretty
during a conjunction, but it represents the worst possible
seeing conditions that an astronomer can encounter. (Actually,
total cloud-cover is slightly worse. ) This dilemma was docu­
mented in 1 704 by Sir Isaac Newton in his seminal treatise
on optics.

If the Theory of making Telescopes could at length be fully

brought into Practice, yet there would be certain Bounds
beyond which Telescopes could not perform. For the Air
through which we look u pon the Stars, is in a perp etua l
Tremor; as may be seen by the . . . twinkling of the fix' d
Stars .

Sir Isaac continued with telescopic foresight:

 Celestial Windings 245

The only Remedy is a most serene and quiet Air, such as

may perhaps be found on the tops of the highest Moun­
tains above the Grosser Clouds. 4

The well-publicized Hubble Space Telescope was lifted into

orbit primarily to escape the degraded image quality and
poor resolution that the lower atmosphere imposes on obser­
vations of all objects.
Arguably, the world's most famous painting that portrays
stars is "The Starry Night" by the nineteenth-century Dutch
impressionist Vincent van Gogh. These stars are drawn as
large circular undulating yellow-white blobs in the sky. If
this is what Vincent actually witnessed, assuming his eye­
balls did not suffer from a bad case of astigmatism, then it
must go down in the annals of astronomy as the worst
seeing conditions ever recorded for a clear night.
In my early years of high school, I attended a summer
camp for kids who knew they wanted to grow up to become
astronomers. It was located in the cloudless skies of the
Mojave Desert of southern California where we lived noctur­
nally for two months. The camp was equipped with a bank
of more than a dozen telescopes of various sizes, each de­
signed for a particular scientific purpose. A friend of mine at
the camp received a letter from home that said all the usual
tender things that letters from home say. Except that the
letter ended with an unwittingly declared curse from Hell:

. . . and we hope that all your stars are twinkling!

Love,
Mom & Dad

Sometimes a twinkling planet in the twilight sky can be

quite striking, especially if it is Venus. Because of its proxim-

4. Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks (Book 1, Part 1, Proposition 8, Problem 2; rpt . ,

New York: Dover, 1979 ( 1 704)).
246 A S T R O N O M Y I s L O O KING U P

ity to Earth, and because of its high albedo from a thick

reflective white cloud-cover, Venus is often the brightest
object in the sky. At its brightest it is nearly twenty times
brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.
When Venus is low on the horizon, a turbulent atmosphere
can sometimes behave like a prism and display quite a show
of twinkling colors. For these reasons, Venus is occasionally
mistaken for an unidentified flying object that hovers over
the horizon. For some people, a UFO means a flying saucer
that is commanded by hostile aliens. To other people, a UFO
is simply an object that they cannot identify. In general, it is
safer to admit uncertainty and to inquire further than it is
to invoke extraordinary imagination-particularly if you are
otherwise unfamiliar with that evening's schedule of cosmic
conjunctions .
For example, in some urban settings the sky is unfamiliar
to many people. I submitted the following recollection to the
New York Times, which was printed in their "Metropolitan
Diary" of Wednesday, July 12, 1991 .

Dear Metropolitan Diary,

An elderly sounding woman with a strong Brooklyn
accent recently called my office at Columbia University's
Department of Astronomy to ask about a brigh t glowing
object she saw "hovering" outside her window the night
before . I knew that the planet Venus happened to be
brigh t and well-placed in the west for viewing in the early
evening sky, but I asked more questions to verify my
suspicions . After sifting through answers like, "It's a little
bit higher than the roof of Marty's Deli, " I concluded that
the brigh tness, compass direction, elevation above the ho­
rizon, and time of observation were indeed consistent
with her having seen the planet Venus .
Realizing t h a t s h e h a s probably lived in Brooklyn most
 Celestial Windings 247

of her life, I asked her why she called now and not at any
of the hundreds of other times that Venus was bright over
the western horizon. She replied, "I've never noticed it
before . " You must understand that to an astronomer this
is an astonishing statement. I was compelled to explore
her response further. I asked how long she has lived in
her apartment. "Thirty years . " I asked her whether she
has ever looked out her window before. "I used to always
keep my curtains closed, but now I keep them open. "
Naturally, I then asked her why she now keeps her cur­
tains open. "There used to be a tall apartment building
outside my window but they tore it down. Now I can see
the sky and it is beautiful. "

Th e path o f the planets through the sky i s not as simple

as that of the Moon or the Sun. Yes, the planets orbit the
Sun. And yes, if you looked from night to night you would
see them move against the background stars. But what com­
plicates this simple picture is that we observe planets that
orbit the Sun while riding on a planet that orbits the Sun.
The resulting planetary paths confounded centuries of the
world's greatest thinkers before there was agreement that
the Sun was the center of planetary motion.
All planets orbit counterclockwise 5 when viewed from
"above" the Sun. When viewed from Earth, a gen eral trend
emerges for planets to move from west to east against the
background stars . The inner two planets (Mercury and
Venus), complete their orbits around the Sun faster than
Earth. The outer planets, however (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Ne ptu ne, and Pluto), take longer than Earth to com­
plete their orbits around the Sun. A simple and direct obser-

5. During your life, if all your clocks had digital faces, then "counterclock­
wise" is the direction that baseball players, track runners, horses, and race cars
move around their respective tracks.
248 ASTRO N O M Y I s L O O KI N G U P

East -+- West

Background �
Stars

.
I \' . •
:-Retrograde�
I I

�----� •
--�������---4
'Q -....
•r--... �����-� ...�­
P at h of a planet

Figure 13.11. The west-to-east general path of a planet can be seen

in the sky against the background of stars. As Earth and the planets
orbit the Sun, there will always be an interval where the path of a
planet will appear to loop backwards (east to west) in what is called
"retrograde" motion.

vational consequence is that there will always arrive a time

interval when the relative motion between Earth and each of
the other planets makes them appear to move in "reverse,"
from east to west, against the background stars . If you do
not put the Sun at the center of planetary motion, you will
have an extraordinarily difficult time explaining what you
see. In spite of this, the historical bias toward an earth­
centric view of the universe was strong. When the sixteenth­
century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus wrote De
Revolutionibus (a treatise that placed the Sun, rather than
Earth, at the center of planetary motion), an anonymous
foreword was inserted at the time of publication without
 Celestial Windings 249

Copernicus' knowledge or permission. It was later revealed

to have been written by the Lutheran theologist Andreas
Osiander, who had helped to supervise the printing. The
foreword included the following disclaimer:

To the reader Concerning the Hypothesis of this Work

There have already been widespread reports about the
novel hypotheses of this work, which declares that earth
moves whereas the sun is at rest in the center of the
universe . . . . For these hypotheses need not be true or
even probable. On the contrary, if they provide a calculus
consistent with the observations, that alone is enough.

The concept of backward apparent motion should be easy

for modem humans. The next time you visit an amusement
park, give close attention to the dizzy people on the rides
that go in circles. (Ignore the people doing energy experi­
ments on the roller coaster. ) In an analogous scenario to
orbiting planets, you will notice that when the riders are
near you on these nausea-inducing machines they mi gh t
cross your field of view from left to right, yet when they are
on the other side of the machine the reverse is true-you
will see them pass from right to left. Similarly, these people
see you, as you wait patiently in line for the next ride, shift
across their field of view alternatively from left to right and
then from right to l eft
.

Planets that appear to move backward are commonly said

to be in "retrograde," which has even found its way into
Shakespearean literature. In the first scene of the first act of
the comedy All's Well That Ends Well, Helena displays a
sharpness of wit as she comments on the valor of Parolles .

HELENA: Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charita-

ble star.
PAROLL E S : Under Mars, I .
250 A S T R O N O M Y I s L o o KI N G U P

* * * * * BACKGROUND SCENERY * * * * *

Left --- Right

Figure 1 3 . 12. A person who waits to join others on an amusement

park ride will notice that the revolving people who feel nausea
alternatively pass left to right and right to left against the back­
ground scenery. To the people on the ride, the person who waits
will also appear to swing left to right and then right to left. Planets
in orbit around the Sun exhibit similar behavior when viewed
from Earth .

H E L E N A : I especially think, under Mars.

P A R O L L E S : Why under Mars?
H E L E N A : The wars h a t h so kept you under that you must
needs be born under Mars.
P A R O L L E S : When h e was predomina n t .
H E L E N A : W h e n h e was retrograde, I think rather.
 Celestial Windings 251

PAROLLES : Why think you so?

