Not only for high school students

Probably, in one form or another, any person who decided to popularize astronomy came across this: in order to convey the right thought to an unprepared audience, the story has to start very from afar. Indeed, how can you explain the structure of spiral sleeves to a person who does not know what the galaxy is? And the conversation about the galaxy immediately and inevitably leads to ancient Greek mythology.

The very historical approach seems as true as possible to me. For in astronomy, as in any other science, it is important to show not only the result, but also the long path that he led to it - due to the extreme indirectness of almost all available evidence. It was the historical approach to the presentation that the authors of both books were chosen. The selected topic - exoplanets in the first case and the Olbers paradox in the second - is largely used by them as an occasion to talk about astronomy from a more general point of view.

About the book by V.G. Surdin "Intelligence of distant planets" is enough to say only that this is the book of V.G. Surdin, and no reviews are no longer required. He is a recognized master of the popularization of astronomy, and I have long been obligatory for myself to have all his books on the book shelf, at least in order to steal metaphors and little -known facts for lectures from there.

However, the task of the reviewer is to find disadvantages, not advantages. The book has a drawback - this is its name. Neither it nor even the abstract gives a complete idea of ​​the content. The circle of issues considered in the book is very wide. Summing up the story to distant planets, the author tells not only about the history of the study of the planets, but also about telescopes, and about the system of astronomical designations, and about astroblimat ... In fact, the book can be safely recommended as the first Books on astronomy. Until I judged the content of “intelligence of distant planets” only by name, such a thought did not occur to me. Now that they will ask me what I need to read to get acquainted with modern astronomy, I will call this book one of the first.

V.P. Reshetnikov also begins his book “Why the Sky Dark” with historical introduction, and in this case, it is probably even more necessary. For some reason, cosmology makes some people feel that the problems of the evolution of the Universe are formulated only yesterday and therefore no one has tried to resolve them yet-they will be the first. The paradox of Olbers is one of these problems. The book “Why the Sky is dark” clearly makes it clear: all the “trivial” methods for resolving a photometric paradox have long been considered and rejected not because the power in the world has seized the race of relativists, but because all these methods are contrary to observant data.

And this book, if necessary, is not limited only by a photometric paradox. It also addresses numerous related issues (hence the subtitle “how the universe is arranged”), although the degree of “concentration” to the main topic is higher. This book can be advised as the first book on cosmology. So, now it is necessary to complain about something here ... In order to revive the narrative (already quite fascinating), the author in some places “dilutes” it with lyrical digressions. In a couple of places, they seemed to me somewhat prolonged. Although, on the other hand, it is precisely such deviations that best characterize science as a living process, and not as a set of dogmas.

And one more - sad - comment. In the annotations of both books, high school students are indicated as the main target audience. Practice shows that both books, despite their initial level, will not be completely superfluous in the library of high-year physicists, and in the library of many astronomers graduate students ...

Dmitry Vibe,
Astrophysicist, doct. physical. science, leading researcher,
Head. Department of Physics and Evolution of Stars of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences