PLATE SECTION CREDITS
p1 © NASA/Science Photo Library; p2 © Sheila Terry/Science Photo Library; p3 © BBC; p4 © ESA and the Planck Collaboration; p5 Courtesy of The Carnegie Observatories; p6 © NASA/JPL; p7 top © Jerry R. Ehman; p7 bottom © Benjamin Crowell; pp8–9 bottom © Lionel Bret/Look at Sciences/Science Photo Library; p9 top left © Didier Descouens; p9 top right © Roger Harris/Science Photo Library; pp10, 11 © Brian Cox; p12 © NASA/Rex Features; p13 © Ted Kinsman/Kenneth Libbrecht/Science Photo Library; p14 top © Philippe Plailly/Science Photo Library; pp14–15 bottom © National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy; p15 top © CERN/Science Photo Library; p16 © age fotostock Spain, S. L./Alamy.
Picture Section
This famous image (‘Earthrise’) was taken by US astronauts on board the Apollo 8 spacecraft on 24 December 1968 as they orbited the Moon. The photograph has become iconic for its depiction of the beauty and fragility of the Earth.
This bas-relief shows Giordano Bruno (1548–1610) being burned at the stake for his heretical and revolutionary ideas, among which was his belief that the universe is infinite and contained numerous habitable worlds.
In the great vacuum chamber at Plum Brook Station we re-created Galileo’s simple experiment by dropping a heavy object (bowling ball) and some lighter ones (feathers) to see which falls faster.
This snapshot of half of our universe reveals the oldest lights within it. The tiny temperature fluctuations that ripple through the skies reveal the presence of the stars and galaxies of today and for the future.
Edwin Hubble’s glass plate from the Hooker telescope very clearly reveals his excitement at his discovery that one of the novae he thought he had previously located was in fact a variable. VAR! marks the spot.
Our message to worlds beyond our own. The Voyager probes carried this phonograph on which were recorded sounds and images that would reflect life on Earth.
Jerry R. Ehman’s now-famous printout which illustrates the strongest signal ever recorded by the Big Ear – known as the Wow! signal because of his annotation.
This illustration highlights the location of the Wow! signal. It was found to be coming from the constellation Sagittarius near the Chi Sagittarii star group, from one of the two red bands marked here.
Outside the Goldilocks Zone – Jupiter from Europa, where it is possible life exists in the sub-surface liquid water.
Stromatolites are layered structures which are one of the oldest records of life on Earth; the fossil remains within them date back 3.5 billion years.
Theoretically the first encounter of a space-faring civilisation is more likely to be with a self-replicating robot than with the actual life form. This computer artwork shows a nanorobot assembler using a claw to attach itself to a bacterium.
Filming the return of the Expedition 38 crew from the International Space Station to the Kazak Steppe was one of the wildest adventures I have ever experienced. That we got to see it is a testament to the determination of man!
When I was young I dreamt of being an astronaut – it was why I became interested in astronomy and physics. Floating in a most peculiar way in the ISS simulator tank is the closest I will ever get.
Charlie Duke was the Pilot of Orion, the Apollo 16 Lunar Module. He is shown here collecting lunar samples at Station no. 1 during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity at the Descartes landing site. The photograph was taken by Astronaut John W, Young. commander.
A snowy walk in Prague led Johannes Kepler to formulate The Kepler Conjecture, based on the symmetrical, hexagonal structure of the snowflakes that settled around him.
The chemical waves in this solution demonstrate the theory that just a tiny alteration in conditions or contents can cause an altered image, such as a dust particle on the surface or the level of moisture in the air.
This computer simulation reveals the type of particle collision that occurs within the Large Hadron Collider which is expected to produce quark-gluon plasma.
A global initiative, the ‘Doomsday’ seed vault is located halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, deep inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago. The purpose of the depository is to store duplicates of all seed samples from crop collections around the world.
A tiny handprint gives a tantalising glimpse into an ancient way of living in the Altamira caves in northwestern Spain. El Castillo contains some of the oldest cave-art in the world.
Footnotes
HOW THE LEOPARD GOT ITS SPOTS
fn1This analogy was published by J. D. Murray in Notices of the AMS, June/July 2012: ‘Why are there no 3-headed monsters? Mathematical modelling in biology’.
