A Welcome Addition To Basic Astrophysical Literature: "Welcome To The Universe"

As Black Friday dawned yesterday it was almost a certainty that 99 percent of people would be flooding big box stores to snatch up the latest electronic wonders including the new 55"  "Ultra HD" TV sets to make their debuts as Walmart and Best Buy. But a much more sensible option,  as opposed to more electronic titillation,  would have been to invest in Neil De Grasse Tyson's new book, Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour.'

The book, a breathtaking overview of astrophysics and especially how we obtain the knowledge we do, is indispensable to getting to know the universe as science knows it   It is distinct from most other basic texts because most of those - as De Grasse Tyson noted on a recent CBS Early Show appearance -  are "a mile wide and an inch deep".  By contrast, this 472 -page book is a "mile wide and a mile deep."  Well, not quite but pretty close and hey, it even includes algebraic equations where necessary - so ignores the old rule that each equation given "decreases sales by one percent" - or some such jabberwocky.

Some of the topics covered include: stellar evolution (the lives and deaths of stars), the search for life in the galaxy, the interstellar medium, the Milky Way, the expansion of the universe, the early universe, quasars and Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Also: black holes, cosmic strings, inflation and the shape of the universe.

The content actually represents a division of labor between Neil De Grasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss and J. Richard Gott. For example, the three chapters on special and general relativity were very ably done by Gott.  If you truly wish to get a handle on these abstruse theories there is perhaps no place better then Gott's trio of chapters, so long as you're ok with some intermediate algebra to assist in the task.

Tyson himself is responsible for chapters:  1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10. The only one I really had issues with was Chapter 9, 'Why Pluto Is Not A Planet'.   For one thing, Pluto is not specifically an object for astrophysical inquiry but rather planetary astronomy. Hence, the chapter's inclusion can only be attributed to Tyson having already spent a lot of ink on the subject, so why not include it (since it's firmly in his academic 'wheelhouse') in a new book?

But as I noted in previous posts the arguments given don't make any physical sense. For example, Alan Stern, executive director of the Space Science & Engineering Division of the Southwest Research Institute – and Principal Investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto- observed that the new planet definition was “sadly flawed, particularly due to the vagueness of the third condition- clearing the neighborhood around its orbit - which might also disqualify Earth”.

He added: “A lot of people are going to ignore the (new) definition because it doesn’t make sense.” (Source: Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, Vol. 87, 29 August, p. 350). The other aspect is that Pluto’s dethroning was done by a subjective vote at an IAU meeting, not by any objective measures or consistency. The problem is the IAU definition overlooks the neighborhood of the object.  Pluto just happens to be in the Edgeworth –Kuiper belt with thousands of other objects. This is a condition of happenstance, not of actual intrinsic property.

If Earth were to interchange its position with Pluto it would also be in the same belt, and because other substantial objects (e.g. Neptune) crossed its path, it would have to be demoted – by De Grasse Tyson and the IAU's definition. So what to call it, a “demi-Earth”? A jumbo dwarf planet or jumbo shrimp planet? Give me a break!

Tyson is on much firmer ground - as well within the proper astrophysical sphere -  when he explores the lives and deaths of stars, as well as the scale of the cosmos, how stars radiate energy and stellar spectra. The last two are especially important cornerstones of astrophysics, and Tyson does a stand up job. One also hopes that when curious readers finish his chapters they will move on to Lawrence Aller's  (and now also Leo Goldberg's) 'Atoms, Stars and Nebulae' - which remains the standard for elementary astrophysics in terms of deciphering the nature of stars.

But Tyson and company excel in their own approach presenting the (usual) less advanced reader with numerous examples borne out by superb diagrams such as Fig. 2.4 showing Kepler's laws, and Fig. 6.2 showing the energy levels and associated spectral line series for hydrogen. I also liked how Tyson delved into the historical background, e.g. for the Balmer series, discovered in 1885.

