The night sky has never been so fascinating as when seen through the eyes of Mike Brown, planetary astronomer at the California Institution of Technology in his book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming". Mr. Brown managed to convey the scientific actions and ideas involved in the discovery of new objects in space in such a readable style that we neither yawned nor fell asleep during the course of devouring this book. He chronicled the controversy surrounding the demotion of Pluto in a very understandable manner. He also relates the saga of astronomical tension regarding the discovery and naming of the large object now known as Haumea. His passion for his work comes through clearly and caused us to bookmark his website http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/ so that we can check back occasionally to see what future escapades he will have, confident that he will handle them with the grace and style epitomized in this book.
On another, more human level, "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" also tells the story of how entering into parenthood impacts one's life. It is amusing, and charming, to see how his scientifc mind strives to observe, document and quantify many aspects of the newborn's days and nights. Mr. Brown created a blog www.lilahbrown.com, which contains an incredible accounting of the details, both joyful and otherwise, of the beginning of a new life. Eventually the author discontinued his careful upkeep of the log, but at this writing the blog is still there for us to view. It reminds us of when we ourselves were caught up in the throes of new parenthood...and makes us giggle at his obsession in putting those details in graph form. For those of us who had trouble keeping up a simple baby book, his fatherhood blog can bring back the joy and chaos of the early days of our own offspring.
We found "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" on the New Book Shelf of our library and hereby declare it to have been a delightful discovery.
No comments:
Post a Comment