Description: A fascinating look at the progress of
astronomy and theoretical physics in the 20th century—focusing on
the work of Subramanyan Chandrasekhar and Arthur Stanley Eddington.
Condition: Hardbound in black cloth with gilt title on spine; pictorial
dustjacket. Book in new condition: clean, crisp, tightly bound, and unmarked.
From
the publisher’s promo: “In August 1930, on a voyage from Madras to
London, a young Indian looked up at the stars and contemplated their fate.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar--Chandra, as he was called--calculated that certain
stars would suffer a strange and violent death, collapsing to virtually
nothing. This extraordinary claim, the first mathematical description of black
holes, brought Chandra into direct conflict with Sir Arthur Eddington, one of
the greatest astrophysicists of the day. Eddington ridiculed the young man's
idea at a meeting of the Royal Astronomy Society in 1935, sending Chandra into
an intellectual and emotional tailspin--and hindering the progress of
astrophysics for nearly forty years.
Empire of
the Stars is the dramatic story
of this intellectual debate and its implications for twentieth-century science.
Arthur I. Miller traces the idea of black holes from early notions of
"dark stars" to the modern concepts of wormholes, quantum foam, and
baby universes. In the process, he follows the rise of two great
theories--relativity and quantum mechanics--that meet head on in black holes.
Empire of the Stars provides a unique window into the remarkable quest to
understand how stars are born, how they live, and, most portentously (for their
fate is ultimately our own), how they die.
It is also the moving
tale of one man's struggle against the establishment--an episode that sheds
light on what science is, how it works, and where it can go wrong. Miller
exposes the deep-seated prejudices that plague even the most rational minds.
Indeed, it took the nuclear arms race to persuade scientists to revisit
Chandra's work from the 1930s, for the core of a hydrogen bomb resembles
nothing so much as an exploding star. Only then did physicists realize the
relevance, truth, and importance of Chandra's work, which was finally awarded a
Nobel Prize in 1983.
Set against the waning
days of the British Empire and taking us right up to the present, this sweeping
history examines the quest to understand one of the most forbidding phenomena
in the universe, as well as the passions that fueled that quest over the course
of a century.”
About the Authors:
Arthur I. Miller is an professor of the history and
philosophy of science at University College London. His many books include Insights
of Genius and Einstein, Picasso.
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