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Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos

Priyamvada Natarajan

3.83 · Rating details · 324 ratings · 48 reviews

A noted astrophysicist presents a lively and accessible introduction to radical ideas and discoveries that are transforming our knowledge of the universe

“A strikingly lucid account of the expansion, not just of the universe, but of the way we have tried to understand it, from the Babylonians to black holes and dark matter.”—Richard Holmes, “By the Book,” New York Times ...more

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published May 23rd 2017 by Yale University Press (first published April 26th 2016)

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May 29, 2016 Jill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There have been a number of books lately on the history of science, but most of them are very detailed - perhaps too much so for the average lay reader. This book includes just enough information to highlight the major players and their main contributions, and most interestingly, perhaps, to explain why the history of science has changed drastically in the past thirty years.

Specifically, the author points out that we are now in an era of “big science” - i.e., one dependent on large teams in more There have been a number of books lately on the history of science, but most of them are very detailed - perhaps too much so for the average lay reader. This book includes just enough information to highlight the major players and their main contributions, and most interestingly, perhaps, to explain why the history of science has changed drastically in the past thirty years.

Specifically, the author points out that we are now in an era of “big science” - i.e., one dependent on large teams in more than one country, rather than lone scientists working in isolation. This is not to say there is no longer competition, but now it tends to be between teams rather than individuals. Dr. Natarajan adds that the advances in equipment, particularly from computerization, have also provided a huge boost in the capacity of scientists to explore the universe. And of course, there is the Internet, allowing for peer communication, peer review, and instant promulgation of ideas. Big science, she proposes, has the potential of accelerating the rate of discovery, although she allows that the vast amounts of data being collected have caused bottlenecks in analysis.

The author begins with the ancient Greeks. She goes through the contributions of the most prominent thinkers since then, focusing on those who contributed to major shifts in our understanding of where we are in the universe, and how central (or not) we are to the universe. Her first big shout-out is to Copernicus in 1543, who identified the earth as going around the sun instead of the reverse, creating a new reference system by reordering of the heavens. More recently, she cites Edwin Hubble who, as she says poetically, “set the entire universe adrift.”

Natarajan would agree with Wootton, in his recent book The Invention of Science, that while Copernicus’s insights were brilliant, they were not driven by data. Thus Wootton dates the beginning of the so-called “scientific revolution” with Tycho Brahe, who carefully compiled extensive data from observations. Natarajan concurs that “[t]he new primacy of empirical data marked an important turn in the history of science….” But she locates the points for major changes in science with changes in perceptual frameworks.

Nevertheless, she concedes, for ideas really to make headway, they must, as she writes, “marry observation, technology, and understanding.”

Quite a bit of Natarajan’s history focuses on questions about the origins of our universe, and the controversy among different proponents of theories, from the ancient model of “turtles all the way down” to the steady state theory, the big bang, and now, the multiverse. She explains each one as well as the data supporting or controverting the theories.

She also tackles black holes and their properties, doing a much better job than Stephen Hawking of explaining them for the non-scientist.

Other topics include standard candles - from Cepheids to Quasars, the electromagnetic spectrum, blackbodies, dark energy, dark matter, gravity, and the possibility of other forms of intelligence in the universe.

Evaluation: This is an excellent book, especially if you don’t want to delve too deeply into an equation-laden explanation of complex subjects. The author is a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale, but in addition to having many academic awards, she also writes for the popular media. This was evident from her lucid prose and ease in explaining complicated subjects.
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Oct 03, 2016 James F rated it liked it · review of another edition

I tend to read in "projects", and once in a while I actually finish one. I've been reading our library's popular and semi-popular books on cosmology for about two years now, in chronological order starting with Steven Weinberg's 1977 "classic", The First Three Minutes. I finally reached the last book the library has, from 2016.

Mapping the Heavens is a historically oriented book about "maps" of the universe; the first chapter is about literal star maps and charts from antiquity and the middle age ...more

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Nov 17, 2016 Charlene rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: physics, innovation, history, space

There really wasn't much new here. The history of how we came to know our universe has been told many times over. One thing this book did have going for it was that it was new (2016). Yet, the newer advances in mapping the skies were but mere mentions in this book. She included only a scarce little bit about Stephen Hawking's collaboration with Yuri Milner. This collaboration is extremely exciting and, for a 2016 book, deserved much more attention.