HELENA : You go so much backward when you fight.

Unlike amusement park rides and Shakespeare's Parolles,

planets require months of careful tracking to watch them
enter and emerge from retrograde motion against the back­
ground stars. The observation is a task best accomplished by
astronomers and insomniacs .
O f all the cosmic objects that one might observe with a
backyard telescope, the planet Saturn, with its banded sur­
face, its orbiting moons, and its awesome ring-parted in its
middle by Cassini's division-would appear high on the list
for its ability to excite passers-by. In my youth, I did not
have a backyard, only the roof of my urban apartment build­
ing. And there were no passers-by, except for the occasional
grumpy police officer who would mistake my telescope for
an M-79 grenade launcher. My telescope's motor, which
allowed the telescope to track stars across the sky as Earth
rotates, required electricity. I would often lower a 100-foot
extension cord from the roof through my bedroom window,
which police would reliably mistake for a rappelling rope. I
had a total of five such encounters. In three of the five
cases, I was promptly saved by the planet Saturn, with the
following a typical dialogue:

OFFICER (shooting-hand poised near gun, other hand holding flash­

light): What the hell is that thing, and what are you doing
on the roof ?
ME (maneuvering Saturn q uickly into field of view): Good eve­
ning, officer. Ever see the planet Saturn through a tele­
scope before?
OFFICER (shooting-hand now scratching head ): No, just in pic­
tures.
ME: Turn off your flashlight and have a look.
252 ASTRONOMY Is LOOKING U P

OFFICER (looking through telescope): Wow! Saturn really does

have rings! Maybe I'll buy one of these for my kids!

The police officers may have learned that in life and in the
universe, it is always best to keep looking up . But if some­
body really does set up a rooftop grenade launcher, I hope it
will still attract their attention.
 Suggested Reading

Periodicals

The following periodicals will keep you abreast of discoveries in

astronomy and science in general .

Scientific American, 415 Madison Avenue, New York, New York

10017. Available on most newsstands. With articles written by
research scientists, it is still the most respected science periodical
intended for the lay reader.
Science News, 1 719 N Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Weekly news items on discoveries in all areas of scientific re­
search. Highly readable.
Sky and Telescope, Sky Publishing Company, 49 Bay State Road,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. Indispensable if you own a
telescope and are serious about getting around the sky.
Astronomy Magazine, P.O. Box 92788, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202.
Looks better on the coffee table than Sky & Telescope but contains
mostly the same information. Its photogenic layout attracts a
considerably larger audience.
Stardate Magazine, McDonald Observatory, University of Texas,
Austin, Texas 78712. Many of the chapters contained in Universe
Down to Earth first appeared as feature articles in this magazine.
Published six times a year, its articles, news items, star charts,
and question-and-answer column are ideally suited for the
weekend stargazer. Stardate Magazine is published by the same
people who produce the nationally syndicated daily radio spot
"Star Date . "
Griffith Observer, 2800 East Observatory Road, Los Angeles, Califor­
nia 9002 7. Serves a similar audience to Stardate Magazine. They
254 SUGGESTED READING

are each for people who cannot get excited about all the contents
of Sky and Telescope, but who care enough about the universe to
stay in touch with what is important.
Skeptical Inquirer, The Quarterly Journal of the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal, Box
703, Buffalo, New York 14226-0703. Perhaps the most important
periodical in this list, the Skeptical Inquirer applies scientific prin­
ciples and methods of investigation to the extraordinary claims
that permeate the sensationalist press. The topics extend from
UFO abductions to telekinesis to out-of-body experiences. The
magazine is society's vaccine against pseudoscience.

Books

Many of the topics discussed in Universe Down to Earth may be

explored further in the following books.

Biography and Autobiography

Christianson, Gale E. In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and
His Times. New York: Free Press, 1984. A fat biography that
leaves no apple unturned.
Einstein, Albert. Out of My Later Years. New York: Philosophical
Library, 1950. Einstein reflects on his life as a scientist and as a
public icon.
Geymonat, Ludivico. Galileo Galilei: A Biography and Inquiry into His
Philosophy of Science. Translated by Stillman Drake. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1965. The life and times of Galileo.
Koestler, Arthur. The Sleepwalkers. New York: Penguin, 1990. A
chatty and often amusing account of some great astronomers of
the past.
Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia . An Autobiography, and Other Recollec­
tions. Edited by K . Haramundanis. New York: Cambridge Uni­
versity Press, 1990. It was not easy being a female astronomer in
the early twentieth cen tu ry.
 Suggested Reading 255

General Astronomy
Adouze, Jean, and Guy Israel, eds. Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy.
2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. If you seek
to own only one astronomy book (besides, of course, Universe
Down to Earth), it should be this one. With contributions from
professionals in the field, it is a comprehensive reference on all
areas of astronomy.
Burke, John G. Cosmic Debris: Meteorites in History. Berkeley: Uni­
versity of California Press, 1986. If you are one of those people
who maintains a morbid fascination with meteors that strike
Earth, then this book and the following Chapman/Morrison title
are for you.
Chapman, C. P., and D. Morrison. Cosmic Catastrophes. New York:
Plenum, 1989.
Harwit, Martin. Cosmic Discovery: The Search, Scope, and Heritage of
Astronomy. New York: Basic Books, 1981 . A telling account of
the academic and societal conditions that have led to discoveries
in modern astronomy.
Jaschek, Carlos, and Mercedes Jaschek. The Classification of Stars.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. A confusing
topic, even for many professional astronomers, this book ex­
plains it all.
Moore, Patrick. Fireside Astronomy: An Anecdotal Tour Through the
History and Lore of Astronomy. New York: Wiley, 1992. An anthol­
ogy of unusual, bizarre, and humorous recollections from one
of the most prolific British astronomers of our times.
Shu, Frank H. The Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy.
Mill Valley, California: University Science Books, 1982. If simply
knowing the names of things in the universe leaves you unful­
filled, then this book will provide insight to the deeper physi­
cal principles that underlie "astronomy as a science" rather
than "astronomy as pretty pictures . " The author is not afraid
to use math, but unlike many other relatively advanced books,
it does not use math as a substitute for communication with
words.
256 SUGGESTED READING

General Physics
Cox, P. A. The Elements: Their Origin, Abundance, and Distribution.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. I cannot add much to
the book's title.
Peierls, Rudolf. Surprises in Theoretical Physics. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979. Many scientific discoveries are not
planned . Here is an account of some of them.
Schwartz, Cindy. A Tour of the Subatomic Zoo: A Guide to Particle
Physics. New York: American Institute of Physics, 1992. A heav­
ily illustrated introduction to the abstract world of particle
physics.
Swenson, Jr., Loyd S. The Ethereal Aether. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1972. Direct from the theory graveyard, this book
documents the rise and fall of the concept of a luminiferous
ether.
Weinberg, Steven. Subatomic Particles. Scientific American Library.
New York: W. H. Freeman, 1983. A readable and somewhat
anecdotal history of the discovery of atomic particles.

General Reference
Abbott, David. The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists: Astronomers.
New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1984. This one has everybody
in it-from the famous to the obscure.
Jerrard, H. G . , and D. B. McNeill. Dictionary of Scientific Units.
London: Chapman and Hall, 1980. A useful reference for that
moment when your memory of units does not measure up.
Mackay, Alan L. Dictionary of Scientific Quotations. New York: Adam
Hilger, 1991. As complete a collection as you are likely to find .
Includes quotes from politicians, novelists, and of course scien­
tists. Entertaining and revealing.
Weast, Robert C. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Cleveland:
CRC Press, 1992. Accept no substitutes. Nearly four inches
thick and weighing in at over five pounds, this reference book
 Suggested Reading 257

belongs on the shelf of all serious students of physics or chem­

istry.

General Science
Aveni, Anthony. Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures.
New York: Basic Books, 1989. The history of the measurement
of time. Highly readable and, at times, entertaining.
Brancazio, Peter J. Sport Science. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1985. Required reading for the scientifically inclined sports en­
thusiast. The physics of everything from the discus throw to a
basketball shot.
Flaste, Richard, ed. , and the Editors and Reporters of Science
Times [science section of the New York Times] . New York Times
Book of Scientific Literacy. New York, Random House, 1990. A
collection of science facts that the science editors of the New York
Times have determined to be essential knowledge for the
masses.
Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York:
Dover, 1957. An account of how people have claimed to use
principles of science as a basis for fads, cults, and the paranor­
mal. While many examples were especially relevant in the 1950s,
the book still serves as a blueprint to help combat contemporary
pseudoscience .

