Exploding Stars and Invisible Planets: The Science of What’s Out There

Astronomer Watson (Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope) explores a bounty of subjects from his field in this intriguing and accessible view of cutting-edge astrophysics. Watson begins close to home, looking at the features that make Earth unique, the (to him) inevitable continued expansion of human activity into space, and the question of how to minimize environmental contamination when exploring other worlds. He then takes up the mysteries that only grow more fascinating as scientists peer into them: the secrets of black holes and dark matter, the Big Bang, and how the violent death of one star can initiate long-term change across the universe. Watson’s writing style is clean and concise, and the illuminating explanations of the book’s various topics—which also run to meteors and meteorites, the weather on other planets and the search for extraterrestrial life—are accessible to casual readers. Among other vivid details, he recounts how Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, an early theorist about intelligent extraterrestrials, deduced that the Moon’s populace had built “circular embankments to protect themselves from the Sun’s radiation,” and describes a gold-tinted, perfectly hexagonal hurricane at the North Pole of Saturn. Watson explains and entertains to equally strong effect. (Jan.)