The H-R diagram (Fig. 7.1) is also one of the best, most beautiful I've seen in any astrophysics text, with the relative sizes of specific stars - like Betelgeuse and Aldebaran - in color and projected against their evolutionary tracks. It's also interesting just how the famous diagram was composed: "From a catalog of stellar luminosities and temperatures Hertzsprung and Russell started filling in the diagram and discovered stars did not occupy just any place". Well, no, because it plots the stellar spectra (or surface temperature) vs luminosity so because each stars has distinct pairs of these, it will have differing positions on the H-R grid.

One warning here: Tyson uses an unorthodox form for describing nuclear fusion reactions in stars. For example (p. 101):

ppn + ppn  =  ppnn + p + p

As opposed to say,

³ He + ³ He ®  ⁴ He + ¹H + ¹H  + 12.85 MeV

with the energy given off.    But truth be told, this notation of his would probably only irritate purists or pedants

What really sets the text apart is all the calculations shown, all very basic, such as the total energy a star will generate over its lifetime by multiplying the star's luminosity L by the lifetime. T. In fact, all the math used which leads to so many fascinating insights, is fairly basic. None of it ought to be beyond a person who has taken at least first year algebra though the derivation of  E = m c²       in Appendix I will likely require at least an intermediate algebra background to follow. .

What makes this book so special is that it offers the reader so many more useful insights and "tidbits" - for lack of a better word- than most astrophysics texts would at this level. One learns, for example (p. 51) "Superman can indeed throw an object 5 miles per second . The object will also fall under the influence of gravity but its curved trajectory now matches the curvature of the Earth such that it never hits the surface and ends up in a circular orbit."

De Grasse Tyson's conversational style, which served him so well in his  2014 reprise of 'COSMOS'  e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/new-cosmos-series-is-well-worth-look.html


is apparent throughout his chapters in the current work. For example, on p. 88, we read:

"You can think of the outermost layer of a star as a tree. Do you know what is coming toward the tree (from inside the star)?  Mixed nuts. We have a mixed nut cannon (the interior of the star) firing mixed nuts (photons at different frequencies) into the tree, and in the tree we have squirrels. My squirrels like acorns (the photons) - these are acorn squirrels. They see all these mixed nuts coming through but they are grabbing only the nuts they like, the acorns, on the other side. (outside the star) come mixed nuts minus the acorns (the thermal radiation minus the H-alpha  photons)"

The reader has to understand that this sort of description is uniquely Tyson's, You won't find it in the chapters by Gott or Strauss, though theirs do remain in a colloquial mode.

The takeaway here is that if you enjoyed the COSMOS series you should find a lot  to enhance your reading in this book. There is all one could ask for to gain a foothold in grasping the basic principles of astrophysics - as well as other topics not specifically related to it, such as how the zodiacal constellations came to be (including why astrology is off) and, of course, why Tyson doesn't regard Pluto as a planet.

Xtianoid Twitterati Strike Back at 'COSMOS'

I must admit to being wrong, in my post about the new 'COSMOS' series when I wrote:

My take is there won’t be any such ‘pushback’ because these close-minded dolts won’t bother to watch it in the first place!  They are too sure of their blind faith based on nothing but superstition and old wives tales elaborated by primitive, semi-literate nomads in an ancient book.

This was in response to Denver Post reviewer Joanne Ostrow's take that 'pushback' would come from "conservative religious quarters" who didn't like the graphic animation of how the Roman Catholic Inquisition put Giordano Bruno to death for his conception of an infinite universe. The segment was very well done, especially the scene where Bruno is dragged in front of his accusers - all Bishops - who also had the appearance of psycho perverts with their dark-rimmed beady eyes and reptilian pupils and the exaggerated five o'clock shadow with some drool coming down over the lips. It was well done but I didn't think any of these idiots would respond because well, they wouldn't watch it!

But I was wrong! According to a salon.com report, these Neanderthals came out guns blazing. According to the report:

"Some of the poor souls oppressed by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s return to the promised land first pioneered by Carl Sagan took to Twitter with their predictable grumblings. My favorite: “Dear #cosmos, the origin of the universe actually is not mysterious. God had Moses write about it in the #Bible. You should read it sometime.”


Well uh, okay, if you're going by the old wives' tales of Genesis, it's not mysterious. But, to those of us who've studied physics, we'd still like to know the Earth can exist BEFORE the Sun, when the Sun's origination is essential to spin off the Earth and other planets.  We know from modern astrophysics that the solar proto-nebula had to collapse first to yield the SUN. (No planets, since they had yet to spin off the collapsing nebular cloud – it hadn’t cooled enough to allow it). As the proto-solar nebula collapsed it also began spinning and gained angular momentum. This angular momentum was then transferred to regions of the nebula that cooled and separated from the whole, and these regions became separate clouds of dust and gas that aggregated into the planets. Under a combination of electrostatic attraction (between larger charged particles) and gravity (attracting the whole mass from the center of the cloud) each planet was formed as what we call a “planetesimal”.

As more angular momentum was transferred – the planetesimals (each one) acquired their own spin (in a period of revolution) and specific shapes. The giant planets (e.g. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus) garnered more spin momentum than the more dense, terrestrial planets. Thus Jupiter’s planetesimal ended up as an oblate spheroid with diameter of about 88,000 mile and rotating rapidly with a day of ~ 10 hours. Earth meanwhile ended up as a relatively spherical orb with diameter of ~ 8,000 miles and day approaching approach 24 hrs. Mars ended up in a similar shape to that of Earth and a diameter of 4200 miles and day ~ 24 hours.

Thus, the Earth spun off about 1.1 billion years after the solar nebula fully collapsed, and it could not have come BEFORE the Sun.

Yet Genesis (1:1-5)proclaims :

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light and there was light....

which is nonsense. . It is clear from this that Gen.1:1-5 has stated a patent impossibility which violates all known laws of physics and dynamics and is therefore WRONG! It is clear from this that the Bible must be in error, certainly in this one passage – and if here then likely in many other places too. If this is so then it must have been written by flawed humans using limited conceptions of space, time and astrophysics which accounts are not even correct in their most general form.

The actual origin of the cosmos is indeed a deep mystery because it entails the fact that we may inhabit a multiverse, not just a universe.  Thus, the mystery enters by way of the inherent complexity of the theories, including for M-branes, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-could-universe-originate-from.html

Another howler in the salon.com report is the Evolution News and Views take,  published by The Discovery Institute - backward bunch of Seattle-based goobers who are all for "intelligent design" but refuse to explain who or what this 'designer' is. Anyway, their take on COSMOS is that  Giordano Bruno "wasn’t even really a scientist, and he was burned to death because of his theological heresies and not his belief in Copernican theory," (SO HE DESERVED IT!)

Also,  "the main reason he showed up on “Cosmos” at all was because he was the only one with even a passing association with a scientific controversy to be burned at the stake during this period of history.”

Of course, this is nonsense. According to Henry Lea, the author of 'The Inquisition of the Middle Ages' we don't really know how many of those expressing scientific theories (say based on Copernicus' heliocentric theories) might have been burned at the stake. It could run into the thousands, as records weren't always kept. Also, their property was also confiscated first, and there was little to go by in ascertaining their identities.  Bruno then is likely the most major and significant example, representing all  those of scientific temperament burned at the time.

The argument that he "wasn't really a scientist" also rings hollow and uninformed. What is science, after all? It is based on open inquiry, asking questions and finding out ways to pursue the answers. Giordano Bruno may not have had the empirical tests available to test his concept of an infinite universe, but he did extrapolate to his concept from Copernicus' results. Yes, his idea of untold numbers of populated worlds was speculation, but it was scientific speculation little different from Carl Sagan's own speculations, written about in his assorted books.

The dumbest aspect of the knuckle dragging religious Twitterati is that Cosmos is labeled “a glossy multi-million-dollar piece of agitprop for scientific materialism” as if that’s a bad thing.   In fact, scientific materialism is the ONLY philosophy that puts us in touch with reality, all else is superstition and tomfoolery.

It is precisely scientific materialism that provides and energizes the drive to make measurements to confirm that what we think we observe, is actually there- and then accounting for it in a physical setting.  For example, it enables us to grasp that the "Miracle at Fatima" was no miracle at all.

In his essay collection Unweaving the Rainbow biologist Richard Dawkins, Britain's most prominent atheist, chose to examine the Fatima miracle of 1917, where 70,000 people "reportedly saw the sun move", to apply Hume's principle: As Dawkins observed:

"On the one hand, we are asked to believe in a mass hallucination, a trick of the light, or mass lie involving 70,000 people," Dawkins writes. "This is admittedly improbable. But it is LESS improbable than the alternative: that the sun really did move...If the sun had moved in truth, but the event was seen only by the people of Fatima, an even greater miracle would have been perpetrated: an illusion of NON-movement had to be staged for all the millions of witnesses not in Fatima."

The dual –tandem improbability associated with the Sun actually moving is less than getting a royal flush in poker 6.5 million times in succession. It is actually less than the proverbial monkey on a typewriter re-typing Hamlet in its entirety, and with no errors. It is indeed, beyond the realm of physical possibility especially as NO solar observatories around at the time - detected ANY motion! Hence, it had to be all in the believers' heads.

This comports with David Hume's principle of what it would take to accept any "miracle":

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish."


In other words, given a mass hallucination by those at Fatima that day is LESS miraculous than that the Sun actually moved even a centimeter -- then clearly THAT is the only explanation the rationalist can accept!

Hence, we see here the sheer power of scientific Materialism at work. Observations, REASON and formulating a consistent conclusion based on them!  Contrary to most fundies' misperceptions, scientists do not willy-nilly accept violations of physical laws without demanding empirical support for the claim. If you insist that water can be changed into wine, a scientist (or scientific Materialist)  will demand to see your evidence for such a feat. The same applies to the claim of a man "walking on water", or "brought back to life". In each case, the evidence by which a natural law is violated must be thoroughly scrutinized.

In this process, all alternative natural explanations must be considered-- including outright trickery or fraud, before the actual violation of a physical law is conceded. If you instead simply quote an ancient text, you will be summarily dismissed as a babbling idiot.

The 'Cosmos' complainers, if they have any sense, will go back to their enclaves and rethink their nonsense, and also realize this is one contest they can't win.   As the author of the salon.com piece put it:

"All we need to do to see our world descend into a real pit of hellfire is to continue to let the nonsense propagated by The Discovery Institute stand uncontested, while we greenhouse gas ourselves to the boiling point. Kudos to “Cosmos” for calling bullshit."

New 'COSMOS' Series Is Well Worth A Look!

For years I have been patiently waiting for an update of Carl Sagan's 'COSMOS' series, given the many discoveries in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology that have transpired since 1980. Now that has arrived with a timely and streamlined re-do narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and broadcast on FOX (which I usually never watch) and The National Geographic channel (which re-broadcasts the FOX episodes on Monday night).

The update – at least from the first episode- is well worth watching. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an engaging host who's more than able to fill the shoes left by the original host, Carl Sagan. Having watched the original, the first thing that strikes the viewer in the new series is the vivid use of graphics, including computer SGI visuals (such as in one scene with Tyson near the sea, discussing abiogenesis,  as a fishlike creature ambles out on land).

 

Some reviewers, e.g. Joanne Ostrow (Denver Post, Mar. 8) have bemoaned the attention to “so much astrophysics” noting:

                                                                                      

“Marvel at the stunning visuals, be stirred by the grand concepts, but don’t expect to really comprehend astrophysics. The producers assure us it’s enough to come away feeling a respect for science.”

