Monsters in the Sky (English and Italian Edition)

By Paolo Maffei

Book Overview

Comets, supernovae, black holes, and quasars are among the "monsters" of the book's title-extraordinary astronomical bodies and phenomena that scientists now believe are the key to understanding the rules of the universe. Monsters in the Skyis the sequel to Paolo Maffei's popular Beyond the Moon(MIT Press, 1978), which gave lay readers a grand tour of the natural order of the universe. Beginning with comets, Monsters in the Skymoves outward from our solar system, from one enigma to the next, ending with those farthest removed, the invisible "hidden mass" of galactic clusters extremely distant from us. Between the comets and the hidden galactic mass, the book's topics include: satellite clouds, dust rings, cyrillids and tektites, the mysterious planet Vulcan, nebulae and novae, super-supernovae, "runaway stars," the future of our own star, X-rays, the probable cause of the dinosaurs' demise, black holes (probably one of the best discussions of this subject), white holes, journeys through space-time, BL Lacertae objects, Markarian, N, and Seyfert galaxies, quasars, and anomalous red shifts.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262131536
• ISBN13: 9780262131537
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Reference Book on Astronomy

An excellent astronomy reference book for the intelligent layman or advanced amateur by a distinguished Italian astronomer. Most notable: Maffei should be praised for correcting misinformation about the meteorite-like stones called "tektites." The author includes research results from aerodynamic studies made by the late Dean R. Chapman of NASA Ames Research Center. Chapman was a genuine scientific Sherlock Holmes; he showed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the mysterious Australasian-class of tektites originated on the Moon. Few books include this information about tektites. Many scientists still claim tektites were formed by terrestrial impacts. (Aside: research supporting evidence of the lunar-origin of tektites is rarely published--the so-called 'impact mafia' seem to control the peer review of such papers.) This book is out of print but used copies are readily available. The reviewer hopes it is republished.