Sunday, May 19, 2019

Calculating The Cosmos: How Mathematics Unveils The Universe, Ian Stewart, c. 2016

Has published many books along this line: mathematics and the universe.

Not an easy book to read. Either the writing style or failure to adequate explain things. Not well edited? That was thought after first "reading," much of which was skimmed after about halfway through. 

Prologue

Chapter 1: Attraction at a distance
  • planets move in an ellipse
Chapter 2: Collapse of the solar nebula
  • formation of the solar system
  • introduction of the term "resonance"
  • Jupiter:Saturn::2:1 resonance -- Jupiter's year is exactly half that of Saturn
Chapter 3: Inconstant moon
  • earth's moon so large some compare it to a double planet
  • Mercury: no moons
  • Venus: no moons
  • Earth: one moon
  • Mars: two tiny moons
  • Jupiter: 67 known moons, but 51 are less than 10 km across; Ganymede, the largest, less than 1/30th the size of Jupiter
  • Saturn: 150 moons and moonlets, and a giant, complex ring system; the largest, Titan, is only 1/20th the size of Saturn
  • Uranus: 27 known moons; the largest, Titania, is less than 1600 km across
  • Neptune: 14 known moons; all small; one relatively large one, Triton, is 1/20th the size of the Neptune
  • Pluto: actually does better than us; four tiny moons, but the fifth, Chiron, is half the size of Pluto
  • Earth-Moon: unusually large angular momentum
  • many other peculiarities
  • a new theory, developed in 1984: impact by huge "impactor": Theia 
Chapter 4: The clockwork cosmos
  • orrery: a mechanical model of the solar system, or of just the sun, earth, and moon, used to represent their relative positions and motions.
  • orbital distances between planets, measured in astronomical units, seem to suggest some pattern
Chapter 5: Celestial police
  • asteroids
  • asteroid belt outside earth's orbit
  • Hildas: three "clumps" of asteroids between the asteroid belt and Jupiter's orbit
  • The Hilda asteroids (adj. Hildian) are a dynamical group of more than 4000 asteroids located beyond the asteroid belt in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Jupiter. The namesake is the asteroid 153 Hilda. Hildas move in their elliptical orbits so that their aphelia put them opposite Jupiter (at L3), or 60° ahead of or behind Jupiter at the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points.
  • Greeks, Trojans: two "clumps" of asteroids in/on Jupiter's orbit; Johann Palisa suggested naming the Greek and Trojan asteroids after participants in the Trojan War
Chapter 6: The planet that swallowed its children -- Saturn

Chapter 7: Cosimo's stars, the four larger moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo
  • the chapter is a discussion of Saturn's rings and planets
Chapter 8: Off on a comet

Chapter 9: Chaos in the cosmos
  • nice little discussion of dinosaurs
Chapter 10: The interplanetary superhighway

Chapter 11: Great balls of fire

Chapter 12: Great sky river

Chapter 13: Alien worlds

Chapter 14: Dark stars

Chapter 15: Skeins and voids

Chapter 16: The cosmic egg

Chapter 17: The big blow-up

Chapter 18: The dark side

Chapter 19: Outside the universe

Epilogue

Units and jargon

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