I've recently been able to resume working on a non-fiction book about space that I've attempted to write for a couple of decades, but it seems to be working now and things finally clicking into place.
At the moment it has an opening/introduction before hitting the main content, but I'm beginning to think it may not be necessary and will simply slow down the book. It's one thing to expect a reader to skip this if not interested, but I'm mindful that if someone is simply browsing on Amazon and reading a preview I'll want to hook them as quickly as possible.
Then again, some readers might prefer being prepared for what to expect? I'm not sure if I'm too repetitive, though.
Anyway, I'd like to see what other chronners think in terms of feedback.
There is a quiet revolution happening in space science.
Much of what you think you know is fast becoming outdated. Partly it’s because of the huge strides in research over the past couple of decades, made by a combination of planetary exploration and more powerful telescopes. But perhaps more importantly it’s because scientists are finally beginning to recognize and challenge some of the basic assumptions that have underpinned our big questions about life in the universe.
This is more important than you’d think—while science can often appear to be objective, in reality many theories are founded not just on assumptions, but also personal and social biases, which can undermine them. Yet as these theories develop over time, these flaws can get baked into them, until what was nothing more than unfounded opinion ends up masquerading as solid science. Eventually overwhelming data will expose these and demand such theories to be revised or completely overturned. When that happens the reaction from other scientists can be anything from disbelief to dismissal, indifference to outright hostility.
It can take decades to overcome this resistance, until newer theories eventually revise or completely replace the older ones. And yet change is a normal and well-recognized process in the history of science—we only need to look at our technological progress over the past few centuries to see this in action. The constant process of discovery means that science is in a constant process of change, but it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we think we know at any one moment is in any way absolute.
This is especially as there remain profound biases that continue to exist when it comes to answering fundamental questions in science, and are only now being noticed and slowly addressed. This is harder than it sounds. For thousands of years humans have thought themselves somehow special, that life is miraculous, that the sun and our Earth were—if not at the center of the universe, then at least an important part of it. Even though science should be able to distance itself from these biases, we as individuals can still be subject to them, whether consciously or unconsciously. Added to this is the human tendency to presume the world we see around us is unchanging without obvious interference, whether it be ecosystems, physical geography, or even the orbits of the planets.
Some biases have already been noticed, some have still to be recognized, and these continue to define attempts to answer the most basic questions about life, the universe, and existence. Only now is it coming to light how misleading these biases can be. As they are finally being challenged, we can begin to properly answer those questions in a more objective way. The very latest findings in space science already provide the groundwork for major upheavals in thinking—but not all of the pieces have been put together yet. This book aims to do so.
First, we’ll spend time exploring the very latest discoveries covering stars, planets in other star systems, galaxies, and deep space itself. Then we’ll apply what we’ve learned with a journey through our Solar System, starting from the outer edge and moving in to allow for a different perspective. After that, we’ll cover the development of our Earth, the formation and evolution of life, and even look at how consciousness itself has arisen. We’ll then wrap everything up at the end to show how all this cutting edge research fundamentally changes our view on how to answer some of our biggest questions about our place in the universe, how life begins, and whether there is life elsewhere in the universe.
To keep things simple, this book is written in a style that the most general reader should easily understand—there are no equations or formulas, and no charts or diagrams to try and follow. I provide plenty of references, but not directly to scientific papers themselves, which are often hidden behind a paywall, and written in a language only a specialist minority can understand. Instead, I’ve linked to articles in the science press, to press releases sent out by various science institutions, as well as references from reputable sources—all of which are written in a way that the everyday reader can easily follow, while also making it easy for those who wish it to track down the original articles in peer-reviewed journals to do so. I’ve tried to vary these sources as much as possible, and I also highly recommend clicking through these for further information on what is being discussed, as well as to see some of the amazing images that can accompany.
I should also add that I use the general term of “space science” rather than name individual disciplines, and “scientist” to refer to all the people engaged in its research, regardless of their field. This way I can avoid any misunderstanding that there may be a difference in ideas between different specialties. Additionally, a lot of space science research these days overlaps many disciplines, and I know many of the scientists involved do not like the idea of being pegged to a single label.
So, without further ado, let us begin. And we’ll do so by looking up—to the stars.
The sun is a star.
It’s easy to forget that. After all, when we think of stars it’s normal to remember all those tiny little twinkling little points of light that fill the night sky. Sometimes it seems like there’s millions of them, but even with the clearest and widest view, the most stars you can possibly see with the naked eye is just over 4,500[1]. Together these stars give off only a faint light and no obvious heat at all.
