Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

More than four thousand exoplanets, meaning planets beyond our solar system, had been discovered by March 2020. Many are of different types than our eight planets, and they exist in planetary systems of many different kinds, including binary star systems, illuminated by two different "suns." Exoplanets often are found to follow orbits quite unlike those of our local planets. These diverse circumstances are even harder to explain than the origin of the Earth and its near neighbors, a process still incompletely understood. This work is a highly mathematical textbook, drawing on many subdisciplines in physics, chemistry, and geophysics, and designed to train specialists in this complex and rapidly evolving discipline. Armitage (State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook) is an expert on computational astronomy who has written and lectured widely on planetary formation. The field is rapidly changing, with continuing discoveries and theoretical advances, justifying this second edition, and no doubt future editions to come. The book is suitable for students and professionals who are well trained in orbital and fluid dynamics, with some knowledge of other pertinent fields including physical chemistry and magnetohydrodynamics. While a rewarding read, this text is not light reading.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty; professionals.

The fourth edition of this standard work by Burke (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and colleagues Graham-Smith and Wilkinson (both, Univ. of Manchester) includes enough additional material that it is effectively a new book. As before, the first half of the text introduces technical considerations in the use of radio telescopes, interferometers, and image processing. Of great assistance in achieving an understanding of the sometimes challenging concepts is that the derivations of mathematical expressions are accompanied by scholarly explanation of the physics underlying the equations. Recognizing that there are new applications of interferometers and synthesis arrays requiring high dynamic range and image fidelity, the authors include comprehensive discussion of correlation, digitization, and modern techniques of image restoration. The book concludes with a masterful summary of the recent extraordinary advances in our knowledge of the universe and its constituents. Many of these have involved significant contributions at radio wavelengths. Finally, a potentially important feature of this edition is the associated website. Here supplemental materials provide additional background, while the site offers an opportunity to show new results, such as the observation of the shadow of the central massive black hole in the giant galaxy M87. This edition should replace previous versions as the principal reference.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty.

Professor Weinberg (physics and astronomy, Univ. of Texas at Austin) is well known as joint recipient (with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam) of the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics and a prolific author whose works include the 1972 classic Gravitation and Cosmology as well as more recent titles addressing educated lay audiences--for example, the retrospective collection Third Thoughts (CH, Feb'19, 56-2405) and two historical accounts of the development of physics (To Explain the World, CH, Aug'15, 52-6367 and The Discovery of Subatomic Particles, CH, Mar'04, 41-4104). He describes this current book as "an introduction to the more traditional nuts and bolts aspects of astrophysics: the properties of single and binary stars, the phenomena associated with interstellar matter, and the structure of galaxies." It is based on lectures delivered in 2016 and 2017. In a text that is clear and concise, and supported by analytical equations that do not require a computer to solve, Weinberg frequently offers the reader insight into the essential physical concepts by doing approximate calculations. He also provides twelve problems for the reader to attempt to solve, but it would have been helpful to include more such examples. The book is strongly recommended to libraries supporting readers at the graduate and advanced undergraduate level.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

The general educated public has heard about many key terms of modern science: "evolution," "virus," "quantum theory," and the "big bang," for example. But the framework and methodology of science are barely understood by most. This situation prompts outsiders to speak, write, and publish rash and nonsensical claims about science and its limitations. Here, Barnes (Western Sydney Univ.) and Lewis (Sydney Institute for Astronomy) inform the general reader about many fascinating aspects of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. The book is full of scientific facts and clarifying figures. More importantly, it clarifies the routes that lead to major scientific results as well as the traffic rules governing those routes. Readers will gain a more than nodding acquaintance with the basics of astrophysics, including magnetic monopoles, dark matter, the inflationary model, and related key concepts. It is unlikely that this book will silence the many anti-science and dissatisfied-with-science grumblers who will continue churning their own interpretations of the natural world. Thanks to the internet, their ideas are propagated with ease in our own times. But books like this will inform and educate those who respect science and are willing to learn about good science and how it is done. This should be required reading for all college students, regardless of their major.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Students enrolled in two-year technical programs.General readers.

Page, an experimenter who has contributed much to the field of cosmology, here superbly summarizes existing knowledge on the nature of the universe. He provides clear and accurate explanations of cosmic evolution from the origin of the universe to the present state. Understanding the text requires minimal mathematics, but the reader needs to be at ease with physics. The role of gravity, the constancy of the speed of light, the expansion of space itself, and measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are stressed, along with the less familiar concept of quantum fluctuations in "empty space," in both the early universe and that of later times (i.e., the one we inhabit at present). The book will reward a faithful reader, whether a trained astronomer who wants to bone up on cosmology or a bright high school physics student who reads above grade level. Having described the standard model of cosmology, in conclusion Page admits that "... we do not know what space is." In fact, since this book was written a new controversy has surfaced involving highly precise but conflicting measurements of the expansion of the universe. Perhaps this "little book" will inspire that young student to go out and resolve the dispute.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.