A Note on Buying the Books
Most of these books were available in paperback, at reasonable cost
(around 10 pounds), at the time that they were added to the list. The
trouble with non-fiction paperbacks is that they very rapidly go out
of print, and a number of the featured books appear to be in this
situation. I would strongly recommend trying Amazon, which has a good
second-hand and remainder marketplace. Try to avoid going for books
where the stated delivery time is more than a week: you have eight
weeks to read the book and do the exercises, and you do not want to
waste six of them waiting for the book to turn up.
The Star Rating
Each book is given a rating for relevance and technical level. 'Relevance' measures how
directly the material of the book relates to the lecture course; 'technical level' indicates
whether it will help to have background knowledge of physics. (Note that all the books
claim to be for the general reader, and all the authors would no doubt argue that they do
not require any specialist background: the technical level ratings represent my subjective
impression of how much extra work they would be for a
non-scientist.)
Relevance
| ****
| Practically an alternative textbook for the course! Deals
with most of the topics covered in the lectures.
| | ***
| Highly relevant: the material in this book will illuminate
more than one section of the lecture course.
| | **
| Useful: the material will illuminate one section of the
course.
| | *
| Tangential: the material of this book is not directly relevant
to the lecture material, though it is consistent with the
overall theme of the module.
|
Technical level
| ****
| High: this book will be seriously tough if you don't have A-level physics!
| | ***
| Moderate: this book makes considerable use of physics
concepts, and will be easier if you have some background
knowledge already.
| | **
| Mild: this book does use some technical concepts, but they
are well explained.
| | *
| Easy: this book really is designed for non-scientists.
|
The Books
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Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin: The Five Ages of the Universe
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Relevance *** Technical level **
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What does the future hold for our Galaxy and the universe?
This book starts with an account of the Big Bang and the
present era of stars and stellar evolution, but unlike most cosmology
books its main focus is on what will happen to our universe when stars
like the Sun are a distant memory. It is aimed at the general reader,
but it deals with some intrinsically tricky concepts, and its
framework of 'cosmological decades' (a logarithmic measure of time)
might be confusing if you have no maths background.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Marcus Chown: The Magic Furnace
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Relevance *** Technical level *
-
This book is a historical account of our theories of stellar
structure, focusing on how stars generate energy and how they produce
the different chemical elements. The production of the light elements
in the Big Bang is also discussed. Chown is a science writer, not an
astronomer, and this book is a straight historical narrative,
distinctly 'lighter' than 100 Billion Suns, with which it has
considerable subject overlap. If you do not have A-level physics, you
may well find this one easier going.
Note: if you are having trouble getting hold of the book that you
originally ordered, or if you are very short of cash, we do have a few
copies of this book available for loan: first come first served.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw: Why Does E = mc2?
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Relevance ** Technical level **
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Much of this is what it says on the can – an attempt to lead the general reader
through the reasoning of Special Relativity, culminating in a derivation of the
celebrated equation. It is an interesting attempt to do mathematics without
actually doing any mathematics: the reasoning is much more explicitly mathematical
than is the case in Einstein's own book, and yet the level of mathematical
understanding required is probably lower. In addition to relativity, Cox and
Forshaw, both particle physicists by training, also cover the Standard Model of
particle physics and a brief account of the main features of General Relativity.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Ken Croswell: The Alchemy of the Heavens
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Relevance **** Technical level **
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This book describes our modern understanding of our Milky Way Galaxy's structure,
origins and evolution, and explains how that understanding has been developed by
the interplay of theoretical modelling and astronomical observations. Croswell has a
PhD in astronomy from Harvard, and for this book he interviewed essentially
everybody who has made a significant contribution since the 1940s. Their
recollections and opinions are a distinctive feature of this book as compared with,
say, The Magic Furnace. The book's bibliography is entirely technical research
papers, but it is itself aimed at the interested non-scientist. The explanations are
clear and thorough, but the information conveyed is complex and the level of detail
high: you will find this book easier if you have some background knowledge already. One should note that it is now getting rather old, so the material on cosmology is out of date – however, this only applies to a very minor part of the book.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Ken Croswell: Planet Quest
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Relevance ** Technical level */**
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This book is an account of the observational discovery of other planets. It starts with
a description of our own solar system and the discovery of the three (or two?) non-naked-eye
planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, but it is primarily focused on the
recent observations of planets around other stars. (Given the publication date of 1998,
obviously only the first few discoveries are discussed!)