A DAY WITHOUT YESTERDAY?
fn1Andrei Linde, ‘Inflationary Cosmology after Planck 2013’, arXiv:1402.0526v2 [hep-th]
INDEX
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. You can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
A
adenosine triphosphate (ATP) 107, 108, 109, 110, 183
Africa: evolution and 2, 105, 111, 125, 130–1, 138, 139, 143, 149, 150, 151, 153; farming/trade routes and 151, 153 see also under individual nation name
agriculture, development of 151, 152–5, 160, 239
Al Khazneh, Petra 153, 154
al-Haytham, Ibn 10
aliens see extraterrestrial life Allen Array 66
Alpha Centauri 84
Alpha Draconis 134
Alpher, Ralph 55
Anders, Bill 16, 17, 18–19, 25, 32, 54
Andromeda 32–4, 49, 59
APM 08279+5255 93
Apollo flights 145, 229–38; Apollo 1 133; Apollo 7 16, 18; Apollo 8 16, 18–19, 25, 132–3, 146, 147; Apollo 9 18; Apollo 11 146, 149; Apollo 13 145–9; Apollo 16 229, 230; Apollo 17 233
archaeon 109, 110
Archean period 102, 103
Archicebus achilles 125
archosaurs 105
Arecibo radio telescope, Puerto Rico 47, 84
Aristarchus 9–10
Aristotle 7, 20, 29, 37, 39, 43, 54
Armstrong, Neil 122, 201, 231, 232
Arnold, Ken 60
art, early human 210, 213–14
asteroids 102, 115, 116, 117, 215–16, 218–20, 223, 224, 227
astrology 132
Atchley, Dana 68, 69
ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System) 216, 218
atomic bombs 113
atomic clocks 133
atomic nucleus 46, 84, 86, 114, 175, 191
Audrey, Stephan 90
Australopithecus 4, 126, 129, 131, 138, 139, 140, 141
axial precession 133–4, 136, 137
B
bacteria 59, 107, 108, 109–10
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 121, 123
Baird auditorium, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History 30
Barringer Crater 217
Beidha, Jordan 152, 153
Bellerophon (51 Pegasi b) 89
Bessel, Friedrich 22, 23
Betelgeuse 97
Big Bang 5–6, 29, 39, 54, 55–6, 93, 168, 169, 170–1, 198, 200, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207
Big Ear telescope, Ohio University 73, 74
binary star system 20, 45–6
Bird, John 132
Borman, Frank 16, 17, 18–19, 54
Brahe, Tycho 9, 12, 20
Bronowski, Jacob 232
Bruno, Giordano 5–6, 25, 54, 56, 82
Burke, James 58, 145
Burns, Heinrich 224
Bush, George 231
C
Callisto 38
Calvin, Melvin 68, 69
Cambrian Explosion 98, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 118, 192
Camelopardalis 76
carbon 96, 102, 174, 197
carbon dioxide 95, 103, 107, 146
Catholic Church 37–8
Cavendish, Henry 10
cell nucleus 113, 114
Cepheid variables 27, 33, 49, 132
CERN, Geneva 69, 160, 177, 180, 231–2, 236
Cernan, Gene 232, 233
Chaffee, Roger 133
Chandrasekhar limit 46
Chelyabinsk, Russia 215, 216, 217
Chicago Pile 1 61
Chicxulub impact, the 217
China 79, 80, 125, 152, 161, 232, 236, 239
chlorophyll 107
chloroplasts 108, 110
Cigoli (Lodovico Cardi) 37, 38
Clarke, Arthur C. 57, 58
classical theory 179
climate change 114–15, 131, 134, 135, 138–44, 214, 240
clouds, patterns in 187
Cocconi, Giuseppe: ‘Searching for Interstellar Communications’ 64, 68, 69, 74
Cold War 16, 114
Columbus, Christopher 132
complexity, emergence of 98–9, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109–10, 110, 111, 114, 143, 172, 184, 185–96, 222–3, 227, 242
‘constants of nature’ 46, 195–6, 197, 198–9, 205