But the sun is an immense ball of fire, giving off intense light and fierce heat. The rise and fall of the sun as our Earth orbits it gives us the stark distinctions of day and night, and at its height in the sky it can literally burn. Of all the objects in the sky, it is the most extreme and dominant. Its scientific name, Sol, comes from the Latin root that also gives us words such as solo and sole—meaning “only one”. From our vantage point on earth, the sun appears to be absolutely unique.
It’s only in recent centuries it was realized that the sun is a star. If so, all of those tiny twinkling lights in the night sky must also be other suns. But what is the sun? What makes it a star?
The sun is a nuclear furnace. Conditions inside the sun are so extreme that it’s technically not even a burning ball of gas but instead a plasma—which means a gas heated so much that the electrons have been stripped from its atoms, leaving just nuclei. The sun’s mass is so massive that at its core the pressures are so great as to be able to fuse these nuclei. This process releases vast amounts of energy, not least in terms of heat and light. The ancient Greeks thought the sun burned wood, and scientists in Victorian England calculated how much coal it burned, but now we know the power of the sun comes from an ongoing process of nuclear fusion on an immense scale.
The sun is a million times bigger than our Earth. At the center of the sun is the core where most of the fusion takes place. This core is so dense that light generated by nuclear fusion is constantly absorbed and then emitted in random directions, meaning it can take thousands of years to finally escape into space. The light you see today could have been made during the Roman Empire, or when farming was first practiced, or even during the ice age.
The churning heat from the core also causes superheated plasma to rise up through the sun until it eventually reaches what we think of as the sun’s surface, the photosphere—really it’s no more solid than the edge of a cloud—and there convection cells boil up like fiery scales as big as entire countries. These are routinely swamped by quakes with thousands of times more energy than anything ever seen on our Earth. All this violence creates sound waves which travel at supersonic speeds, making the entire sun vibrate like a drum, resulting in dancing spikes of burning plasma on the surface that are thousands of miles high and sometimes accompanied by fire tornadoes[2].
...
[1] Sky & Telescope (17 Sept 2014), 9,096 stars in the sky-is that all?, 9,096 Stars in the Sky—Is That All?
[2] NASA (11 Feb 2020): Ten Things We’ve Learned About the Sun From NASA’s SDO This Decade, Ten Things We’ve Learned About the Sun From NASA’s SDO This Decade - NASA
At the moment it has an opening/introduction before hitting the main content, but I'm beginning to think it may not be necessary and will simply slow down the book. It's one thing to expect a reader to skip this if not interested, but I'm mindful that if someone is simply browsing on Amazon and reading a preview I'll want to hook them as quickly as possible.
Then again, some readers might prefer being prepared for what to expect? I'm not sure if I'm too repetitive, though.
Anyway, I'd like to see what other chronners think in terms of feedback.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Opening
There is a quiet revolution happening in space science.
Much of what you think you know is fast becoming outdated. Partly it’s because of the huge strides in research over the past couple of decades, made by a combination of planetary exploration and more powerful telescopes. But perhaps more importantly it’s because scientists are finally beginning to recognize and challenge some of the basic assumptions that have underpinned our big questions about life in the universe.
This is more important than you’d think—while science can often appear to be objective, in reality many theories are founded not just on assumptions, but also personal and social biases, which can undermine them. Yet as these theories develop over time, these flaws can get baked into them, until what was nothing more than unfounded opinion ends up masquerading as solid science. Eventually overwhelming data will expose these and demand such theories to be revised or completely overturned. When that happens the reaction from other scientists can be anything from disbelief to dismissal, indifference to outright hostility.
It can take decades to overcome this resistance, until newer theories eventually revise or completely replace the older ones. And yet change is a normal and well-recognized process in the history of science—we only need to look at our technological progress over the past few centuries to see this in action. The constant process of discovery means that science is in a constant process of change, but it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we think we know at any one moment is in any way absolute.
This is especially as there remain profound biases that continue to exist when it comes to answering fundamental questions in science, and are only now being noticed and slowly addressed. This is harder than it sounds. For thousands of years humans have thought themselves somehow special, that life is miraculous, that the sun and our Earth were—if not at the center of the universe, then at least an important part of it. Even though science should be able to distance itself from these biases, we as individuals can still be subject to them, whether consciously or unconsciously. Added to this is the human tendency to presume the world we see around us is unchanging without obvious interference, whether it be ecosystems, physical geography, or even the orbits of the planets.