Getting Around the Sky

Allen, Richard Hinkley. Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning. New
York: Dover, 1963. First published in 1899, this book contains
more information about star names and constellations than you
could have ever imagined. Its high density of information makes
it better for the reference shelf than for the beach .
Astronomical Almanac, Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Govern­
ment Printing Office, Washington, D . C . , 20402. Published an­
nually. If you are really serious about stargazing, then the Astro-
258 SUGGESTED READING

nomical Almanac i s indispensable. It contains everything you

never needed to know about cosmic happenings, from detailed
eclipse timings to the rising and setting times of the Sun, Moon,
and planets, to the differential coordinates of Jupiter's satellites.
Indispensable to the professional astronomer and the commit­
ted amateur.
Burnham's Celestial Handbook: An Observer's Guide to the Universe
Beyond the Solar System. 3 vols. New York: Dover, 1978. Alpha­
betical by constellation, these books contain over two thousand
pages of readable information about everything that is worth
your attention in the sky.
Norton, Arthur P. Norton's Star Atlas and Reference Handbook. Edited
by Ian Ridpath. New York: Halsted Press, 1989. First published
in 1910, this time-honored classic handbook of the heavens of­
fers useful and informative chapters on telescopes and general
astronomy. It also contains star charts with interesting objects
clearly identified . Unlike Bumham's handbook, this one fits eas­
ily into your bag or briefcase.
Ottewell, Guy. Astronomical Calendar. Sky Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 91 1 1 , Belmont, Massachusetts 021 78-91 1 1 . Published
annually. If you are serious about stargazing, then this one is
for you. It gives a detailed account of cosmic happenings for
every day of the year.
Seidelman, P. Kenneth, ed. Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomi­
cal Almanac. Mill Valley, Calif. : University Science Books, 1992.
This is what you read when you get lost reading the Astronomical
Almanac. It contains especially informative discussions of the
reckoning of time, coordinate systems, and how the tables were
computed for the Astronomical Almanac.
Voyager II: The Dynamic Sky Simulator for the Macintosh. Carina Soft­
ware, 830 Williams Street, San Leandro, California 94577. If your
local planetarium is too far away from you, then this is the next
best thing. The software enables you to do things you have
never even thought of (such as monitor the paths of the planets
in the sky as they would appear if you lived on Pluto). With a
color monitor, the program may be more interesting than actu­
ally going outside and looking up.
 Suggested Reading 259

History of Science
Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by Richard McKeon.
New York: Random House, 1941 . Aristotle enjoyed less success
in astronomy than in other pursuits of knowledge. This volume
contains his most important and influential writings.
Einstein, Albert. The Principle of Relativity: Collection of Original Pa­
pers on the Special and General Theory of Relativity. New York:
Dover, 1952. The original papers, including the one where E =

mc2 appears for the first time.

Galileo Galilei. Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. Translated
by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. New York: Dover, 1954.
A reprint of Galileo's original work from 1638. To convey his
scientific discoveries to the lay reader, Galileo published his
research on mechanics in the form of continuous dialogue be­
tween a teacher, Salviati, and two inquisitive students, Sagredo
and Simplicio.
Newton, Sir Isaac. Principia. Vol. 1, The Motion of Bodies. Vol. 2, The
System of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1962. Reprinted from the original Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, published in 1687. Newton's insight to the universe
was staggeringly deep.
Shamos, Morris H. Great Experiments in Physics: Firsthand Accounts
from Galileo to Einstein. New York: Dover, 1959. The original
descriptions of the most significant experiments ever conducted
in the history of physics.

Mathematics
Boyer, Carl B. A History of Mathematics. New York: Wiley, 1991 .
Concise, complete, and readable.
Kasner, Edward, and James R. Newman. Mathematics and the Imagi­
nation (originally published in 1940) . Reprint . Redmond, Wash . :
Tempus Books, 1989. The most enjoyable book I have ever read
on mathematics . I first read it at age fourteen, and it is still on
my shelf.
260 SUGGESTED READING

Smith, David Eugene, ed. A Source Book in Mathematics. New York:

Dover, 1959. Original papers from the greatest thinkers in the
history of mathematics.

Philosophy of Science
Feynman, Richard. The Character of Physical Law. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1965.
Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Mod­
ern Science. New York: Harper and Row, 1958.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolution. 2d ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970. These are three timeless clas­
sics. They are short and mostly accessible to a general audience.

Assorted
Edelman, Bernard, Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1985. Revealing and often upsetting first­
hand descriptions of combat during the Vietnam War. (Used for
parts of chapter 6.)
Major, Frederick, M. C. Myatt, and Gerard Ridefort. Modern Rifles
and Submachine Guns. London: Salamander Books, 1992. Detailed
yet brief discussions of nearly every important rifle and machine
gun used in warfare. (Used for parts of chapter 6.)
Shakespeare, William. Riverside Shakespeare. Edited by G . Blake­
more Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. A complete collec­
tion of Shakespeare's plays and poems, with supplemental ma­
terial on the life and times of Shakespeare himself. (Used for
parts of chapters 4 and 13.)
 Index

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures.

Aborigines, 41 Animal magnetism, 174

Absorption spectrum, 60 Animal metabolism, 174
Accidents, automobile, 84 Annular eclipses, 242
Acetylene (C2H2), 1 73 Antarctic Circle, 227
Aea i n Cokhis, 194 Antibiotics, 180
Africa, 8, 240 Anticyclone, 50
Afros, 20 Antimatter, 28
Airplanes, 15, 1 76 Apogalacton, 53
AK-47 rifle, 94 Apollo astronauts, 235
Alaska, 228 Apollo command module, 1 74
Albedo, 51, 246 Apollo space missions, 173
Alberio, 74 Apus, 191, 201
Aliens, 149, 155, 246 Arctic Circle, 228
Alkaid (star), 155 Arctic igloo, artist's rendition of,
All's Well That Ends Well, 249 142
Alnico magnets, 1 78 Argo Navis, 194
Alpha Canis Majoris, 192 Aristotle, 16, 32
Alpha Centauri, 74, 192 Aristotle's falling balls, 1 7
Alpha Ceti V, 74 Arizona, 96
Alpha Lyrae, 1 18, 155 Arp catalogue, 74
Alpha Orionis, 151 Arsenic, 1 78
Aluminum, 1 77, 180 Ascending nodes, 59, 218
Amateur astronomer, 65 Asia, 8
American cars, 84 Asterisms, 194
Americium, 184 Asteroids, 55, 57, 69; 1989FC, 70;
Ammonia (NH3), 1 73 belt, 57; Ceres, 27; close encounter
AM radio, 1 14 with Earth, 70; discovery of, 65;
Amusement parks, 249; rides, formation, 177; lettering scheme,
250 69; nomenclature, 69
Analemma, 53, 54, 223, 224 Astrologers, 196
Ancient monuments, 33 Astrologers, expensive ones, 210
Anderson, Carl, 28 Astrological sign, 208, 209
Andromeda, 190 Astrology, modern-day, 207
Andromeda galaxy, 68, 75 Astronomers, professional, 65
A ngstroms, 9 Astronomers, solar, 58
Animal husbandry, 20 Astro11omical Alma11ac, 233
262 Index

