"The abyss of stars has opened is full"

Kay I looked Up . Jay was alarmed :

- What ?

- Which They Beautiful , right ?

- Who ?

- Stars . From here their It is visible badly .

Because of​ city lights . One smart Human said me that we Now on them rarely We look . I think he was right on All One hundred percent . I for a long time on them I do not look , but They Indeed ... beautiful .

Movie "People V black "

Yes, the demanding reader will forgive me, but it is precisely these phrases from the film “People in Black” that I will begin my story about the new popular-popular book of Vladimir Petrovich Reshetnikov “Why is the sky dark. How the Universe works. "

There are many quotes in the book, from ancient thinkers to the authors closer to us. But I chose from the book the one that is most consistent with our time. Reshetnikov [1] did not stint on examples of an inspired attitude to the stars, which existed in all centuries of our civilization, and, I think, earlier. He brought the words of outstanding poets and philosophers: George Byron, Seneca, Immanuel Kant and others, showing how closely science and culture are.

Vladimir Reshetnikov devoted his book to the Children's Question - why is the sky dark? But, answering him, he could not help but delve into the issues of cosmology, so the second part of the name of the book is “how the universe is arranged”.

Try to ask this not difficult, it seems, to your friends or acquaintances (it’s better to read the book) and you will understand that it is not so simple. Vladimir Reshetnikov set himself the task in an accessible form to explain a specific problem - a photometric paradox (or paradox Olbers ) or why is the night sky not flooded with the light of a huge number of stars (clusters, galaxies) of our universe?

Using only a small number of formulas, affecting the history of science, namely, the change in the views of scientists and just interested people (such as the writer Edgar of the Poe, who wrote “Euryk” - a poem about the universe) on the “cosmological question” about the night sky and completing the narrative of the modern scientific picture, the author coped with the task, composing in a small volume of the publication. It turned out so successfully that Astrophysicist Sergey Popov recommended the book “Why is the sky dark. How the Universe works ”in the list of five relevant books on astronomy and astrophysics [2].

Separately, it is worth noting that the book tells about the principle of Arnold (named after the famous Russian mathematician, academician Vladimir Arnold), formulated by the English physicist Michael Berry: if any subject or concept has a personal name, then this is not the name of the discoverer.

Vladimir Petrovich spoke about the role of a number of scientists in the development of cosmology, for various reasons unfairly forgotten by society. For example, about the model of the expanding universe of Alexander Friedman, whose priority was already recognized much later than his sudden death ... Thus, this book and tribute to many wonderful scientists who contributed to the understanding of the world around us. I really hope that even people far from astronomy, reading “why the sky is dark. How the Universe works ”will be more often selected where the lights of the city do not hide the star picture from the eyes. And admiring the treasury of the night sky will be more meaningful, with an understanding of our place in the universe. In conclusion - a few words about the format of the book. It seems to me that the concept proposed by the author-a detailed, deep, but balanced answer to a “simple question”-can be relevant in other technical and natural sciences-the field of activity of science popularizers is very wide (it is enough to recall the section of the TRV-hobby-“10 facts” [3], which today only at the very beginning of its incarnation).

1. An interview with Vladimir Reshetnikov about his book http://postnauka.ru/books/1527

2. Astrophysical books from Sergey Popov http://postnauka.ru/books/2919

3. Http://trv-science.ru/tag/10-faktov/

4. See also a review of the book by Dmitry Vibe in the Trav-Nauka No. 115 dated October 23 http://trv-science.ru/ne-tolko-dlya-starsheklassnikov/