The X-Ray Universe Reprint 2014 Edition Contributor(s): Tucker, Wallace (Author), Giacconi, Riccardo (Author) |
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ISBN: 0674594436 ISBN-13: 9780674594432 Publisher: Harvard University Press OUR PRICE: $61.75 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: February 1985 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Nature | Star Observation - Science | Physics - Astrophysics |
Dewey: 522.686 |
Series: Harvard Books on Astronomy |
Physical Information: 0.75" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.31 lbs) 209 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Beyond the range of optical perception--and of ordinary imaginings--a new and violent universe lay undetected until the advent of space exploration. Supernovae, black holes, quasars and pulsars--these were the secrets of the highenergy world revealed when, for the first time, astronomers attached their instruments to rockets and lofted them beyond the earth's x-ray-absorbing atmosphere. "The X-Ray Universe" is the story of these explorations and the fantastic new science they brought into being. It is a first-hand account: Riccardo Giacconi is one of the principal pioneers of the field, and Wallace Tucker is a theorist who worked closely with him at many critical periods. The book carries the reader from the early days of the Naval Research Laboratory through the era of V-2 rocketry, Sputnik, and the birth of NASA, to the launching of the Einstein X-Ray Observatory. But this is by no means just a history. Behind the suspenseful, sometimes humorous details of human personality grappling with high technology lies a sophisticated exposition of current cosmology and astrophysics, from the rise and fall of the steady-state theory to the search for the missing mass of the universe. |