Conway’s Game of Life 223
Copernicus, Nicolaus 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 20, 29, 32, 38, 39, 54, 82
Cornell University 35, 60, 64
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) 55, 178, 200, 201–2, 203, 206
cosmological constant 52
coupling constant 179, 182
cranial capacity 140, 141
craniofacial development 143
creation of universe 5, 49–56, 167–207
cricket 182–3
Crippen, Bob 120
crystallography 190
Cuban missile crisis 70, 113
Cuneiform 160–1
Curtis, Heber 31–2, 33, 49
Curtis, Ian 173
cyanobacteria 108
Cygnus constellation 91, 98
D
da Vinci, Leonardo 231
dark energy 169, 182, 196, 197–9, 205
dark matter 169, 177–8, 198
Darwin, Charles 31, 110, 113, 192
Delta Cephei 27
Deneb 98, 134
DESY laboratory, Hamburg 160
Disraeli, Benjamin 31
DNA 79, 104, 109–10, 125, 138, 139, 142, 151, 175, 190
Doppler effect 87, 89
down quarks 175, 177, 242
Draco, constellation of 91
Drake Equation, The 70, 71, 72, 73, 82, 91, 100, 101, 103, 104, 111, 113–14
Drake, Frank 64, 66, 68, 72, 82, 116
dreamers 234–41
dualism 187
deuterium 235, 237
Duke, Charlie 229, 230–1, 232
Dunbar’s number 151
Dunn, Alan 61
dwarf stars 20, 33, 46–7, 76, 84, 90, 96, 97, 99–100, 221
E
Earth 4; Archean Eon 102, 103; birth of life on 104, 192; collision with another planet 143; Earthrise photo 19, 32; formation of 103; from Earth to the Sun 8; Hadean Eon 103, 111; life on, brief history of 104–12; orbit 7, 15, 18, 20, 43, 44, 45, 48, 105, 132–5, 136, 137, 143, 148, 168, 224; position in solar system 1–56; spin axis 102, 132–5, 137; Triassic period 105; Upper Paleolithic period 210; why is there life on? 93–101
East African Rift Valley 2, 4, 105, 111, 120, 125–6, 131, 138–44, 149, 150, 151, 164, 166
Eddington, Arthur 53
Ediacaran biota 105
Effelsberg telescope, Germany 47
Egypt, ancient 134, 153, 155, 160, 161–2, 163
Ehman, Jerry R. 73, 74, 76
Einstein, Albert 9, 29, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51–6, 168–9, 176, 179, 202, 222, 235 see also under individual theory name
El Castillo, Spain 210, 213, 214
electromagnetism 45, 97, 175, 180, 181, 197, 235
electrons 46, 65, 78, 107, 108, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 191, 235, 242
elementary particles, Standard Model and 181
Eliot, T. S. 1, 19
endosymbiosis 108, 109, 110
energy use 235–6
Enola Gay 113
Epicurus 9
Epsilon Eridani 64, 66
equinoxes 8, 133, 137, 226–8
Erta Ale volcano, Ethiopia 138
eternal universe 2, 5, 6, 52, 207
Ethiopia 125, 130, 138, 139, 143, 166, 193, 194
Euclid 160, 232
eukaryotes 109, 110, 111–12, 113, 118
Europa 38, 100, 103
European Southern Observatory’s VLT, Chile 47, 90
European Space Agency 231–2
evolution, theory of 31, 52, 53, 86, 104–12, 113, 118, 126, 127, 128, 130–1, 132, 135, 138–44, 193
existentialism 171
exoplanets 84, 88, 89, 90–1, 107
extraterrestrial life, possibility of 57–118
F
farming 152–5
Fermi Paradox 62, 64, 113, 118
Fermi, Enrico 61, 62, 64, 65, 66
Fermilab, Chicago 160
Feynman, Richard 35, 36, 60
Fibonacci numbers 193
fingerprints 81, 185–7
‘First Cause’ argument 169–70
First Chkalovsk Air Force Pilots School, Orenburg 122
Fleming, Williamina 25
flight, birth of human 62, 117, 232
food, oxidization of 106
footprints, early human 131
