BTRIPP (btripp) wrote,
BTRIPP
btripp

Another book ...

The Light at the Edge of the UniverseWell, I knew gong in on this that a lot of it might sound like "old news", as what might have been "Leading Cosmologists on the Brink of a Scientific Revolution" (as per the sub-title) 10 years or so back, might be less pressing or impressive these days. Of course, as I'd not been particularly "keeping up" over the past decade on advances in the cosmology field, much of the deep-space research and cold dark matter theory was new to me, but it was irritating to hear griping about the Hubble (as this was published before NASA fixed it), given its impressive production in recent years.

The Light at the Edge of the Universe is something of an odd book. It was written by Michael Lemonick, a science writer for the likes of TIME, rather than a researcher, and frequently reminds one of a travel program as the author goes visiting various astrophysicists around the US. It is filled with strange details (Lemonick seems to insist of painting an unflattering word picture of each of the scientists he talks to ... what point is there if Dr. X looks "rumpled" or Dr. Y has a receding hairline, especially if you're including photos of each?) which have little bearing on the point of the narrative. Of course, there is no "point", really, as it a survey of different people's work on inter-related scientific issues ... I only wish it didn't have quite the "what I did on my summer vacation" feel to it. Oh, well.

I have another half dozen or so books on similar topics (cosmology, etc.) waiting for me, but I felt I needed to disengage from this a bit to be able to go into the next "serious" book fresh, so I'm taking a bit of a break for the middle reading station and jumping into William Gibson's now-classic Neuromancer, which has likewise been sitting on the shelf for the past decade (but I trust that this will have "aged better" than the early 90's "cutting edge science" things!).


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