I appreciated how much time she spent detailin ...more

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Jul 20, 2016 muthuvel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: astronomy-physics

The book's mostly about the history of the astronomical breakthroughs such as Copernican Model of Universe, Accelerating Universe, Dark stuffs and energy, Black holes and quasars. A very little ideas from the author regarding the mapping and it's future scope in the epilogue. It's good to know both the facts and speculations.

Personally, I found this book very addictive. The author uses very simple yet catchy words that could inspire the readers to watch out for the sky. I've read outstanding boo ...more

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Mar 29, 2016 Dannii Elle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-books-read, non-fiction-nuances

I received this book in exchange for an honest review on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, Priyamvada Natarajan, and the publisher, Yale University Press, for this opportunity.

This is the non-fictional accounts of some of the greatest cosmological discoveries in the history of mankind. From past to present, this chronicles amazing discoveries, complex theories and astounding sightings that showcase man's obsession with the unknown and with the unknowable universe around us.

I expected this to b ...more

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Jan 05, 2021 DW rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I thought this would be a fun book about stars maps after I heard the author speak on CBC radio.

Instead, I got a thrilling description of the history of scientific discovery in astronomy.

Biggest point for me was how disruptive Einstein was to preventing scientific discoveries. His biases as a person played a big part in this though he obviously genuinely cared a lot about science.

Some might say, okay, but pure science is not biased. This book refutes that argument.

Data is not biased. But how we ...more

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Apr 20, 2016 J.S. rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: vine, science-misc, history-science

3.5 stars
This is a very interesting look at some of the history around such cosmological discoveries as black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and string theory. The author frequently points out how various personalities or situations often got in the way of advancing scientific knowledge, dispelling the notion that science is an orderly advance from one level of knowledge to the next. I think I understand the things explained a little better than I did before, but I'm not sure I'd go along with ...more

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Sep 26, 2017 Sumanth N rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Fantastic book to learn about our universe! The author discusses in great detail about black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and how the discoveries were made and defended, without requiring the reader to have advanced knowledge of physics, astronomy or math. The author clearly delineates the arguments between the theoretical and observational groups without a bias. The later chapters - about the six cosmological constants, the Supernova cosmology project and theories about bubble universes mak ...more

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Mar 03, 2021 Gary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Fascinating at times. Not too much history. Lots of modern scientific work and ideas. Fits well with other books.

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Nov 04, 2019 Leah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Mindbogglingly cool. At least, the parts I understood were.

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Aug 08, 2019 Itsaso rated it liked it · review of another edition

Not what I expected. History of astrophysics. Interesting read nevertheless.

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Oct 01, 2017 Jeff rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Mapping the Heavens provides a solid summary for the layman of the current state of cosmology and our understanding of the universe and its component parts. It’s bolstered by a friendly and slighty quirky narrative voice, which attempts to be inclusive in its telling. Readers looking for an introduction to the big issues in astronomy and how they developed will find much to like here.

Unfortunately, the book is a bit of a hodge-podge. It starts off as a very cursory history of the mapping of the ...more

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Apr 17, 2016 Kadri rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: astronomy

It's a well written book about some of the most important discoveries in cosmology, about the people behind those discoveries and a bit of discussion about who has gotten the fame and credit for a discovery when someone else might have discovered it before.

I did find that it is certainly a great book to read if you're just getting acquainted with cosmology - you'll start to understand what role Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity plays in modern science, how it was discovered that th ...more

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Jun 06, 2016 Amy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads-giveaways-read

Excellent discussion of the history and development of the field of astronomy. Written in easy to understand terms, the author looks at many of the great turning points in this field. A must read for anyone interested in the current state of astronomy and cosmology.

I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway but the opinions expressed are solely my own.

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Oct 19, 2016 Duff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The author, a scientist, often seems to be that superb conversationalist who weaves stories and facts in a way that is just aimed at you. I'm a non scientist and enjoyed every minute of this private conversation about science, cosmology and a solid hope for the future. The science, history and theory are all here. But, in a way that was always accessible for me. A splendid read. ...more

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Aug 15, 2017 Bob Brimm rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Very boring and superficial. I love reading about cosmology but there was nothing here to enjoy. A bunch of historical facts that you can find searching Wikipedia.

