Origin and Evolution of the Universe. Группа авторов
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Название: Origin and Evolution of the Universe
Автор: Группа авторов
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Физика
isbn: 9789811206474
isbn:
In addition, since 1996, the importance of these big themes of science to non-scientists has arguably grown even larger. Scientific research is now depending on public support for even larger amounts of funding than ever before. Many specific successful examples appear throughout the chapters in this book. Scientific results from the European Space Agency’s Planck and Newton/XMM satellites are described in Chapters 1 and 4. New exoplanet discoveries from NASA’s Kepler satellite are described in Chapter 6. And further scientific breakthroughs from the multi-national collaborations to build and operate the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as ALMA — a giant array of radio telesopes located in northern Chile — are described in Chapters 2 and 5. We are already anticipating comparable publicly-funded advances in astronomy with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2021.
One broader point should be clear to readers of this Second Edition. In the entire Universe, Earth’s biosphere remains the only home of life that we know of. Whether or not we are prepared for it, we humans have thus inherited a tremendous responsibility as Earth’s stewards.
As in 1996, many people today regard the climax of the evolution of the Universe to be life, and especially “intelligent” life. It remains an open question whether or not this will be enough. “Intelligence” makes our technology possible, but it should be much more. Are we truly “intelligent”, or only “technological”? Human intelligence notwithstanding, we often seem to be our own worst enemy. Our rapid technical advances have often not been matched by comparable improvements in our ability to get along with each other and our environment. Using our full human intelligence is our best hope for the future. Our species will have to be smarter — and act smarter. Our success or failure at solving our problems in managing our uniquely precious planet provide the sharpest test yet of real human intelligence. If we can pass this test, then we may also be able to answer the outstanding future questions explored and raised in this book.
Matthew Malkan and Benjamin Zuckerman
UCLA
Editors
Matthew Malkan
Matthew Malkan is a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. After graduating Harvard with summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors, Dr. Matthew Malkan studied at the University of Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar. He received his PhD from Caltech on a Hertz Fellowship, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Arizona. Upon starting his Assistant Professorship at UCLA, Dr. Malkan was a Presidential Young Investigator from 1986 to 1991. He has been Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA since 1992. In 2009, Malkan was the AMC-FUMEC Distinguished Visiting Professor in Mexico. He has published over 450 refereed articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has worked extensively on astronomy-related film and television shows, behind and in front of the camera. Malkan uses a wide range of telescopes in space and on the ground to study the evolution of galaxies and their massive black holes.
Ben Zuckerman
Ben Zuckerman is a Professor in the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy at UCLA. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT and Harvard. His major scientific interests have been the birth and death of stars and planetary systems. He has maintained a continuing interest in the question of the prevalence of life — especially intelligent life — in the Universe and, beginning way back in the mid-1970s, developed and regularly taught a course on “Life in the Universe”. He also developed and taught a UCLA Honors course entitled “The 21st Century: Society, Environment, Ethics”. He believes that while our species (Homo sapiens) may be considered to be “technological”, because we are destroying our home — Earth’s biosphere — we cannot be considered to be “intelligent”. Zuckerman has co-edited six books including, Extraterrestrials, Where Are They? (Cambridge University Press) and Human Population and the Environmental Crisis (Jones & Bartlett).
Authors
Edward L. Wright
Edward L. Wright has been a professor at UCLA since 1981. Wright works in infrared astronomy and cosmology. As an interdisciplinary scientist on the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) Science Working Group, Wright has worked on the SIRTF project (renamed the Spitzer Space Telescope) since 1976. He was an active member of the teams working on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) since 1978. Wright is the principal investigator of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) project. Wright is also a member of the science team on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which launched in June 2001. Prof. Wright was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2011. Wright was named the Distinguished Scientist of the Year, in 1995 by the Center for the Study of the Evolution and Origin of Life. In 1992 he received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his work on COBE, and NASA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, in 2018. He received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as part of the WMAP team in December 2017.
Alan Dressler
Dressler is Astronomer Emeritus at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, in Pasadena, California. Dressler’s principal area of research is the formation and evolution of galaxies. He makes observations with large ground- and space-based telescopes — imaging and spectroscopy, to study the morphological types, structures, stars, and kinematics of galaxies. Dressler investigates galaxy evolution as it happened — by observing galaxies so distant that they are seen as they appeared billions of years ago. A principal direction of his research has been the charting of the diverse histories of star formation in galaxies, a strong constraint on theoretical models of how such structures have developed over cosmic time. Dressler has been an active member of the astronomical community and has served on and chaired many committees, for NSF, NASA, and the National Academy of Sciences, that make recommendations on future facilities like the James Webb Space Telescope and the next generation extremely large telescopes. He is an experienced and passionate promoter and popularizer of science and has written many magazine articles and a book, “Voyage to the Great Attractor: Exploring Extragalactic Space” that puts our studies of the universe in the broader context of humanity’s place in the natural world.
Virginia Trimble
Virginia Trimble is a native Californian and graduate of Hollywood High School, UCLA, and Caltech (PhD 1968) with honorary degrees from the Universities of Cambridge UK (MA 1969) and Valencia Spain (Dott. h.c. 2010). She is the oldest faculty member in physics and astronomy of the University of California, Irvine still on full active duty (having been the youngest in 1971, the only woman and the only СКАЧАТЬ