As in The Alchemy of the Heavens,
Croswell's approach is to interview as many as possible of the people actually
involved in the science, and his bibliography dives directly into the research
literature, but the book is aimed at the general public and does not assume any
background knowledge. As with many of these books,
there is a glossary of technical terms at the back.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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David Darling: Life Everywhere
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Relevance ** Technical level *
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This book is an introduction to astrobiology — the science of
extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology, as is frequently pointed out, is a science
without a confirmed subject — nobody has yet provided strong evidence for
the existence of life outside our planet — and opinions vary greatly as to
how common extraterrestrial life might be, how complex it might be, and how likely
we are to detect it. Darling is well out on the optimistic end of the spectrum of
opinion, and the book was written partly as a riposte to Rare Earth by
Ward and Brownlee, which sets out the pessimistic viewpoint. Written in 2001, it is
obviously out of date when it comes to discussing future space missions (reading the
enthusiastic section on the likely science output of Beagle 2 is a bit painful), but
most of the content has held up well.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Albert Einstein: Relativity
(In some editions the title is "Relativity: The Special and the General Theory".)
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Relevance */** Technical level ***/****
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This really is straight from the horse's mouth: a recent reissue of
Einstein's account of the special and general theories of relativity
for the general public. Obviously a classic in the field. While we
do not make much explicit use of relativity in this course,
E=mc2 underpins almost everything we do, and general
relativity is vital to the cosmology section. Warning:
Einstein describes this book as requiring "a standard of education
corresponding to that of a university matriculation examination, and
... a fair amount of patience and force of will on the part of the
reader." University matriculation in 1920s Germany seems to have
entailed a fair amount of mathematics: students without at least an AS
level in maths are likely to find this book very difficult.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Brian Greene: The Fabric of the Cosmos
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Relevance: */** Technical level **
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Brian Greene is a noted string theorist, and his previous book The Elegant Universe
attempted to explain string theory to a general audience.
This book has a similar approach, but is more general,
covering quantum mechanics and general relativity with particular emphasis on
their relevance to spacetime and cosmology.
It is definitely intended for the general reader,
but the ideas being covered are intrinsically complex and somewhat difficult to visualise,
hence the ** for technical level.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Brian Greene: The Hidden Reality
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Relevance: */** Technical level **
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Brian Greene's most recent book revisits some of the topics covered in his earlier work,
but is focused specifically on the subject of parallel universes. He discusses various types
of parallel universe, from simple (if we live in an infinite universe, it follows from fairly
uncontroversial reasoning that there must be infinitely many copies of you – albeit a
very long way away) through controversial (the string landscape) to complex (the
holographic principle). None of this is much covered in the course, but it's an increasingly
hot topic in the more speculative branches of cosmology.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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John Gribbin: The Universe — a Biography
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Relevance: ***/**** Technical level *
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John Gribbin is a well-known science writer specialising in physics and astronomy
(he trained as an astrophysicist). This fairly up-to-date book (published 2006) has
a fair amount of overlap with Origins, but is pitched at a slightly higher level.
It starts with a basic introduction to the idea of a scientific theory (which Gribbin
calls a "model") and a rapid overview of particle physics, before progressing to an account
of the history and possible future of the universe in reasonably chronological order.
