The Glass Universe

On reading The Glass Universe
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Annie: When I was about ten, I wanted to be an astronomer.

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Harlow: Why?

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Annie: I liked the pictures of the moon and planets.

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Harlow: Stars?

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Annie: I liked the planets. They were bigger. They had features. I could relate to those whereas the stars just, well, they just shone.

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Harlow: When you were ten… that was before the universe had been mapped.

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Annie: Steady on, I’m not a hundred and fifty yet. Reading Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe and those women astronomers last month got me interested in astronomy again and particularly, the stars more than the planets. Their sizes, magnitudes, compositions, distances and the fact that the universe is expanding..

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Harlow: I see reviews of The Glass Universe split the readers into two camps: those who like the science and those who grumble there wasn’t enough about the women astronomers’ personal lives.

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Annie: It was a little hard to visualize the women, although there were pictures of them. But because my knowledge of astronomy stopped at the planets and the stories of the stellar research was so gripping, the science was enough for me.

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Voice-over

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“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us to other worlds.” Plato.

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Recipe for a Universe

Searching for a metaphor…

Woodward: The universe. I have to write up the universe by tonight.

Bernstein: Hmm, big subject. What’s in it besides you and me?

Woodward: Dark energy, dark matter, particles like neutrinos and atoms. Need a metaphor.

Bernstein: Quite a mix. Write it like a recipe. The particles are ingredients, apply a big bang to stir it up, it becomes a soup of dark energy, dark matter and neutrinos. Mix in atomic particles to become stars and planets to taste.

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Voice-over

Would that astrophysics be as easy as cooking. Though some scientists might wish that cooking were as simple as astrophysics.

For CERN’s recipe go here 

“Take a massive explosion to create plenty of stardust and a raging heat. Simmer for an eternity in a background of cosmic microwaves. Let the ingredients congeal and leave to cool and serve cold with cultures of tiny organisms 13.7 billion years later.”
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