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Apr 16, 2016 Tonstant Weader rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos is an excellent guide to the many radical discoveries that are remaking our understanding of the cosmos. The author, Priyamvada Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale who maps dark matter by observing how light is bent by “potholes” as it travels from its source to where we see it. These potholes reveal the mysterious dark matter whose effects we can map (Well, Natarajan can map.) even while we don’t have a clue Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos is an excellent guide to the many radical discoveries that are remaking our understanding of the cosmos. The author, Priyamvada Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale who maps dark matter by observing how light is bent by “potholes” as it travels from its source to where we see it. These potholes reveal the mysterious dark matter whose effects we can map (Well, Natarajan can map.) even while we don’t have a clue what it is.

There is a poem that I used to include in my syllabus as a history teacher. It’s by Thomas Bailey Aldrich and begins, “My mind lets go a thousand things/Like dates of wars and deaths of kings” and then goes on to recall the very hour the wind shook loose two petals from a flower. I think of it often when reading historical overviews. Authors are always in a double-bind. If they don’t include the thousand things, they will be perceived as unserious, and if they do, they risk losing their readers before they get to the good stuff when those petals start falling. For me, when I read the overviews, I just tell myself, it will get better and it usually does.

The book begins with an extensive overview of the history of cosmology from the earliest observations recorded in cuneiform more as statistical tabulations without any attempt at explanation though the centuries. Natarajan makes some effort to remind readers that cosmological exploration was not isolated to Europe, reminding us of the invention of the compass by the Chinese, the mapping advances from India and the critical role of Arabs in creating the mathematics that formed the foundation for advanced cosmology. She also reminds us that the Flat-Earth Society has been a collection of anti-science cranks since Ptolemy, not Columbus – though not in those words.

One of the central points she makes is that science is provisional and self-correcting. Throughout the history of science, new technologies enable the collection of new data, new data creates new insights and discoveries, and meanwhile old ideas resist change. There is a clash of ideas, sometimes people suggest a middle way, but ultimately, the best data and explanations win out because science chooses what is replicable and empirical even when it is uncomfortable.

It is unfortunate that this overview must come first, but it must because all the rest of the book is built on its foundation, but it is far less exciting and interesting than the meat of the book that beings in the second chapter and then just keeps building. The tone of the writing changes dramatically after the first chapter, becoming more conversational, more engaging and far more fascinating. Natarajan adds lots of interesting information such as Poe presaging Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe in a poem eighty years before Of course, Poe had no evidence, it was a dream of an idea, but it was true and Hubble confirmed it with science. The expanding universe upends everything, after all literature is full of the constancy of the heavens and Hubble broke it. It makes this science so much more accessible for the general public when she makes this connections with other disciplines like literature and poetry.

I love how Natarajan reveals the humanity of the scientists who shape our worldview. Einstein’s resistance to the expanding universe, his “fudge” as she calls it, a final attempt to hand onto the static universe model in the face of new evidence and his eventual confession he was wrong. It’s kind of reassuring to know that even Einstein hung onto belief over evidence for a while before coming round. Because he did come around. Perhaps those who cling to denial of climate change and evolution will do the same. Maybe not, but the idea that Einstein fudged for a bit makes me feel more optimistic about those who doubt science today. She also describes how Sitter’s wrong explanation while being totally, bizarrely wrong, contained a nugget of an idea that helped jumpstart another direction that led toward the right solution (or at least, since science is provisional, what we believe now is the right solution.) Equally fascinating, it is something so simple as photographic plates that enabled the real breakthroughs in observation that advanced the radical theories we have now come to accept.

Natarajan brings the same enthusiastic passion to revealing the nonlinear push and pull advancements that led to the discovery of black holes, dark matter, background radiation, the accelerating universe and will, I am certain, the discovery of other worlds and other sentient, curious, imaginative and creative beings. Full disclosure: I began volunteering my background computer capacity to SETI back when I had a Apple Mac Classic. But when Natarajan talks about other worlds, she does not mean just habitable planets with sentient life out there somewhere lost in the stars, but also other worlds in the multiverse and whether there could be life where the cosmological parameters necessary for the universe as we know it are different. This is radical stuff, revealing that scientists are some of the wildest and most radical thinkers on the planet.

But isn’t that what science is? Taking what we know, what we can observe and then getting freaky with it? Always presuming of course, the evidence backs it up.

