Measuring the Sky: The Journey of Humanity in Exploring the Universe's Boundaries

Author: Gigi Ferguson
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: The Space Shuttle, the exploration of the tenth planet in the solar system, all embody humanity's primal desire to measure the heavens. After reading this book, you might exclaim, "Why didn't I think of that!" Many of the methods we've invented to measure distances to unreachably distant regions are remarkably simple—only slightly more complex than measuring the length of Grandpa's windmill. But how incredibly brilliant it was to propose these methods! In these chapters, we've come to understand the awe, loneliness, and the "strong desire" that humans have felt for thousands of years about the vast mysteries of the sky, as Galileo put it. People have written countless poems about its beauty, revered it, searched for evidence of a creator, observed it closely with telescopes, and risked everything to find a way there. At the same time, they have also succeeded in measuring the universe. Has everything become so mundane? Is the story over? Has this immense mystery been reduced to numbers and images?