Review of 'The Hunt for Vulcan : . . . and How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
One way to think of this is as a biography of the planet Vulcan, zeroth planet in our solar system.
It was born in an 1859 paper by Le Verrier (who discovered Neptune using only mathematics and astronomical observations of Uranus) as the story behind Mercury's perihelion advance. It's troubled childhood include hiding from astronomers and a claimed sighting by French physician and amateur astronomer Edmond Lescarbault. After being declared missing (and presumed dead) in 1878, the scientific community basically ignored the discrepancy in Sir Isaac Newton's system of the world until finally Albert Einstein came along to declare that poor Vulcan had never existed.
That discrepancy between Newtonian orbital mechanics and one described by the general theory of relativity are the focus of this short book, which also delves into the stories of the men involved. No serious math is required, though I felt the author rushed through the …
One way to think of this is as a biography of the planet Vulcan, zeroth planet in our solar system.
It was born in an 1859 paper by Le Verrier (who discovered Neptune using only mathematics and astronomical observations of Uranus) as the story behind Mercury's perihelion advance. It's troubled childhood include hiding from astronomers and a claimed sighting by French physician and amateur astronomer Edmond Lescarbault. After being declared missing (and presumed dead) in 1878, the scientific community basically ignored the discrepancy in Sir Isaac Newton's system of the world until finally Albert Einstein came along to declare that poor Vulcan had never existed.
That discrepancy between Newtonian orbital mechanics and one described by the general theory of relativity are the focus of this short book, which also delves into the stories of the men involved. No serious math is required, though I felt the author rushed through the explanation of the change in distance / time required in a gravity field. It took Einstein years to make the math for this come out right - I expect a few more pages in a book for the layman.
If most of the terms in this review are familiar to you, I think you will enjoy this fairly quick read.