 

My quarrel with that view is that first, it's way too myopic. It dumbs down the Americans who would be attracted to watching the series, and second, it is hard to ‘come away with respect for science’ unless one at least has a workable, basic understanding of what the science is about!  This is why, for example, I did extensive past work on  introducing basic and intermediate astronomy concepts to blog readers, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/tackling-simple-astronmoyh-problems.html

 

Also I did a series introducing readers to astrophysics earlier, in 2010, followed up by more advanced astrophysics: e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/introducing-some-advanced-astrophysics-1.html

 

But ‘Cosmos’ surely won’t veer anywhere near this level of detail, hence the astronomy and astrophysics ought to be understandable to most viewers who've at least had some high school science under their belts, and exposure to a bit of algebra and geometry.

Two aspects in this first episode were particularly useful and captivating: nailing down our own planet’s cosmic ‘address’, i.e. Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Local Group, Virgo cluster, universe, and the way a ‘cosmic calendar’ is presented to grasp (or try to) the vast stretches of cosmic time. Thus, the Big Bang occurs the first instant of ‘January 1^st’,  while humans don’t appear until Dec. 31^st and recorded history only occupies the last 14 seconds of ‘December 31^st’. Nearly the entire cosmic ‘year’ has elapsed before humans have appeared.

 

Ostrow is correct that ‘Cosmos’ “is not a documentary so much as a cinematic journey” and this was also appreciated by Sagan in his original series. There simply aren’t the details to qualify as a genuine documentary which should mean even a greater viewership than say, Brian Greene’s PBS series ‘The Elegant Universe’ (in which the equations for cosmic string theory are also featured)

 

One of my favorites segments, as a confirmed atheist and free thought advocate, featured the graphic animations depicting Giordano Bruno’s vicious treatment at the hands of the Inquisition. Merely because Bruno visualized an infinite cosmos and that the stars were other suns (likely with populated planets too), he was hounded for his views. After continuing to express them and refusing to recant, we see the Inquisitors – depicted as demonic looking perverts - interrogating and torturing Bruno,  then burning him at the stake.   To me, the segment graphically exposed how science and religion differ and why the two can never, ever be 'bedfellows' - but rather eternally at each other's throats.  Thus, the recent memes spewed out that attempt to show how religion helped "advance" science are so much hooey and balderdash. Science helped itself primarily by breaking away from the constraints of thought and inquiry peculiar to religion!

Ostrow warns, also commenting on this:

"Expect pushback from conservative religious quarters- this series unapologetically takes a stand for science versus blind faith"

 

But why pushback against the TRUTH? My take is there won’t be any such ‘pushback’ because these close-minded dolts won’t bother to watch it in the first place!  They are too sure of their blind faith based on nothing but superstition and old wives tales elaborated by primitive, semi-literate nomads in an ancient book.

I only had a couple of quibbles with this first episode: first the banishing of Pluto to a sub-planet sized,  'asteroid type' rock, which Tyson himself was partly responsible for, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/03/neil-degrasse-tyson-is-wrong-about.html

 

 and second,  depicting the big bang as an explosion when it actually wasn’t.  It is more an unfolding in space and time.  The standard analogy, i.e. to a terrestrial explosion - while attention grabbing is inaccurate.  A good article ('Cosmology's 5 Big Things You Need to Know')    will be of help in grasping this, found in the May, 2007 issue of ASTRONOMY magazine. As noted therein, p. 31:

 

"The universe's beginning wasn't an explosion. It was closer to an unfolding or creation of matter, energy, time and space itself. "

 

The last is especially important as it is consonant with the expansion of space with time. The lead astronomer of the Wilkinson Microwave Array Project quoted in the piece also adds:

 

"The Big Bang is not an accurate name for the theory. What this theory describes is the expansion and cooling of the universe. It doesn't describe an explosion at all."

 

Thus, a better analogy would be depicting a hot, very dense gas inside a confined container or bag, then letting it all out. The dense gas escapes, expands into the larger volume  available and cools as it does so. Of course, this is no where as entertaining or riveting as an explosion!

 

 

Never mind, this series re-do is welcome and at least ought to get again get people’s minds expanding outwards beyond their limited terrestrial lives and everyday concerns.