Astronomical Ephemeris and Nautical Big Dipper, 74, 155, 194, 202
Almanac, 233 Billion, 7
Astronomical units, 9 Binary star systems, 59, 1 22
Astrophysics, birth of, 153 Binzel, Rick, 71
Atlantic Ocean, 240 Biology, 5
Atlas, daughters of, 195 Black body, 134, 137, 155; curves,
Atmospheric bands, 58, 67 134; radiation law, 139; spectrum,
Atmospheric turbulence, 244 138, 1 39
Atomic bomb, 1 79, 184 Black holes, 50, 52, 87, 98, 122, 157;
Atomic collisions, kinetic energy of, event horizon of, 52; fall into, 90;
98 Sun as a, 85
Atomic decay, 55 Blood chemistry, 1 76
Atomic fission bomb, 183 "Blue Hot," 142
Atomic nuclei, 55, 58 Blue sky, 119
Atoms, 6, 10, 1 2, 165 Blue stars, 1 19, 121
Australia, national flag, 193 Body temperature, human, 40
Australian Outback, 41 Boiling water, 109
Automobile accidents, 84 Bok, Bart, 57
Autumnal equinox, 208, 225 Bok globules, 57
Autumn, first day of, 208, 216 Boltzmann, Ludwig, 137
Boltzmann's constant, 140
Babylonian mythology, 207 Bombs, nuclear, 15
Babylonians, 207 Bonds, molecular, 64
Bacon, Francis, 19 Boolean algebra, 27
Bacteria, 5 Bose, Jagadis Chandra, 53
Bacteria, radius of, 7 Boso, 53
Baltimore, Maryland, 88 Boson, 53
Bar chart, 129 Boston, 88
Barred galaxies, 68 Bowling balls, 20
Barringer Crater (Arizona), 96 Brahe, Tycho, 17
Barter, 5 Bright giants, luminosity class, 152
Baryon, 53 Bright time, 242
Baseball stadiums, 1 13 British Isles, 107
Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1 16 Bromine, 1 78
Bennett, comet, 71 Brooklyn, New York, 246
Bently, Richard, 89 Brown dwarfs, 86
Berlin, 139 Buckminsterfullerine, 172
Berzelius, ] . ] . , 1 68 Buckyballs, 1 72
Beta Orionis, 151 Bug bulbs, 120
Betelgeuse, 151 Bug electrocutors, 120
Bezillion, 8 Bullets, armor-piercing, 180
Bicycles, 1 76
Big bang theory, 3 1 , 50 , 54, 64, 1 1 6, de la Caille, Abbe Nicolas Louis,
1 39, 1 70 194
 Index 263

Calcium, 179 Center of mass, 79; airborne base­

Calcium H and K, 67 ball bats, 87; boomerangs, 87;
Calcium hydride, 67 bowling pins, 87; continental
Calculators, 27, 44 United States, 88; dumbbell
Calculus, 140 weight-set, 86; household cat, 87;
California, 89, 245 Jupiter-Sun, 85; location between
California Institute of Technology, two bodies, 84; rocket, 86; seago­
243 ing vessels, 89; subatomic parti­
Caloric theory of heat, 19 cles, 83; triple-decker buses, 89
Calories, 104, 105 Center of the Milky Way, 204
Cambridge catalogue of radio Centrifugal force, 59
sources, 75 Cepheid variables, 161
Cambridge, University of, 6 Ceres, 27
Cancer, 219 Cesium-133, 42
Cancer: internal organs, 122; lu- Cesium atom, 43
kemia, 182; skin, 122 Cetus, 210
Canis Major, 192 Chadwick, James, 6
Cannon, Annie Jump, 67, 152 Chaffee, Roger, 173
Cape Kennedy, 173 Chain reaction, 1 83
Capricorn, 220 Chaldean mythology, 207
Carassius auratus, 49 Chaldeans, 207
Carbon, 171, 175 Charcoal briquettes, 172
Carbon, cosmic abundance of, 172 Charged coupled devices, 1 75
Carbon dioxide, 1 1 6, 178 Chariots of the Gods, 33
Carbon dioxide, on Venus, 1 1 8 Chemical element, identity of, 55
Carbon hydride, 58 Chemical elements (chart), 167
Carbon white dwarf, 172 Chemical energy, 64, 93, 97
Carnot, Nicolas Leonard Sadi, 91 Chinese term for Milky Way, 195
Car power, 41 Christianity, spread of, 222
Cartesian coordinates, 26 Christmas, 222
Cassini, Giovanni Domenico, 58 Circle, 101
Cassini's division, 58, 251 Circle, perfect, 56
Cassiopeia, 1 %, 204 Clarke, Alvan G . , 192
Cavendish Laboratory, 6 Clemens, Samuel, 22
CCDs, 175 Clendening, Logan, 37
Celestial equator, 54, 216, 218, 219, Clocks, 43, 216
228 C02, 178
Celestial grid, 228 Cobalt, 181
Celestial poles, 228 Cobalt, magnetic, 177
Celestial sphere, 207, 216 Coherent photons, 61
Cells, 5 Columbia University's Department
Celsius temperature scale, 121 of Astronomy, 246
Centaurus, 53, 192 Combustion, 1 73
Center of gravity, 83, 90 Comets, 71; Bennett, 71; discovery
264 Index

Comets (Continued) Cosmic jargon, 65

of, 65; Halley, 71, 100; Ikeya-Seki, Coude focus, 59
71; Kohoutek, 71; lettering Coude room, 59
scheme, 70; nomenclature, 70; Counting, 5
tails Counting sheep, 5
Complex analysis, 27 Count Rumford, 91
Computers, 44 Crab Nebula, 51
Conduction, 108 Crescent Moon, 231 , 244
Cones of the retina, 125, 132 Crux Australis, 193; 201
Congressional debates, 8 Cube, 22
Conjunctions, 244, 246 Cygnus, 74
Constellation boundaries, 209
Constellations, 73, 187; Andro- Daniken, Erich von, 33, 34
meda, 190; Apus, 191, 201 ; Argo "Dark Side of the Moon, the," 237
Navis, 194; Camelopardalis, 189; Dark Spot of Neptune, 51
Cancer, 219; Canis Major, 192; Dark time at astronomical observa-
Capricorn, 220; Carina the Keel, tories, 243
194; Cassiopeia, 196, 204; Centau­ Darwin, Charles, 18
rus, 53, 192; Cetus, 210; Crux Aus­ Darwin's theory of evolution, 145
tralis, 193, 201 ; Cygnus, 51; Her­ Data: analysis, 23; errors in, 23; con-
cules, 189; Hydra, 189; Libra, 191, taminated, 24; importance of, 17;
200; Lyra, 1 18, 155; Microscopium, peculiar, 32
193; Musca, 189; Ophiuchus, 210; Day, length of, 223
Orion, 151, 1 89, 1 98; Pavo, 189; Declination, 216
Pegasus, 189, 190, 1 99; Perseus, Degeneracy, 56
189; Puppis the Stern, 194; Pyxis Degenerate star, 56, 159
the Compass, 194; Sagittarius, Denmark, 17
195, 204; Scorpius, 189; Southern De Reuolutionibus, 248
Cross, 1 93, 201 ; Telescopium, 193; Descartes, Rene, 26
Triangulum Australis, 191, 200; Descending node, 59, 219
Ursa Major, 74, 195; Ursa Minor, Detector: digital, 60; photographic,
195; Vela the Sail, 1 94 59
Convection, 108 Diamond, 172
Cool paint colors, 142 Differential calculus, 27
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 19, 248 Differential geometry, 27
Copper, 178 Diffraction grating, 60
Copper, power lines, 180 Digital clocks, 43, 44
Coppola, Francis Ford, 234, 235 Dirac, Paul, 28
Corona, solar, 238, 239 Disney, Walt, 66
Cosmic Background Explorer Distance ladder, 162
(COBE), 1 1 6 Distribution function, 129
Cosmic ballet, planets a s a , 243 DNA, 15
Cosmic chessboard, universe as a12 Dodecahedron, 22
Cosmic Discovery, 18 Dog days of August, 192
 Index 265

