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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Popular astronomy
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Many Skies - Alternative Histories of the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars (Paperback, First Paperback Edition)
Loot Price: R937
Discovery Miles 9 370
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Many Skies - Alternative Histories of the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars (Paperback, First Paperback Edition)
Expected to ship within 18 - 22 working days
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What if Earth had several moons or massive rings like Saturn? What
if the Sun were but one star in a double-star or triple-star
system? What if Earth were the only planet circling the Sun? These
and other imaginative scenarios are the subject of Arthur Upgren's
inventive book Many Skies: Alternative Histories of the Sun, Moon,
Planets, and Stars. Although the night sky as we know it seems
eternal and inevitable, Upgren reminds us that, just as easily, it
could have been very different. Had the solar system happened to be
in the midst of a star cluster, we might have many more bright
stars in the sky. Yet had it been located beyond the edge of the
Milky Way galaxy, we might have no stars at all. If Venus or Mars
had a moon as large as ours, we would be able to view it easily
with the unaided eye. Given these or other alternative skies, what
might Ptolemy or Copernicus have concluded about the center of the
solar system and the Sun? This book not only examines the changes
in science that these alternative solar, stellar, and galactic
arrangements would have brought, it also explores the different
theologies, astrologies, and methods of tracking time that would
have developed to reflect them. Our perception of our surroundings,
the number of gods we worship, the symbols we use in art and
literature, even the way we form nations and empires are all
closely tied to our particular (and accidental) placement in the
universe. Many Skies, however, is not merely a fanciful play on
what might have been. Upgren also explores the actual ways that
human interference's such as light pollution are changing the night
sky. Our atmosphere, he warns, will appear very different if we
have a belt of debris circling the globe and blotting out the
stars, as will happen if advertisers one day pollute space with
brilliant satellites displaying their products. From fanciful to
foreboding, the scenarios in Many Skies will both delight and
inspire reflection, reminding us that ours is but one of many world
views based on our experience of a universe that is as much a
product of accident as it is of intention.
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