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Thomas Levenson
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“This Saturday, Galle and a volunteer assistant, Heinrich Ludwig d’Arrest, command the main telescope. Galle stands at the eyepiece and guides the instrument, pointing toward Capricorn. As each star comes into view, he calls out its brightness and position. D’Arrest pores over a sky map, ticking off each candidate as it reveals itself as a familiar object. So it goes until, sometime between midnight and 1 A.M., Galle reels out the numbers for one more mote of light invisible to the naked eye: right ascension 21 h, 53 min, 25.84 seconds. D’Arrest glances down at the chart, then yelps: “that star is not on the map!” The younger man runs to fetch the observatory’s director, who earlier that day had only reluctantly given his permission to attempt what he seems to have thought a fool’s errand. Together, the trio continue to watch the new object until it sets at around 2:30 in the morning. True stars remain mere points in even the most powerful telescopes. This does not, showing instead an unmistakable disk, a full 3.2 arcseconds across—just as Le Verrier had told them to expect. That visible circle can mean just one thing: Galle has just become the first man to see what he knows to be a previously undiscovered planet, one that would come to be called Neptune, just about exactly where Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier told him to look. —”
― The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
― The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
“... there’s a common trick nature plays on its would-be investigators: resemblance, the human urge to map the unknown onto the already known, can be a snare. Just because something looks like something else doesn’t mean that the backstory for both must be the same. Rocks scattered across the sky may appear to be a rubble field left behind by an explosion…but unless you stop to think how else you might get there, you rely on assumptions not in evidence.”
― The Hunt for Vulcan: ...And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
― The Hunt for Vulcan: ...And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
“Vulcan is long gone, almost completely forgotten. It may seem today to be merely a curiosity, just another mistake our ancestors made, about which we now know better. But the issue of what to do with failure in science was tricky right at the start of the Scientific Revolution, and it remains so now. We may—we do—know more than the folks back then. But we are not thus somehow immune to the habits of mind, the leaps of imagination, or the capacity for error that they possessed. Vulcan’s biography is one of the human capacity to both discover and self-deceive. It offers a glimpse of how hard it is to make sense of the natural world, and how difficult it is for any of us to unlearn the things we think are so, but aren’t.”
― The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
― The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
Polls
Spotlighted Book Discussion Poll I - October 26, 2011
This is a poll that adds other books to our listing of potential non fiction books to discuss and also helps the moderators determine which one or ones are the most popular. Since we have many more group members than when we first started; voting in the polls is very important. There will be a series of polls. Many of these books have been recommended by group members but were either not selected before nor voted upon before.
Vote for the book that you would most like to read and/or is the book that you believe that would appeal to the most group members.
Note:
We have added some of the books nominated thus far but we have more to add to other polls. However, this poll was getting quite large.
However, if you do not see your favorite book on this list; then just comment or pop me a note and I will immediately add it to this poll.
You can always change your vote at any time; so nothing is lost. There are some books which have been nominated by the same author; however, skip over those if the particular author does not suit you and vote for your favorite or for one you or others might want to read.
Before making your selection, please try to look up your choice and make sure it really is a book you are interested in or you think others would be; do not be lured in by the title. Also, check out the author and what others have said about the book before you (reviewers who you trust). Then of course, make your selection.
And if you do not see your favorite, just contact me and I will add it to the poll.
This is a poll that adds other books to our listing of potential non fiction books to discuss and also helps the moderators determine which one or ones are the most popular. Since we have many more group members than when we first started; voting in the polls is very important. There will be a series of polls. Many of these books have been recommended by group members but were either not selected before nor voted upon before.
Vote for the book that you would most like to read and/or is the book that you believe that would appeal to the most group members.
Note:
We have added some of the books nominated thus far but we have more to add to other polls. However, this poll was getting quite large.
However, if you do not see your favorite book on this list; then just comment or pop me a note and I will immediately add it to this poll.
You can always change your vote at any time; so nothing is lost. There are some books which have been nominated by the same author; however, skip over those if the particular author does not suit you and vote for your favorite or for one you or others might want to read.
Before making your selection, please try to look up your choice and make sure it really is a book you are interested in or you think others would be; do not be lured in by the title. Also, check out the author and what others have said about the book before you (reviewers who you trust). Then of course, make your selection.
And if you do not see your favorite, just contact me and I will add it to the poll.
by Robert W. MerryA Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
by
Allison Hoover BartlettThe Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
by Edward DolnickThe Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society and the Birth of the Modern World
by Thomas LevensonNewton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist
by Lynn Hudson ParsonsThe Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and the Election of 1828
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