Domestic farm animals, 20 Elements: decay of, 1 66; identity of,

Dorothy and Toto, 19 55; number of protons, 165; unsta­
Dublin, New Hampshire, 233 ble, 166
Duration of daylight, 223 Ellipses, 101
Dwarf stars, 66 Elliptical galaxies, 67, 68, 1 14; light
from, 72
2
E = mc , 28, 107 Elliptical orbit, 54
Early type galaxies, 62, 67 Emission spectrum, 60
Early type stars, 63 Energy, 28, 30; chemical, 64, 93;
Earth, 9, 22; atmosphere, 24, 58, 96, conduction, 108; convection, 108;
1 19, 123; atmosphere, density, gravitational potential, 95, 98;
229; axis, 57, 215, 216, 221, 228; heat, 91 , 93, 1 04; hydroelectric,
center of, 90; circumference of, 26; 104; kinetic, 93; maser, 61; me­
equator, 57; gravitational potential chanical, 91 , 105; nuclear, 64; radi­
well, 100; gravity, 82, 90; longi­ ation, 108; solar, 103, 104; stored
tude, 21 7; lower atmosphere of, chemical, 97; stored mechanical,
57, 244; mass relative to Moon's 97
mass, 84; orbit, 24, 42, 207, 219, England, 6, 107, 195
223; principal latitude zones, 219; Equinox, 221, 225
revolution, 30; rotation, 30, 216, Eratosthenes, 26
237; rotational axis, 207; seasons, Erbium, 1 79
cause of, 225; surface, angle of Errors of contamination, 24
sunlight upon, 225; umbra, 242; Escape velocity, 99
wobble, 209 Eta Ursa Majoris, 155
Earth-centric universe, 248 Ethiopia, queen of, 196
Earth-Moon distance, 240 Euclid, 26
Earth-Moon tidal lock, 237 Euclid's geometry, 26
Earth-Sun distance, 240 Europe, 6, 8
Eastern Europe, 5 Event horizon, 52, 98
Eccentricity, 56 Ewen, H. I . , 115
Eclipses: lunar, 218; solar, 57; total­ Excess stomach acid, 16
ity, 57 Expanding universe, 15, 60
Ecliptic, 207, 218, 244; obliquity of, Experimental science, 23
57 Extraterrestrials, 33
Egyptian calendar, 192 Eyepiece, telescope, 58
Einstein, Albert, 18, 21, 22, 26, 42, Eyes, human, 131
107; general theory of relativity,
19; special theory of relativity, 19 Fahrenheit temperature scale, 121
Electromagnetic radiation, 113 Falling stars, 96
Electromagnetic spectrum, 63, 1 1 1 Far infrared , 63
Electron, 10, 28, 1 1 4, 1 65; cascad- Federal Communications Commis­
ing, 1 1 4; degeneracy, 56; radius sion, 1 6
of, 7; spin flip, 1 1 5 Federal Tr.ide Commission, 1 6
Elementary particle physics, 27 Fido, the dog, 2 1 7
266 Index

Filibusters, 8 Galactic structure, 173

Fireplaces, household, 64 Galaxies, 65; barred, 68; clusters, to­
First day of autumn, 225; definition tal mass of, 99; early type, 67; ellip­
of, 219 tical, 67, 72; gas-rich, 1 15; gaseous
First day of spring, 225; definition regions of, 61; irregular, 169; late
of, 218 type, 62, 67; SO 68; Seyfert, 71, 72;
First day of summer, 222, 229; shapes, evolutionary sequence,
definition, 218 62; spiral, 62, 68, 169; starburst,
First day of winter, 220, 222; defini- 122; stellar populations, 73; super
tion of, 219 clusters, 122
First point of Aries, 208 Galilei, Galileo, 6, 16, 42, 50
Fishing, with a bow and arrow, 230 Gamma rays, 1 13, 123, 182
Fission reaction, energy liberated, Gamow, George, 54
183 Gas clouds: collapse of, 97; proto-
Fixed stars, 63 stellar, 156; interstellar, 173
Flatulents, well-aimed, 86 Gas-rich galaxies, 1 1 5
Flying saucer, 246 Gauss, Karl, 26
FM radio, 1 14 Gegenschein, 54
Folk remedies, 234 General Conference on Weights
Ford Model Ts, 24 and Measures, 41
Formaldehyde, 1 1 6, 173 General theory of relativity, 19
Fort Knox, 182 Geocentric universe, 248
Fosbury, Dick, 81 Geodesic domes, 172
Fourth state of matter, 58 Geometric solids, 22
Fractions, 5, 39 Geometry, plane, 26
France, 6, 41 German Physical Society, 1 39
Fraud, scientific, 24 Gestation period, human, 212
Fraunhofer, Joseph, 67 Giant stars, 66
French Revolution, 41 Gibbous Moon, 235
Frequency, 1 1 3 Globular clusters, 50, 53, 99
Friction, 93 Gnomon, 53
Full moon, 54, 191, 243; effect on God, 22, 32, 33
birth rate, 212; effect on human be­ Gogh, Vincent van, 245
havior, 21 1; over Manhattan sky­ Gold, 181
line, 234; time of rise and set, 231; Gold brick, 182
werewolves, 21 1 Golden fleece, 194
Fuller, R. Buckminster, 1 72 Goldilocks and the Three Bears, 153
Fusion, thermonuclear, 58, 98, 107, Googol, 1 1
156; carbon to oxygen, 1 76; helium Googolplex, 1 1 , 12
to carbon, 1 76; hydrogen to he­ Grains of sand, number on an aver-
lium, 1 76 age beach, 8
Graphite, 172
G band, 58, 67 Gravitation, 28, 33
Galactic equator {Milky Way), 1 93 Gravitational collapse, 1 70
 Index 267

Gravitational energy, 105 Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, 63,

Gravitational force, 59 145, 149, 1 49, 158
Gravitational potential energy, 95, High jumpers, 81
98 High mass stars, 157, 158, 1 72
Great circle, 55, 218 Highest-mass stars, 1 76
Great Dark Spot of Neptune, 51 Hindenburg (dirigible), 1 69, 171
Great Square of Pegasus, 1 90, 199 Hiroshima, Japan, 183, 184
Greatest brilliancy, Venus, 56 Histogram, 1 29
Greek alphabet, 73 Horoscope, casting in the United
Greenhouse effect, Venus, 1 18 States, 210
Greenwich, England, 217, 233 Horoscopes, 234
Grenade launcher, 251 Horse power, 41
Grissom, Virgil, 1 73 Horsehead Nebula, 51
Group theory, 27 H-R Diagram, 62, 147, 149, 1 58; lu­
Gulliver's Travels, 29 minosity scales, 151; temperature
scales, 1 51
Haley, Alex, 209 H20, 61
Half moon, 231 Hubble, Edwin, 62, 67
Halley's comet, 71, 100 Hubble Space Telescope, 245
Hamburgers around the Earth, 7 Hubble's tuning fork diagram, 67
Hard X-rays, 63 Hulk (comics), 1 23
Hardy, G. H . , 12 Humans: behavior, 1 27; eyes, 131 ,
Harvard College Observatory, 67, 134; gestation period, 212; height,
152 127; reflexes, 42; retina, 1 1 7
Harwit, Martin, 1 8 Human-interest stories, 234
H-bombs, 58 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 30
Head-on collision, 93 Hydra, 1 89
Heat energy, 91, 93, 104 Hydroelectric energy, 104
Heat shields, spacecraft, 96 Hydroelectric plants, 104
Heat, caloric theory of, 19 Hydrogen, 10, 58, 168; atoms, 1 14,
Heisenberg, Werner, 18 1 1 9; bombs, 58; burning, 64; cos­
Helen of Troy, 1 2 mic abundance of, 168; -cyanide,
Helena (Shakespeare), 249 1 73; fusion of, 183; ionized, 168;
Heliocentric model of the solar sys- metallic, 169; molecular, 169; neu­
tem, 1 9 ti:al, 1 69; plasma, 169; radius of, 7;
Heliocentric universe, 248 spectral signature of, 152; thermo­
Helium, 58, 1 70; cosmic abundance nuclear fusion of, 64
of, 1 70 Hydroxyl (OH), 61
Hell, 245 Hyperbola, 56, 101
Hell, artist's rendition of, 1 42
Henry Draper Catalogue, 153 IAU (International Astronomical
Hercules, 189 Union), 75
Hertz, Heinrich, 1 1 3 Ice cream diet, 105
Hertzsprung, Ej nar, 147 Ice skaters, spinning, 87
268 Index

Icosahedron, 22 Iron, 176, 181; binding energy, 177;

