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Reflector Book Review:
Looking for Earths: The
Race to Find New Solar Systems
Category: Science of Astronomy
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Looking for Earths: The Race to Find New Solar
Systems
by Alan Boss
John Wiley & Sons
605 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10158-0012
Paperback, 256 pages, $16.95
ISBN: 0471379115
Elitist astronomers have scoffed at
the importance of studying anything as mundane as a
mere planetary system. Assigning importance or priority
to the incredible range of objects subject to astronomical
scrutiny has always been a personal and subjective exercise,
and some astronomers believe that the ultimate criterion
is size or distance — the bigger the better, the more
remote the more interesting. Nearby extra-solar planets
would fail to pass muster on either account.
But the 1995 announcement by Michel
Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory, of
the discovery of a planet around 51 Pegasi, achieved
something that had eluded astronomers for 50 years:
the magnificent discovery of an extra solar Jupiter.
Looking for Earths: The Race to Find New Solar Systems,
is a detailed account of that 50 year search in diary
form, starting with the efforts of Swarthmore College’s
Peter van de Kamp in 1963, and ending with the “Planet
of the Week” discoveries of 1998.
Alan Boss is a theoretical planetologist.
And he is better (and much more honest) than most astronomers
at describing the infighting, boredom, professional
feuds, bad donuts, and hard work that go into doing
Big (i.e. astronomically expensive) Science. While his
book is no Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, it provides
a rewarding account of how astronomers and astrophysicists
do their work. Boss includes an acronym glossary, so
you can wrap your brain around all that administrative
jargon.
Ed Flaspoehler
former Reflector Editor
Reviewed in the May 2000 issue.
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