1 day ago
Thursday, December 15, 2005
cosmos regained
picked up a first edition of carl sagan's cosmos—one of the best books to get nonscientists familiar with today's key science issues—for half a buck at a library sale.
the bottom edge of the dust jacket's a little torn in back, and the back cover's a bit warped as if the book stood leaning sideways for a long time—it was donated, not a library copy, and folk just don't read their hardcover books—but otherwise the 25-year-old volume looks like new, tho it does have a very slight musty odor.
also, astronomers have collected an awful lot of data since it was published, and cosmology appears to be undergoing a major shift: apparent acceleration of the universe's expansion, which led to the idea of dark energy.
but it's still a great primer, sagan covers a lot of ground and doesn't limit himself to astrophysics, and i never had a chance to read it all the way thru before, since i had to check it out of the library.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Actually it's the universe itself that has the slight musty odor. We now know that the Big Bang was ignited by black powder and the smell is left over from that.
ReplyDelete