Ikeya-Seki, comet, 71 fusion of, 177; magnetic, 177
Incandescent bulb, 131, 174 Irregular galaxies, 169
Inchworms, 4 1 Isotopes, 55, 1 66; unstable, 55
Inferior conjunction, 56
Inferior planet, 55, 56 Jargon, astronomical, 47
Infrared Astronomical Satellite, see Jason and the Argonauts, 194
IRAS Jesus Christ, birth of, 223
Infrared energy, as heat, 108 Jewish Sabbath, 228
Infrared light, 60, 63, 1 08, 113, 117, Jews, 228
131 Joule, James, 91, 105
Infrared, near, 63 Jovian planets, tidal lock of inner
Inner planets, 247 satellites, 237
Insects that fly, 1 20 Juliet Capulet (Shakespeare), 49
Instability strip, 158, 161 Jupiter, 22, 42; core, 169; magnetic
Integral calculus, 27 field, 169; mass relative to mass of
Intergalactic medium, 122 all other planets, 84; moons,
Intergalactic spaceships, 41 eclipses, 42; Red Spot, 50
Intermediate mass stars, 158, 159
International Astronomical Union,
see IAU Kaaba, 218
International Bureau of Weights Kalashnikov, Mikhail, 94
and Measures, 181 Kansas, 88, 89
International Committee on Data Kasner, Edward, 1 1
for Science and Technology, 43 Katmandu, 25
International Union of Pure and Keenan, Philip Childs, 152
Applied Chemistry, 184 Kellman, Edith, 152
International Union of Pure and Kelvin temperature scale, 121
Applied Physics, 8 Kepler, Johannes, 17, 21, 22
Interplanetary space, 108 Kepler's laws of planetary motion,
Interplanetary space probe, 181 17, 31
Interstellar gas clouds, 1 1 5, 173 Khan, of Star Trek, 74
Interstellar medium, 1 17, 180 Kilogram, 9
Interstellar molecules, 1 16; carbon Kinetic energy, 83, 93
dioxide, 1 16; formaldehyde, 116; King Arthur, 1 63
water, 1 1 6 Kirkwood, Daniel, 57
Interstellar space, 5 1 , 1 69 Kirkwood gaps, 57
Iodine, 180 Kitt Peak National Observatory
lolchis in Thessaly, 1 94 (KPNO), 175
Ionized hydrogen, 168 Kohoutek, comet, 71
Iowa, 89 Korean War, 94
IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satel­ Krypton-86 42, 181
lite), 75 Krypton, 178
I ri d i u m , 181 Kryptonite, 178
 Index 269

Lagado Academy, 29 Lunar tides, 21 1

Lagrange, J. L., 59 Lyra, 1 18
Lagrangian point, 59, 98
Lakehurst, New Jersey, 1 69 McDonald's Restaurant, 7
Lamborghini Countachs, 24 Magellanic Oouds, 68
Large Magellanic Cloud, 68; super- Magnetic field, 58, 1 14
novae in, 70 Magnetohydrodynamics, 58
Large planets, 237 Maine, 107
Lasers, 61 Main sequence, 49, 66, 148, 1 58,
Las Vegas, Nevada, 174 160; luminosity class, 152; peeling
Late type galaxy, 62, 67 off from, 159
Late type stars, 63 Major planet, 55
Latitude zones, principal, 219 Mammalian births, 39
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Manganese-molybdenum, 179
169 Mars, 22, 249; effects of its light on
Lead, 182 you, 208; force of gravity on you,
Leap seconds, 237 208; surface color, 1 76
Least squares, method of, 26 Masers, 61
Lee, Harper, 12 Mass, 28
Leeuwenhoek, Anton van, 5 Mass-transfer, binary stars, 52
L-5 Society, 59 Mathematics, 26, 27
Libra, 191, 200 Matter, 30; conversion to energy,
Life, formation of, 1 77 156; fourth state of, 58; states of,
Light, 1 13; frequency of, 1 13; re­ 137
flected, 140; speed of, 1 13; wave­ Mean Sun, 54
length of, 1 13 Measurement errors, 23
Light amplification by stimulated Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 218
emission radiation, 61 Mechanical energy, 91, 97, 105
Light bulbs, 131, 1 74 Mechanical equivalent of heat, 105
Lightning, 7 Medusa, 189
Light-year, 10 Megahertz, 9
Lithium, 171, 174; cosmic abun- Mendeleev, Dimitri Ivanovich, 145,
dance of, 171 168, 184
Little Dipper, 1 94, 202 Mendelevium, 184
Lobachevski, Nikolai, 26 Mercury (element), 182
Logarithmic scales, 151 Mercury (planet), 22
Longitude, 63 Mesons, 53
Lord Kelvin, 91 Messier catalogue, 74
Lower main sequence, 158 Metallic hydrogen, 169
Low mass stars, 158 Metals, 64
Lukemia, 182 Meteors, %
Luminiferous ether, 19, 25 Meter: definition, 41, 43, 181; inter­
Luminosity class, 71, 73, 15..1 national standard, 18 1 ; length of,
Lunar eclipses, 218, 230, 232, 242 43
270 Index

Methanol, 1 73 Moonlight, contamination of night

Metric prefixes, 9 sky, 242
Metric system, 8, 41 Morgan, William Wilson, 152
"Metropolitan Diary," 246 Morley, Edward, 24
Mexico City, 1 968 Olympics, 81 Mouton, Gabriel, 41
Michelson, Albert, 24 M-16 assault rifle, 94
Microscope, 5 M-79 grenade launcher, 251
Microscopium, 193 Munchkin, 1 71
Microwaves, 60, 1 13, 1 16, 1 73; back­ Musca, 189
ground radiation, 1 16; laser, 61; Musee National des Techniques in
ovens, 1 1 7; telescopes, 1 16, 1 73; Paris, 1 89
window to the universe, 116 Muslim calendar, 231
Midnight sun, 227 Muslims, 217
Midsummer, 224 Mythology, 34
Midwinter, 224
Milky Way galaxy, 51, 52, 57, 193;
appearance, 195; center, 124, 195, Nagasaki, Japan, 1 84
204; rotation, 63 Napier, John, 27
Milli-Helen, 12 Nash, Ogden, 28
Million, 7 National Basketball Association, see
Minkowski, Hermann, 21 NBA
Minor planet, 55 Natural law, 1 8
Missing mass problem, 50, 99 NBA (National Basketball Associa­
Mission control, 235 tion), 129
Missouri, 15 NBA players, height distribution,
Modern computers, as silicon- 130
based life, 1 75 Neanderthal, 7
Mojave Desert, 245 Near infrared, 63
Molecular bonds, 64, 1 72 Nebraska, 89
Molecular hydrogen, 1 69 Neon, 1 74
Molecules, formation, 1 1 6, 1 77 Neon tubes, 174
Molybdenum, 1 79 Nepal, 25
Moon, 7, 57; cow jumping over, 83; Neptune, 51, 183
dark side, 237; far side, 236, 237; Neptu nium, 183
full, 54; gravity, 82; Moon on hori­ Nereids, 196
zon illusion, 234; motion in orbit Neutral hydrogen, 1 69
around Earth, 230; near side, 237; Neutron degeneracy, 56
new, 54; orbit, 232; orbit, in tidal Neutrons, 10, 15, 53, 165
lock, 236; phases, 231 , 232, 235; Neu tron stars, 56, 61, 86, 98; axis of
posi tion rela tive to stars, 231; rotation, 61; collisions, 183; mag­
shadow, 232, 237; shadow, speed netic field , 61; magnetic pole, 61;
across Earth's surface, 242; size in rapidly rotating, 61
sky, 238; through binoculars, 230; New General Catalogue of Non­
umbra, 238; visibility, 235 stellar Objects, see NGC Catalogue
 Index 271

New moon, 54, 231; first sighting Old Farmer's Almanac, the, 233
of, 231 Olsen, George, 94
Newton, Sir Isaac, 13, 16, 18, 27, Olympic gymnasts, 129; height dis-
28, 33, 34, 83, 85, 89, 182, 244 tribution, 130
Newton's laws of gravity, 31 Omega Centauri, 53, 193
New Year's Eve, 44 Open star clusters, 50, 99
New York City, 7, 88, 218 Ophiuchus, 210
New York Times, 246 Orbits, 56; bound, 101; circle, 101;
New Zealand, national flag, 193 ellipse, 101; energy exchange, 103;
NGC Catalogue, 75 gravitational potential energy in,
Niagara Falls, 106 101; hyperbola, 101; kinetic energy
Nickel, 177, 181; decay to cobalt, in, 101; parabola, 101; planetary,
177; magnetic, 177; unstable, 177 59; tilted, 59; unbound, 101; unsta­
Nighttime sky, 125 ble, 57
Nile River, 192 Orion, 189, 1 98; handedness, 1 89;
Nitrogen, 173; atmospheric abun­ left kneecap, 151; missing head,
dance, 173 195; right armpit, 151; sword,
Nobel Prize in Physics; (1901), 122; 190
(1911), 136; (1918), 139; (1945), 19; Orrery, 54, 243
(1978), 1 1 6; (1979), 147 Orthoscopic ocular, 58
Non-Euclidean geometry, 26 Oscillating universe, 20
North Atlantic Drift current, 107 Osiander, Andreas, 249
North celestial pole, 191, 216 Osmium, 180
North Dakota, 89 03 (ozone), 174
North Star, 75, 1 60, 191, 202, 216, 02 (molecular oxygen), 58, 174
228 Outer planets, 247
North Vietnamese, 94 Oxygen ; Earth's crust, 173; Earth's
Novae, 21, 122 atmosphere, 173; universe, 173;
Nuclear bombs, 108 molecular, 58
Nuclear energy, 64 Ozone, 122, 174
Nuclear power plants, 108, 183
Number line, 3 Pacific Ocean, 54, 223
Number theory, 27 Pagan rituals, 222
Palomar 200 inch telescope, 243
0 B A F G K M, 67, 154; mnemon­ Papua New Guinea, national flag,
ics for, 154 193
Obliquity of the ecliptic, 57, 208, Parabola, 56, 1 0 1
218 Parabolic trajectory, 1 0 1
Occam, William, 33 Parolles (Shakespeare), 249
Occam's Razor, 33 Parsec, 1 0
Occultation, 57, 238 Pasadena, California, 243
Oceans, heat capacity o f, 1 07 Pa uli, Wolfgang, 1 8, 19
Octahedron, 22 Pavo, 1 89
OH (hydroxyl), 61 Peculiar veloci ty, 63
272 Index

