Stardust Revolution: The New Story of Our Origin in the Stars
by Jacob Berkowitz
Prometheus Books | September 2012 | ISBN-10: 1616145498 | ePUB/PDF | 6.8/9.36 mb
http://www.amazon.com/Stardust-Revolution-Story-Origin-Stars/dp/1616145498
PDF conversion is mine.
Three great scientific revolutions have shaped our understanding of the cosmos and our relationship to it. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the Copernican Revolution, which bodychecked the Earth as the pivot point of creation and joined us with the rest of the cosmos as one planet among many orbiting the Sun. Three centuries later came the second great scientific revolution: the Darwinian Revolution. It removed us from a distinct, divine biological status to place us wholly in the ebb and flow of all terrestrial life.
Now, science author Jacob Berkowitz describes how we're in the midst of a third great scientific revolution, five centuries in the making: the Stardust Revolution. It is the merging of the once-disparate realms of astronomy and evolutionary biology, and of the Copernican and Darwinian Revolutions, placing life in a cosmic context.
The Stardust Revolution takes readers on a grand journey that begins on the summit of California's Mount Wilson, where astronomers first realized that the universe is both expanding and evolving, to a radio telescope used to identify how organic molecules—the building blocks of life—are made by stars. It's an epic story told through a scientific cast that includes some of the twentieth century's greatest minds—including Nobel laureate Charles Townes, who discovered cosmic water—as well as the most ambitious scientific explorers of the twenty-first century, those racing to find another living planet.
Today, an entirely new breed of scientists—astrobiologists and astrochemists—are taking the study of life into the space age. Astrobiologists study the origins, evolution, and distribution of life, not just on Earth, but in the universe. Stardust science is filling in the missing links in our evolutionary story, ones that extend our family tree back to the stars.
About the Author
http://www.jacobberkowitz.com/
Jacob Berkowitz is an author, science writer and performer who lives in Almonte, Ontario. His writing ranges from a first-person feature on social trends in vasectomy, to how our view of the universe is shaped by the way NASA colors images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Jacob Berkowitz is the bestselling author of Jurassic Poop: What Dinosaurs (and Others) Left Behind, winner of a 2007 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award. His book Out of This World: The Amazing Search for an Alien Earth was selected as a SkyNews magazine best astronomy book for 2009. He has written for the Globe and Mail, among other publications.
CONTENTS
Prologue. Extreme Genealogy
Notes for the Journey
PART 1 . BORN OF STARS
Chapter 1 . The Stardust Revolution
Chapter 2 . A Star's Fingerprint
Chapter 3 . The Origin of the Elements
PART 2 . THE INVISIBLE UNIVERSE
Chapter 4 . The Atoms of Life
Chapter 5 . Dust to Diamonds
Chapter 6 . The Cosmos Goes Green
PART 3 . THE LIVING COSMOS
Chapter 7 . Catching Stardust
Chapter 8. Other Worlds
Chapter 9. Darwin and the Cosmos
Photo Inserts
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Index
