astronomy

Book review – Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond

6-minute read
keywords: earth sciences, popular science, volcanology

If volcanoes make you giddy, then this is the book for you. Robin George Andrews is that rare hybrid of the scientist–journalist: a volcanologist who decided to focus on science communication after completing his PhD. Super Volcanoes combines scientific exactitude with engaging writing and is a tour of some exceptional volcanoes on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System. Andrews starts it with an unabashedly enthusiastic mission statement: “I want you to feel unbridled glee as these stories sink in and an indelible grin flashes across your face as you think: holy crap, that’s crazy!” (p. xxi). For me, he nailed it and I found this an incredibly satisfying read.

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Book review – Fire & Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System

7-minute read

What could be more awe-inspiring than volcanoes? How about volcanoes in space? Having previously raved about asteroids, geologist and cosmochemist Natalie Starkey returns to Bloomsbury Sigma for her second book. Here, she takes readers not just on a Solar System tour of volcanoes, but also walks them through the processes that make a volcano and how these processes play out in extraterrestrial settings.

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Book review – Life in the Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures

8-minute read

Are we alone in the universe? For the moment, this question remains unanswered, though there are many ways to tackle it. Just how many was something I did not appreciate until I sunk my teeth into Harvard University Press’s new flagship astronomy title Life in the Cosmos. Written by astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam and theoretical physicist Abraham “Avi” Loeb, this is a book of truly colossal proportions, clocking in at over 1000 pages. It boldly goes where few academic books have gone before by seriously and open-mindedly considering the possibility of extraterrestrial technological intelligence on par with, or far beyond humans. I found myself gravitating towards this book on account of more than just its size.

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Book review – First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time

8-minute read

In the early days of the universe, there was darkness. Until somebody said, “let there be light”? Not quite. In First Light, astrophysicist Emma Chapman introduces you to ongoing research into the first billion years of our Universe and the birth of the first stars. Popular science at its finest, this book challenged me pleasantly but was above all—with apologies for the terrible pun—enlightening.

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Book review – The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries: The Evidence and the People Who Found It

6-minute read

After three previous books in this format on fossils, rocks, and dinosaurs, geologist and palaeontologist Donald R. Prothero here tackles the story of evolution in 25 notable discoveries. More so than the previous trio, this book tries to be a servant to two masters, resulting in a mixed bag.

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Book review – Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space

8-minute read

This is the second of a two-part dive into the story of oceans on Earth and elsewhere, following my review of Ocean Worlds. That book gave a deep history of how our oceans shaped Earth and life on it and briefly dipped its toes into the topic of oceans beyond Earth. Alien Oceans is the logical follow-up. How did we figure out that there are oceans elsewhere? And would such worlds be hospitable to life? Those are the two big questions at the heart of this book. If there is one person fit to answer them, it is Kevin Peter Hand, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and their deputy chief for solar system exploration.

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Book review – Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and Other Planets

7-minute read

Life most likely originated in the oceans, and it is to oceans that astronomers are looking to find life elsewhere in the universe. With the publication last year of Kevin Peter Hand’s Alien Oceans, I decided this was the right time to finally review Ocean Worlds, a book that I have been very keen to read ever since buying it some years ago. This, then, is the first of a two-part dive into the story of oceans on Earth and elsewhere.

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Book review – The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal about Aliens – and Ourselves

6-minute read

Can we predict what aliens will look like? On some level, no, which has given science fiction writers the liberty to let their imagination run wild. On another level, yes, writes zoologist Arik Kershenbaum. But we need to stop focusing on form and start focusing on function. There are universal laws of biology that help us understand why life is the way it is, and they are the subject of this book. If you are concerned that consideration of life’s most fundamental properties will make for a dense read, don’t panic, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy is a spine-tingling dive into astrobiology that I could not put down.

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Book review – Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene

7-minute read

The idea that extinction is a bad thing and diversity a good thing seems self-evident to us. But, by surveying more than two centuries of scholarship, science historian David Sepkoski shows that this was not always the prevailing belief. Rather than a book discussing mass extinction, Catastrophic Thinking is more meta than that, discussing how we have been discussing mass extinction. So, we have an interesting premise, but also an interesting author because—bonus detail—the work of his father, J. John (Jack) Sepkoski Jr., was instrumental in recognizing the Big Five mass extinctions. I could not wait to get to grips with this book.

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Book review – Terrestrial Impact Structures: The TanDEM-X Atlas (2-Volume Set)

7-minute read

When Google Earth first launched in 2001, I, like many others, found myself poring over satellite imagery. Identifying familiar and unfamiliar landmarks always brought a certain thrill, and spotting craters was part of that. But to properly map impact structures, you need a better dataset. The stunningly produced Terrestrial Impact Structures is a large-format atlas that maps all currently accepted ones, plus some likely candidates, and makes for an instant must-have reference work for any geology or astronomy library.

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