Pegasus, 189, 190, 1 99; Great Polar caps, 221

Square of, 190 Polaris, 75, 1 60, 191, 194, 202, 228
Pentagons, 22 Pole-vaulters, 81
Penzias, Arno, 116 Poppins, Mary, 66
Peppercorn, radius of, 6 Population II stars, 71
Perigalacton, 53 Population I stars, 71
Periodic Table of the Elements, 64, Poseidon Adventure, 89
120, 145, 163, 1 67 Positron, 28
Perpetual motion machine, 104 Potential energy: gravitational, 95;
Perseus, 189 springs, 97
Philadelphia, 88 Precision, 39, 40, 42-44
Photographic detection, 175 Prime meridian, 217
Photography, 59, 60 Primeval fireball, 139
Photons, 21, 53, 6 1 , 107, 1 13; wave­ Principia, 33, 83, 85
length, 127; coherent, 61; energy, Prism, 60
127, 132; frequency, 127; infrared, Professional astronomers, 65
63; radio, 169; visual, 63 Proper motion, 63
Physical law, 31, 32 Proportional to (symbol), 136
Physical models, 27 Protons, 10, 12, 15, 53, 165
Physical sciences, 27 Protostars, 156, 157
Physical theories, 27, 32 Protostellar gas cloud, 156
Pie chart, 129 Protozoa, 5
Piel, Gerard, 15 Proxima Centauri, 10, 193
Pink Floyd, 237 Ptolemy, Claudius, 19, 207, 209,
Pioneer, 10 181 213
Planck, Max, 9, 139 Publicized astronomical events, 215
Planck length, 9, 43 Pulsars, 56, 61, 122
Planck's constant, 139 Purcell, E. M . , 1 15
Planck's radiation formula, 139, 140 Pyramid, inverted, 89
Plane geometry, 26
Planetary disks, 1 18
Planetary nebulae, 64, 65, 1 59 QSOs, 62
Planets: appearance in orbit around Quadrillion, 8, 1 1
the Sun, 250; appearance through Quantum concept, 139
a telescope, 64; as photo opportu­ Quantum mechanics, 9, 1 5, 19, 21,
nities, 243; formation, 177; gravita­ 22, 139, 153
tional forces, 208; orbital plane, Quantum orbits, 165
243; reflected light, 208 Quantum theory, 31
Plasma, 58, 64 Quartz, 1 73
Platinum, 181 Quasars, 15, 61, 62, 1 1 5, 122; en­
Pleiades, 195 ergy production of, 62; first con­
Pluto, 9, 1 83 ; orbit of, 1 8 1 firmed, 75; redshifts of, 62
Plutonium, 1 66, 1 83; fission bomb, Quasi-stellar radio source, 61, 1 1 5
1 84 Quintillion, 8
 Index 273

Radar, 61, 1 1 7 Rontgen, Wilhelm Konrad, 122

Radar guns, 1 1 7 Roots (Alex Haley), 209
Radiation, 108; exposure to, 183 Rosa nutkana, 49
Radioactive elements, 166 Royal Greenwich Observatory, 217,
Radioactive strontium, 179 233
Radio galaxies, 1 14 ROY G. BIV, 1 19, 134
Radio photons, 169 RR Lyrae variable stars, 69, 161
Radio telescopes, 1 16 Rubick cube, 27
Radio waves, 60, 1 13, 114 Russell, Henry Norris, 147, 154
Radon, 166, 182 Rutherford, Lord Ernest, 6, 23
Ramadan, 231
Red giant phase, 172 Sagittarius, 195, 204
Red giants, 49, 65, 98, 170, 176; H-R SAO Catalogue (Smithsonian As-
Diagram, 158; luminosity class, trophysical Observatory), 75
152; planetary nebulae, 51; Roche Saturn, 22, 251
Lobes, 52; size, 151 Saturn's rings, 57, 251
Redshift, 60; as an indicator of dis- Science fiction, 28
tance, 60 Scientific discourse, 34
Red Spot of Jupiter, 50 Scientific discovery, 15, 18
Red star, 1 19, 121 Scientific method, 15, 16, 17
Red sunsets, 119 Scientific notation, 8, 11
Reflected light, 140 Scientific theory, 30, 34
Reflecting telescope, 182 Scorpius, 189
Refracted fish, 230 Seasons, cause of, 218, 221
Refraction, 229; atmospheric, 55 Seat belts, 84, 93
Regions of intense star formation, Second, definition of, 42, 43
114 Seeing conditions, 244
Relativity theory, 15, 19, 26, 42; Seesaws, 86
principles of, 25 Sextillion, 8
Retina, human, 125 Sevre, France, 181
Retrograde motion, 248, 249 Seyfert, Carl, 72
Rigel, 151 Seyfert galaxies, 71, 71
Right ascension, 63, 216, 217 Shadow bands, 57
Ring Nebula, 51 Short-wave, 114
Roche, E., 52 Sidereal clocks, 216
Roche lobe, 52, 98 Silicon, 173, 175
Rocky Mountains, 88 Silicon dioxide, 1 73
Rocky Mountain time zone, 89 Silicon micro circuitry, 1 75
Roemer, Ole, 42 Silicon monoxide, 61
Roller coasters, 249; as physics ex- Silver, 180
periments, 101 Silver River, 1 95
Roman Catholic church, 32 SiO (silicon monoxide), 61
Romans, ancient, 1 76 Sirius A, 1 92
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 49 Sirius B, 192
274 Index

Sirius (star), 192, 1 98, 246 Spectral lines, 59, 60, 120, 152
Six-month day, 228 Spectroheliograph, 58
Six-month night, 228 Speed of light, 42, 43, 50, 107,
Skewes's number, 1 1 , 12 1 13; change in, 229; definition of,
Skin cancer, 122 181; first estimate, 42; first mea­
Slide rule, 27 surement of, 42; precision of,
Small Magellanic Cloud, 68 43
Smithsonian Astrophysical Obser- Speed, units of, 40
vatory Star Catalogue, see (SAO) Sperm, radius of, 6
Catalogue Spherical trigonometry, 218
SN 1987A, 70 Spiral galaxies, 68, 1 69
Sodium, 24, 1 74 Spock (Star Trek), 1 78
Sodium D, 67 Spring equinox, 225
Sodium vapor lamps, 24, 1 74, 1 75 Spring, first day of, 208
Soft x-rays, 63 Standard deviation, 23
Solar corona, 122, 238, 239 Stand-up-and-sit-down waves,
Solar day, length of, 223 113
Solar eclipse, 57, 230, 232, 237; an- Starburst galaxies, 122
nular, 241; total, 238, 239 Star dusters, 50, 158; globular, 99;
Solar energy, 1 03, 104 H-R diagram, 156; open, 99
Solar neighborhood, 205 Star forming regions, 1 1 5
Solar spectrum, 67 Stargazers, 243
Solar system, 9, 52; mechanical Starry Night, the, 245
model of, 54; orbital plane, 54, 57, Stars: atmosphere, 60, 152; birth
243 mass, 157; birth of, 156; blue, 121;
Solstice, 222 chemical composition of, 60; col­
Sound waves, 1 1 3 ors, 125, 155, 160; composition,
Sousa, John Philip, 125 1 76; cool, 63; core temperatures of,
South celestial pole, 191, 193, 216 1 76; core energy generation, 176;
South Dakota, 89 degenerate, 159; evolutionary
Southern celestial sphere, 194 stages, 158; fixed, 63; formation
Southern Cross, 193, 201 , 216 of, 50, 57, 97, 1 1 4, 1 1 7, 169; high­
Southern Triangle, 191 mass, 157, 172; highest-mass, 176;
South Pole, 227 hot, 63; in the universe, number
Space, interstellar, 51 of, 8; intermediate-mass, 159; life
Space station, 59 expectancy, 157, 159; luminosity
Space-time, 2 1 class, 73; main sequence, 49, 66;
Special theory of relativity, 19 population I, 71, 73; population II,
Spectra, 131; absorption, 60; emis- 71, 73; red, 121; spectra, 1 76; star­
sion, 60; high-resolution, 59; red light, 58; surface temperature, 155,
part of, 60, 6 1 ; sola r, 67; stellar, 160, 176; variable, 68
58, 60 Star Trek, 53, 178
Spectral class, 152, 1 55 States of matter, 137
Spectral features, 60 Statistical tests, 23, 129
 Index 275

