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The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way cover

The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way

Ken Croswell

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awards won

3

score

#3260 of 3,809 books · #438 in Science & Technology

Shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology (1995).

The Alchemy of the Heavens offers an exciting and accessible survey of what we know about our galaxy. The home of the earth, the sun, and countless other stars, the Milky Way has long been an object of human fascination, but it's been in the last forty years that astronomers and astrophysicists have made the most startling discoveries about our galaxy. Author Ken Croswell reveals that the Milky Way formed as many earlier galaxies collapsed and smashed together; that many of the elements in the galaxy--including the iron and carbon that course through our bodies--were born in exploding supernovae; that in all likelihood there is a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy, with a million times more mass than the sun, and that the Milky Way's oldest stars preserve the elements created in the big bang, thereby serving as "fossils" of the universe's earliest days. A captivating journey through the modern astronomy of the Milky Way, Croswell shows us how a deeper understanding of the nature and working of the galaxy can offer larger clues into the origins of the universe itself.

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Publisher
National Geographic Books
ISBN-13
9780385472142
Topics
Milky Way galaxyAstronomy and astrophysicsOrigins of the universe

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