Quite a lot of this is relevant to the taught material of PHY111: it covers the early
universe, the origin of the chemical elements, and the origins of planets and life.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Alan Hirshfeld: Parallax — the race to measure the cosmos
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Relevance ** Technical level **
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Ever since Aristarchos first put forward the idea of a Sun-centred
solar system around 270 BC, the search for parallax — the
apparent shift in stellar positions caused by the Earth's motion — has
been central to astronomy, first as the key test of the Sun-centred
theory, and later as the only unequivocal way to measure stellar
distances. Hirshfeld tells the tale from the ancient Greeks to the
final triumphant year of 1838, when Friedrich Bessel announced the
first irrefutable measurement of the parallax of a star. (He
also describes the two independent, less precise measurements
announced in the same year. Some scientific discoveries are like
buses: you wait 2000 years, and then three turn up at once!) This may
seem like a narrow topic, but because parallax was the key
astronomical challenge of the 16th–19th centuries Hirshfeld manages
to bring in many famous scientists, such as Tycho Brahe, Galileo and
Robert Hooke, who are primarily remembered for other work.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Rudolf Kippenhahn: 100 Billion Suns
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Relevance *** Technical level ***
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This is an account of stellar structure and evolution, written by one of the pioneers in
the field. Its scope is similar to The Magic Furnace, but with more emphasis on the
structure of the stars and less on the creation of the elements. Although it is not
mathematical, and is nominally written for a popular audience, it makes extensive
use of physical concepts and will be easier to grasp if you have some physics
background. A classic of popular astronomy, it was originally written in 1980, so its
treatment of some of the more esoteric aspects of stellar evolution does not benefit
from the latest findings. Note: This book is out of print and
may be difficult to obtain. There is one rather battered copy in the library!
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Robert Kirshner: Extravagant Universe
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Relevance ** Technical level **
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This is an insider's account of the work that won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics
(though this team's half of the prize went to two of his students—I think
he's a victim of the rule that no more than three can share): the discovery,
using Type Ia supernovae, that the expansion of the universe is accelerating over time.
It combines a
narrative account of the work with explanations of the underlying science, and
gives a very good idea of how research of this kind is actually done.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Lawrence Krauss: Atom
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Relevance *** Technical level **
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Written by a cosmologist, this book traces the history of an oxygen atom (more
precisely, the protons and neutrons which are currently combined in the nucleus of
an oxygen atom) from just after the Big Bang to the present day and beyond. It
actually covers most of the material of the course, but — because of its narrative
framework — not as systematically as some of the other books: it may well be easier
to keep track of what's going on if you have already read some astronomy. Krauss
has a distinctive writing style, which you will probably either love or hate.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Martin Rees: Just Six Numbers
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Relevance ** Technical level **
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Is our universe unexpectedly hospitable to life? Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal,
discusses how the values of six numbers occurring in cosmology and physics affect
the structure of the universe and the prospects for the evolution of life.
The six numbers refer to concepts ranging from the number of spatial dimensions,
through the density and structure of the universe, to the strengths of the fundamental
forces of particle physics.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok: Endless Universe – Beyond the Big Bang
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Relevance ** Technical level **
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Over the past 30 years, the Standard Cosmological Model of the "inflationary universe" – a big bang followed by a period of extremely rapid expansion, resulting in the smooth, flat universe we see in the cosmic microwave background – has become more or less "received wisdom" in cosmology: none of the alternative models proposed in the 1940s and 50s has been able to account for the observational data. However, the emergence of string theory as a candidate model of quantum gravity has produced the first genuinely new cosmological model for many years, the so-called "ekpyrotic model", and its modified offspring, the cyclic model. In this book, two of the originators of the new models present a non-technical account of how they are supposed to work and their advantages over the current consensus. Obviously, this book is not exactly an unbiased viewpoint – one does not put years of work into a new and untested theory without real conviction of its merits! – but it provides an interesting alternative to the standard model.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith: Origins
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Relevance ***/**** Technical level *
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This book was written to accompany a TV documentary. An
American TV documentary, at that. One might therefore expect
it to be
intended for readers whose IQ does not exceed their height
in inches, and indeed the book is pitched at a very elementary level.
However, one of the authors is an astrophysicist (the other is an
astronomically inclined science writer), which keeps them reasonably
honest on the science front. As the title implies, the focus is on
the beginnings of things, but by adopting a sequential approach to
"origins" (first the universe, then structure, stars, planets and
life) they actually manage to conduct a tour of most of astronomy and
cosmology.
Questions for this book (Word format)
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