Steady state theory of the universe, Sunrise, 227, 229

20 Sunset, 227, 229
Steam engine, 9 1 Sunspots, 51
Stefan-Boltzmann law, 137, 138, Superclusters of galaxies, 122
140, 150 Supergiants, 66, 151, 157, 158; life
Stefan, Josef, 137 expectancy, 1 57
Stellar atmospheres, 153, 1 76 Superior conjunction, 56
Stellar composition, 180 Superior planet, 55
Stellar cores, 64 Superman, 1 78
Stellar evolution, 97, 155, 156, 180; Supernovae, 21, 72, 1 22, 157; classi­
theories of, 85 fication, 72; discovery of, 65; ex­
Stellar spectra, 58, 60, 1 75; classifi- plosion, 177; lettering scheme, 70;
cation of, 67 luminosity, 177; thermonuclear fu­
Stockholm, Sweden, 179 sion, 177; type I, 71; type II, 71
Stoner, Eugene, 94 Swift, Jonathan, 29
Street light, as pollution, 1 74 Synchrotron radiation, 1 14
Strontium, 178, 1 79 Syzygy, 54, 57, 237, 24i
Subatomic particles, 6, 10; number SO galaxies, 68
in the entire universe, number
of, 10 Talking trees, 19
Sub-dwarfs, luminosity class, 152 Taurus, 75
Subgiants, luminosity class, 152 Technetium, 179
Summer solstice, 221 , 222, 224 Teeter-totters, 86
Sun, 9, 51, 53; altitude of, 53; and Telescopes, 6, 24, 51, 64; design,
Moon, size in sky, 238; Arctic path 18; eyepieces, 58; microwave, 1 1 6;
through the sky, 226; celestial radio, 1 16; secondary mirror, 59;
equator, 224; center of planetary tertiary mirror, 59
motion, 247; core energy produc­ Telescopium, 193
tion, 64; directly overhead, 220; Television, 114; advertisements, 16;
ecliptic path, 220; energy output, sitcoms, 1 15
133; journey along the ecliptic, Temperature scales, 121
220; luminosity class, 152; mag­ Temporary motion machine, 104
netic storms, 51; mass relative to Terbium, 179
mass of Earth-Moon system, 84; Tetrahedron, 22
mean, 55; motion across the back­ Theon the Younger, 1 95
ground stars, 216; motion through Theories: scientifically empty, 32;
the sky, 55, 220, 225,-228; neigh­ untestable, 33; without physical
borhood in Milky Way, 205; path basis, 33
in along ecliptic, 207; peak output Thermodynamic laws, 1 9, 31, 9 1
of energy, 1 1 9; size in sky, 238; Thermonuclear fusion, 58, 98, 1 07,
spectra, 58; spectral class, 1 55; sur­ 156, 169; supernovae, 177
face temperature, 132; wattage of, Thompson, Benjamin, 91
160 Thompson, J. J . , 6
Sundials, 30, 53, 54, 223 Thompson submachine gun, 94
276 Index

Thompson, William, 91 Umbra, 238

Three degree microwave back­ Unidentified flying object, see UFO
ground radiation, 1 1 6, 139 United States Naval Observatory,
Tidal effects, of the Moon on the 233
brain, 211 Units, 40
Tidal forces, 237 Universe beginning of, 50; center
Tidal lock, 235, 236 of, 16, 29; earth-centered, 19; edge
Tides, 211 of, 29, 52; energy density of, 99;
Times Square, 44 expanding, 60; oscillating theory
Time zones, 55 of, 20; philosophically perfect, 1 6;
Tin, 1 18, 180 quantum behavior of, 43; steady
Tin foil, 180 state theory of, 20; temperature of,
TiO (titanium oxide), 176 139
Titanium, 176 Unnilhexium, 184
Titanium oxide, see TiO Unnilnonium, 184
Topology, 27 Unniloctium, 184
Totillion, 10 Unnilpentium, 184
Transmutation, 166 Unnilquadium, 184
Triangles, 22 Unnilseptium, 184
Triangulum, 200 Unstable elements, 166
Triangulum Australis, 191 Unstable isotopes, 55
Trigonometry, 27 Upper main sequence, 158
Trillion, 7, 10 Uranium, 1 66, 1 83; ores, 183; rarity
Triple star system, 1 93 of, 183
Tropic of Cancer, 220, 221, 229 Uranus, 183
Tropic of Capricorn, 220, 22 1, 229 Ursa Major, 195
Tropic of Scorpius, 229 Ursa Majoris, 74
Tropic of Taurus, 229 Ursa Minor, 195
Tropics, 220 U.S. Census Bureau, 88
Tucson, Arizona, 1 75 U.S. coins, 1 78
Tungsten, 131-132; melting point, U.S. Department of Defense, 94
180 U.S. five-cen t piece, 177
Tuning fork d iag ra m, 62, 67
TV sitcoms, 1 15
Twain, Mark, 25 Vaccines, 15
Twen ty-one centimeter radia tion, Vacuum, 42
1 15 Van de Hulst, H. C. , 1 15
Twiligh t sky, 244 Variable stars, 68; lettering scheme,
Twinkling: planets, 244; stars, 244 68; nomencla ture, 68
Vector calculus, 27
U FO (uniden tified flying object), Vega, 1 18, 155
56, 246 Vela satellites, 1 23
Ultraviolet, 1 1 3 Venus, 22, 56, 182; atmosphere,
Ultraviolet ligh t, 98, 1 1 3, 1 20, 1 35 1 18; greenhouse effect, 118; in twi-
 Index 277

light sky, 245; low on the horizon, White, Edward, 173

246 Wien's displacement law, 136, 138,
Vernal equinox, 208, 225 140
Vietnam War, 94, 175 Wien, Wilhelm, 136
Visible light, 9, 1 1 8 Wilson, Robert, 1 1 6
Visible light spectrum, 132 Winged monkeys, 19
Visual photons, 63 Winter solstice, 222, 224
Vitamins, 15 Wizard of Oz, 19
Volcano, 135 Wolf bone, 5

X-rays, 98, 1 13; background, 122;

Warm paint colors, 142 hard, 63; photons, 122; soft, 63
Washington, D.C., 88, 233
Water (H20), 61, 1 16 Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 75
Water waves, 1 13 Yellow brick road, 19, 35
Watt, James, 91 Yellow light, wavelength of, 9
Wave crests, 1 1 3 Ylem, 54
Wavelength, 113 Young star cluster, 158
Waves sound, 1 13; stand-up-and- Ytterbium, 1 79
sit-down, 1 13; water, 1 1 3 Ytterby, 179
Wave troughs, 113 Yttrium, 1 79
Wavicles, 21
Waxing crescent moon, 232 Zenith, 217
Weather predictions, 233 Zinc, 1 18, 1 78
Weinberg, Steven, 147 Zodiac, 196, 208
Western Samoa, national flag, 193 Zodiacal constellations, 196
"What Goes Up, " 100 Zone of avoidance, 52
White, component colors, 140 Zubenelgenubi, 191, 200
White dwarfs, 49, 56, 86, 150, 158, Zubeneschamali, 191, 200
192; carbon, 1 72; helium, 170; lu­ Zwicky catalogue, 74
minosity class, 152 Zwicky, Fritz, 99