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If the cosmos is vast, says astrophysicist
Trinh Xuan Thuan, it is by no means silent. Nature, he writes,
"delights in continuously sending us her notes of music."
Like some far-off orchestra, it tantalizes us with fragments
of a symphony, but the melody linking the bits and snatches
of song is missing. The task of science is to unravel the
secrets of that hidden melody, so that we can listen to
the composition in all its glory.
In The Secret Melody, Trinh Xuan
Thuan examines our many attempts to capture the music of
nature and hear the cosmic fugue. First, as prelude, he
describes the many other cosmologies that preceded the modern
Bog Bang theory of creation -- the magical universe of cavemen,
the ancient Chinese idea of the universe (which Thuan compares
to a gigantic bureaucracy), the mathematical universe introduced
by Pythagoras, and the heliocentric universe of Copernicus
-- and he explores the work of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and
other early scientists. He then describes in a clear, vivid,
and poetic language our current understanding of the cosmos,
painting a sharp picture of how modern astronomers study
the universe, the equipment they use, the most prominent
scientists, and the major discoveries. A mind-boggling portrait
of the cosmos emerges in these pages. We read, for instance,
of the incredible size of our own galaxy, the Milky Way,
which is some 90,000 light-years in diameter, with several
hundred billion stars orbiting its center. More amazing,
we discover we live in a universe where stars, like human
beings, are born, live, and die, leaving behind such strange
and exotic objects as neutron stars and black holes; where
time may expand and space may contract; and where billions
of galaxies have sprung from a tiny primordial speck that
was infinitely smaller than a hydrogen atom in a gigantic
explosion, the Big Bang. And, of course, any examination
of the origin and nature of the universe inevitably raises
philosophical and religious questions, and Thuan examines
these issues as well, presenting a provocative case for
the anthropic principle (which argues that the universe
has been fine-tuned to an extreme precision to produce living
creatures with consciousness and intelligence) and illuminating
the place of God in a Big Bang cosmology.
Here then is an intriguing look at modern
cosmology, blending up-to-the-minute descriptions of the
forefront of astronomy with thoughtful reflections on science's
possible impact on philosophical and religious belief. With
many beautiful and informative illustrations, The Secret
Melody is an enthralling look at our endless efforts
to understand the cosmos and to hear the music of the stars.
Trinh Xuan Thuan is Professor of Astronomy
at the University of Virginia. The Secret Melody
first appeared in France, where it was a major bestseller
and where Thuan is widely known for his popular science
books and television appearances. In fact, he has been sometimes
called "the french Carl Sagan."
Original text translated from the French
by Storm Dunlop and subsequently revised and updated by
the author.
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