4paws I recommend this book highly. Natarajan has a way of taking theory and all its complexity and explaining it so this non-scientist can easily understand it. She effectively explains the ideas that develop and the historical and technological waves that eventually erode those past explanations and replace them with new constructs, new ideas. She makes the process of interesting, human and fun, with little tidbits of gossipy details that bring revered scientists to life. I have always loved physics, took one astronomy class in college and worked at a planetarium (As an usher, believe me hearing the same presentation 6 times a weekend for 3 months ingrains those particular ideas forever,) so I am not intimidated by science, but I have no real science background, no expertise, and yet never felt overwhelmed by the science.

I like her holistic approach, combining literature and cultural information as ways of showing how radical some of these new concepts are. There are wonderful illustrations. It took me a few weeks to read this, but that is generally how I read nonfiction. I read until I come to a concept I need to think about and internalize and switch to some fiction, coming back when I have chewed it over a bit and am ready to learn something new. My mind still lets go a thousand things, but this book is full of falling petals and they are beautiful in their mystery and magnificence.

Mapping the Heavens will be released on April 26th. I received an electronic advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

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May 26, 2019 Paul rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is a pretty good book. Strengths: the approach is historical, so one gets a sense of how ideas about the cosmos evolved, and how, in particular research and discoveries about atoms and sub-atomic particles and forces on the one hand, and research and discoveries about what is observed in space, on the other, ultimately came to be part of the same overall intellectual endeavor. The historical approach also permits Natarajan to discuss the process of science, not just its "results", and to de ...more

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Apr 10, 2018 Adam rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, physics, history, astronomy-astrophysics

Covers topics such as celestial physics, black holes, dark matter, the big bang and string theory. A brief account of technological advances that improved scientific analyses throughout history. There is the strange assertion that biologists think only Earth harbours life - including no citation - but on the whole it's decent. I do think that Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is a little better. ...more

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Jul 30, 2019 Ruben Garcia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Incredibly researched thorough explanation of how the current view of the universe came into fruition. It's peppered with tons of insight of how the world and specially the scientific community's reaction to proposed discoveries changed since ancient times to now. Specifically, how science has become a mainstream worldwide effort where communities, not singular geniuses like Einstein or Newton, rule it.
Certainly a slow read, wrote notes as it went along and that helped immensely to let the mater ...more

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Dec 31, 2020 Aditya Sundararajan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An engaging summary of how astronomy has evolved over the centuries since the scientific revolution. The author also includes anecdotes of scientific discourse on more modern discoveries such as black holes, dark matter, and dark energy that showcase how influence, clout, and the race to be the first can sometimes dilute or detract from the true essence of this field- to map the heavens and answer questions about the unknown.

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Jan 09, 2018 Caitlin Merriman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, science, 2019-challenge

Really interesting book, the narrative of how we came to have our current understanding of the universe is a fascinating one, and looking at how science itself has changed is a very effective way of anchoring the discussion. Some of the writing is a little trite and some of the technical descriptions could be clearer (very very possible I just didn't get them) but overall it was very good ...more

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Feb 07, 2019 Mark rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, science, astronomy

Good and clear explanation of where we currently find ourselves in our understanding of the universe end our place in it and how we managed to find our way to this knowledge.

The author also details some of the conflicts between scientists (philosophers) of the beliefs in their day and the new explanations that were developed.

Good book!

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Jun 05, 2019 Sara Saab rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.5 stars. I loved this. My complaints are only that the final chapter was a bit woolly and looked again into the past, instead of peering into the future. I learned so much! Gravity waves, standard candles, the cosmological constant. Did you know that the calcium in our bones was made in supernovae?

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Feb 21, 2022 Lenbehr rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A fantastic read

More than I had hoped to gain from a single book. Very well written for persons with a small science background. ...... all the way up to those with a broad science background.

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Apr 20, 2018 Christopher Obert rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2018

A great book about the universe and how we can understand it all.

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Jun 23, 2018 Liz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great book. Had to do quite a bit of re-reading of passages, though not because of the writing, but rather the abstractness of the concepts being discussed. All in all, thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Jul 03, 2018 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science

An excellent review of the major topics of cosmology. Natarajan does a great job of capturing the process of science, with all its zigs, zags and subjectivity.

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Mar 02, 2019 Jabeen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An intelligent read for the curious minds seeking the origin and fate of our universe.

Priyamvada Natarajan takes us through a journey of human sacrifices and patience which finally led to the discovery of every radical idea about our cosmos that we know to this day.

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May 02, 2019 Paperclippe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Kind of a boring rehash of every other popsci history out there. Good enough if you're new to the subject but didn't really add anything to an already crowded field. ...more

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