I
am a layman when it comes to astronomy. I have a high school
education (largely retained), and decades of random reading about the
heavens (perhaps less retained). But I am also a star gazer. It’s
nice every now and then to go out at night, stare at the sky, and let
the mind wander where it will. It’s precisely moments like that we
forget about the minutiae of daily life and remember that Earth
hurtles 30 km/sec through a void, not to mention that the myriad of
life around us, billions of species, is not forever—that the
greenhouse effect, regardless accelerated by humankind or not, will
eventually burn everything to the ground, leaving only rock.
Bringing to one place all the pertinent information on our solar
system known as of 2019 is the BBC’s The Planets by Brian
Cox and Andrew Cohen (2019). It is star gazing of the most informed
variety.
BBC
embarking on a similar planets project twenty years ago, the 2019
edition of The Planets integrates what was known then with the
information that has come to life or gelled in the meantime, all to
create the most detailed picture of our solar system to date. Why is
Mercury’s orbit the most irregular? How did Venus’ ecosystem
come to be so hellish? Is/was their life on Mars? What hope do
Jupiter’s moons offer for human life occurring beyond Earth? What
exactly are Saturn’s rings, and how did they come to be formed?
These and many, many other fascinating topics and facts are related,
in lucid, wonderfully structured fashion. If there is anyone on
Earth who knows how to collect, organize, and present information in
an interesting, engaging fashion, it is BBC. The material in the
book is enough for a semester’s course providing the tightest
summary of the solar system.
The
Planets follows a natural progression. Starting with the center,
the sun, and working its way through the four terrestrial planets,
through the gas giants, and ending on the singular dwarf planet
Pluto, the reader gains a summary picture of the solar system unlike
any to date. How planets formed, why some moons are volcanic and
others frozen solid. The simple mind boggling distances to the outer
gas giants, as well as the mind boggling ambition, intelligence,
foresight, and precision of the world’s space programs. It can
easily be assumed that many readers will go out and promptly buy a
telescope. It’s that powerful.
The
Planets is also, indirectly, a history of the world’s space
programs. While relating what is known about each planet, Cox and
Cohen discuss how the information came into existence through the
numerous space programs—NASA, ESA, Soviet, and Russian. Some
projects are common knowledge—Hubble, Voyager, Curiosity, etc., but
for laymen like me, many are not. Their fates (to crash land on
planets, hang forever in orbit, or slide silently out of the solar
system) likewise explained, due recognition is given to these
billions-of-dollars, highly specialized, peak of human technology
space objects which have been successfully developed to give humanity
the chance to learn about our solar system, which in turn directly
informs our knowledge of the Earth.
In
the end, The Planets is a fascinatingly presented, wonderfully
explained, clearly laid out collection of information about the past,
present, and future of our solar system. The time scales in the
billions of years, the end of life on Earth a given, the secret
histories of our mysterious, planetary neighbors cast in a deeper
light, and our solar system coming to life—figuratively and
literally, the degree to which mankind and technology have combined
to get a good understanding of where our orbiting sphere came from in
this book, is, and is going, is invaluable.
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