The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak
The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak
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The Day We Found the Universe

Author: Marcia Bartusiak

Narrator: Erik Synnestvedt

Unabridged: 10 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 04/21/2009


Synopsis

From one of our most acclaimed science writers: a dramatic narrative of the discovery of the true nature and startling size of the universe, delving back past the moment of revelation to trace the decades of work--by a select group of scientists--that made it possible.

On January 1, 1925, thity-five-year-old Edwin Hubble announced findings that ultimately established that our universe was a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed, filled with myriad galaxies like our own. It was a realization that reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos. Six years later, continuing research by Hubble and others forced Albert Einstein to renounce his own cosmic model and finally accept the astonishing fact that the universe was not immobile but instead expanding. The story of these interwoven discoveries includes battles of will, clever insights, and wrong turns made by the early investigators in this great twentieth-century pursuit, from the luminaries (Einstein, Hubble, Harlow Shapley) to the lesser known: Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered the means to measure the vast dimensions of the cosmos . . . Vesto Slipher, the first and unheralded discoverer of the universe’s expansion... Georges Lemaître, the Jesuit priest who correctly interpreted Einstein’s theories in relation to the universe... Milton Humason, who, with only an eighth-grade education, became a world-renowned expert on galaxy motions... and others.

Here is the watershed moment in our cosmic history, splendidly arising from the exceptional combination of human curiosity, intelligence, and enterprise.

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About Marcia Bartusiak

Combining her skills as a journalist with a master's degree in physics, Marcia Bartusiak has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for three decades. Currently a professor of the practice of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Science, Smithsonian, Discover, and National Geographic magazines. She is also the award-winning author of Archives of the Universe, Through a Universe Darkly, Thursday's Universe, The Day We Found the Universe, and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Clif on July 13, 2016

This book provides a virtual front row seat to the discoveries of facts about the universe that were bigger, stranger, and more spectacular than anybody could have imagined at the beginning of the 20th Century. Today the newness has worn off of such terms as expanding universe, space-time continuum,......more

Goodreads review by Paul on August 17, 2013

One day in 1925 : Hubble : The universe is bigger than everybody thinks. A humbler astronomer invented for the purpose of this review : Yeah? How big are we talking? Hubble : Well, you know the Milky Way? Okay, now see through this telescope, see those little wispy things there? Astronomling: You mean t......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on January 17, 2010

This book is a fantastic, popular-science history of a pivotal era in astronomy: the moment in time when we went from a belief that the Milky Way was the Universe entire, to the knowledge that the Milky Way is but one galaxy in a Universe comprising billions of others. Both the famous names (Hubble,......more

Goodreads review by Cassandra Kay on February 25, 2012

I can't even imagine what it would have felt like to have seen some of these early images of the expanding universe during this time but it must have been completely inspiring, and if any book gives you a glimpse into what this must have felt like this book is it. It contains an assortment of well k......more

Goodreads review by LeastTorque on April 28, 2023

A fun ride through the backstory of what took up only a few pages of my mid-seventies astronomy course (taught by John Craig Wheeler). This was a nice bit of creamy center for the nerdier astronomy and physics books I usually read. So if that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere. Meanwhile, I am......more