The universe. Time travel (Category PopularScience)
I read this book with great pleasure by Sergey Arkturovich Yazev, a Russian astronomer who has been leading the Astronomical Observatory of Irkutsk State University for many years and is associated with the Institute of Solar-Earth Physics of the SB RAS. Interestingly, Sergey is a hereditary astronomer and practically lives in his subject area, knows how to popularize it and keep the discipline of the scientific method.
The book itself came out. 2020 Peter was conceived as a journey through different scientific paradigms of space perception from the ancient world to current concepts:) The author is able to show how the views of mankind have changed, and separately explains why it makes sense to trust basic physical laws. (It's like the saying, "Trust, but verify.").
The book itself has a number of advantages. It consists of two parts and develops from simple to complex. Through the entire text is a timeline linking the events of world history and astronomical discoveries. The book has excellent illustrations by Evgeny Muretov, which perfectly support the narrative. In general, the history and complexity of the concepts reminds me of progressive jpeg, when the details of the picture are drawn gradually.
Part part 1From the Universe of the Ancient World to the Universe Driven by Physics The first part is a path from the concepts of the world of ancient and philosophical constructions to the world where they begin to work:
- Observation and measurement (instead of authority and myth) Mathematics as the language of the model
- Universal laws (The same rules for the apple, the moon and the planets are a key change in thinking.). The book literally puts milestones from the chapter "The Universe of the Ancient World" to the chapter "The Universe Driven by Physics", and if you draw parallels, then The ancient worldview is a “monolith” where explanation is often inseparable from culture and faith. The scientific picture looks modular, consisting of a cycle: measurements → hypothesis → model → predictions → testing → refactoring models
Separately, it is cool that Yazev not only lists the discoveries, but shows why it was impossible to reliably know the structure of the world for thousands of years without the scientific method - that is, explains the mechanism of progress itself, and not only the results.
Part part 2From the relative universe to the accelerating one – and further, to open questions The second part begins with a qualitative leap in complexity: we are no longer trying to “twistle the old model”, but changing the basic assumptions, which is similar to changing the platform. (You can read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.). It all starts with the chapter "The Relative Universe", and then the story goes through the key "releases" of modern cosmology - expansion, hot beginning. (Big bang.)Inflation - and comes to the chapter "The Universe is accelerating", and the entire universe of open questions is finalized. Logic is especially good here. Relativity changes what we consider the “basic API” of space-time Expansion transfers cosmology from a static picture to a dynamic system (with parameters to be measured, not declared) Inflation – an attempt to close specific bugs of the standard model (flatness/horizon, etc.) A hypothesis that is compatible with observations
- Accelerated expansion ("accelerating universe") adds a component to the model, the nature of which is not fully understood - and this honestly leads the reader to the boundary of knowledge.
As a result, I definitely liked the book - the author explains complex concepts in an interesting, consistent and clear way. I would like to be able to tell them to my children in this way:)
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