fossil fuels 235, 236
fossils 105, 125, 130–1, 138, 139, 142, 150, 232, 235
Fowler, Cary 240
Frail, Dale 84, 87
Friedman, William F. 63
Friedmann, Alexander 52–4, 56
fundamental forces/laws of nature 175, 177, 181
G
Gagarin, Yuri 18, 120, 122, 123–4, 156
Gaia space telescope 22
galaxy formation models 178
galaxy rotation speeds 178
Galileo 5, 9, 12, 36–9, 40, 42, 54, 160, 187
Galilean Satellites 38
Gamma Cassiopeia 132–3
Gamma Cephei 134
Gamma Velorum 133
Gamow, George 52, 55
Ganymede 38, 100
gauge bosons 175, 188
gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) 125, 126, 127
General Theory of Relativity 9, 29, 43–4, 45–6, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 168–9, 179, 182, 183, 202–3, 222
geometry 12, 20, 22, 44, 134, 160, 195
Gliese 445 76
Gliese 581 86, 90
Gliese 581-C 90
Global Crop Diversity Trust, The 240
gluons 175, 177, 181
golden ratio 193
Goldilocks Zone 86, 91, 98
Gould, Stephen J. 53
gravity 179, 207; dark matter and 205; Earth’s rotation and 133–4, 135, 143; eternal inflation and 205; fundamental forces and 179, 182; General Theory of Relativity 9, 29–30, 39, 43–4, 45, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 168–9, 179, 182, 183, 202–3, 222; gravitational waves 47; Main Sequence and 97, 98; Newton’s Law of Gravity 10, 11, 12, 20, 22, 23, 29, 40, 41, 42, 44–5, 46, 47, 158, 159, 160, 182, 221, 224; orbits of three bodies under, unpredictability of 224, 227; quantum theory of 169, 179, 207; space travel and 75, 76; Standard Model and 179
Gray, Tom 130
Great Debate 31–4, 49
Great Pyramid, Giza 134
Great Silence 115
Greeks, ancient 7, 89, 103, 133, 154
greenhouse gases 95, 236
Grissom, Gus 133
Guassa Plateau 125, 127
Guth, Alan 202
H
habitable zone 66, 67, 85, 86–92, 100–1
Haise, Fred 146, 147, 149
handprints, early cave 210, 213, 214
Harriot, Thomas 190
‘Harvard Computers’ 25
Harvard University 53; College Observatory 25
Hat Creek Radio Observatory 66
helium 96, 97, 98, 177, 197, 234, 235, 237
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram 86, 96, 98, 100
Hertzsprung, Ejnar 27–8, 29, 96
hieroglyphs 160–1
Higgs Boson 177, 179, 180, 181, 182
Higgs Field 178–9, 197, 202
Hipparchus 133–4
Hiroshima, nuclear attack on 61, 113, 215, 216
Holocene period 152
hominids, evolution of 125–44
Homo erectus 129, 138, 139, 141, 149
Homo floresiensis 149
Homo habilis 129, 138
Homo heidelbergensis 129, 139, 141
Homo sapiens 62, 105, 118, 126, 129, 139, 141, 149, 210, 213
homogeneity and isotropy, assumption of 52, 56, 203
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Canberra, Australia 145
Hooker telescope, Mount Wilson Observatory, California 33
Hopkins, Mike 158, 166
Horizon: ‘The Pleasure of Finding Things Out’ 35
Horsehead Nebula 25
Hoshide, Akihiko 219
Hoyle, Fred 170
Hubble Space Telescope 27
Hubble, Edwin 26, 32–4, 49, 55
Hubble, John 33
Human Universe 3, 42, 72, 116, 125, 158, 219, 223, 230, 234
humans: evolution of 31, 104–12, 113, 118, 126, 127, 128, 130–1, 132, 135, 138–44, 193; future of 209–42
hunter-gatherers 151, 155
Huxley, Thomas 31
hydrogen 61, 64, 65, 66, 74, 78, 81, 93, 96, 97–8, 107, 145, 177, 191, 197, 234, 235, 237
hydrogen bomb 61, 215
hydrogen line, 21cm 64, 66, 74
I
impact events, asteroid 229