Some biases have already been noticed, some have still to be recognized, and these continue to define attempts to answer the most basic questions about life, the universe, and existence. Only now is it coming to light how misleading these biases can be. As they are finally being challenged, we can begin to properly answer those questions in a more objective way. The very latest findings in space science already provide the groundwork for major upheavals in thinking—but not all of the pieces have been put together yet. This book aims to do so.
First, we’ll spend time exploring the very latest discoveries covering stars, planets in other star systems, galaxies, and deep space itself. Then we’ll apply what we’ve learned with a journey through our Solar System, starting from the outer edge and moving in to allow for a different perspective. After that, we’ll cover the development of our Earth, the formation and evolution of life, and even look at how consciousness itself has arisen. We’ll then wrap everything up at the end to show how all this cutting edge research fundamentally changes our view on how to answer some of our biggest questions about our place in the universe, how life begins, and whether there is life elsewhere in the universe.
To keep things simple, this book is written in a style that the most general reader should easily understand—there are no equations or formulas, and no charts or diagrams to try and follow. I provide plenty of references, but not directly to scientific papers themselves, which are often hidden behind a paywall, and written in a language only a specialist minority can understand. Instead, I’ve linked to articles in the science press, to press releases sent out by various science institutions, as well as references from reputable sources—all of which are written in a way that the everyday reader can easily follow, while also making it easy for those who wish it to track down the original articles in peer-reviewed journals to do so. I’ve tried to vary these sources as much as possible, and I also highly recommend clicking through these for further information on what is being discussed, as well as to see some of the amazing images that can accompany.
I should also add that I use the general term of “space science” rather than name individual disciplines, and “scientist” to refer to all the people engaged in its research, regardless of their field. This way I can avoid any misunderstanding that there may be a difference in ideas between different specialties. Additionally, a lot of space science research these days overlaps many disciplines, and I know many of the scientists involved do not like the idea of being pegged to a single label.
So, without further ado, let us begin. And we’ll do so by looking up—to the stars.
Chapter 1. Stars
The sun is a star.
It’s easy to forget that. After all, when we think of stars it’s normal to remember all those tiny little twinkling little points of light that fill the night sky. Sometimes it seems like there’s millions of them, but even with the clearest and widest view, the most stars you can possibly see with the naked eye is just over 4,500[1]. Together these stars give off only a faint light and no obvious heat at all.
But the sun is an immense ball of fire, giving off intense light and fierce heat. The rise and fall of the sun as our Earth orbits it gives us the stark distinctions of day and night, and at its height in the sky it can literally burn. Of all the objects in the sky, it is the most extreme and dominant. Its scientific name, Sol, comes from the Latin root that also gives us words such as solo and sole—meaning “only one”. From our vantage point on earth, the sun appears to be absolutely unique.
It’s only in recent centuries it was realized that the sun is a star. If so, all of those tiny twinkling lights in the night sky must also be other suns. But what is the sun? What makes it a star?
The sun is a nuclear furnace. Conditions inside the sun are so extreme that it’s technically not even a burning ball of gas but instead a plasma—which means a gas heated so much that the electrons have been stripped from its atoms, leaving just nuclei. The sun’s mass is so massive that at its core the pressures are so great as to be able to fuse these nuclei. This process releases vast amounts of energy, not least in terms of heat and light. The ancient Greeks thought the sun burned wood, and scientists in Victorian England calculated how much coal it burned, but now we know the power of the sun comes from an ongoing process of nuclear fusion on an immense scale.
The sun is a million times bigger than our Earth. At the center of the sun is the core where most of the fusion takes place. This core is so dense that light generated by nuclear fusion is constantly absorbed and then emitted in random directions, meaning it can take thousands of years to finally escape into space. The light you see today could have been made during the Roman Empire, or when farming was first practiced, or even during the ice age.
The churning heat from the core also causes superheated plasma to rise up through the sun until it eventually reaches what we think of as the sun’s surface, the photosphere—really it’s no more solid than the edge of a cloud—and there convection cells boil up like fiery scales as big as entire countries. These are routinely swamped by quakes with thousands of times more energy than anything ever seen on our Earth. All this violence creates sound waves which travel at supersonic speeds, making the entire sun vibrate like a drum, resulting in dancing spikes of burning plasma on the surface that are thousands of miles high and sometimes accompanied by fire tornadoes[2].
...
[1] Sky & Telescope (17 Sept 2014), 9,096 stars in the sky-is that all?, 9,096 Stars in the Sky—Is That All?
[2] NASA (11 Feb 2020): Ten Things We’ve Learned About the Sun From NASA’s SDO This Decade, Ten Things We’ve Learned About the Sun From NASA’s SDO This Decade - NASA
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