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2Physics Quote:
"Many of the molecules found by ROSINA DFMS in the coma of comet 67P are compatible with the idea that comets delivered key molecules for prebiotic chemistry throughout the solar system and in particular to the early Earth increasing drastically the concentration of life-related chemicals by impact on a closed water body. The fact that glycine was most probably formed on dust grains in the presolar stage also makes these molecules somehow universal, which means that what happened in the solar system could probably happen elsewhere in the Universe."
-- Kathrin Altwegg and the ROSINA Team
(Read Full Article: "Glycine, an Amino Acid and Other Prebiotic Molecules in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko" )

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Physics Book Recommendation

[Category: Semi-popular]

"The First Three Minutes: A modern view of the origin of the Universe"
- Steven Weinberg
[1993 Publisher: Basic Books, NY]

Steven Weinberg won Nobel Prize in 1979 with Sheldon Glashow
and Abdus Salam for their path-breaking work on unifying
Electromagnetic and Weak Nuclear interactions in matter
[read our next posting]. He is Josey Professor of Science and
Astronomy at University of Texas at Austin.

This book came out first in 1977 and became an instant hit among
all people interested in Physics and other people who were just
wondering about this Universe and its origin but was not getting
something that could tell them this story spanning a large spectrum
of Physics topics.

Weinberg gives a frame-by-frame almost movie-like account of
what happened in those very crucial first few moments after the
Big Bang as we understand and guess from what we know or
understand from General Physics and Astrophysical observations.

This book is a great synthesis of cosmology, particle physics and
Astrophysics and tells the story in great style.

We put this in "Semi-popular" category because some exposure
to College-level Science is needed in order to fully appreciate the
greatness of the content of this classic book.


posted by Quark @ 5:38 AM     

1 Comments:

At 4:41 AM, Blogger oceanskies79 said...

Thanks for the blog. The topic of the origin of the Universe sounds interesting. What I fear though is that I may not have sufficient prior knowledge to understand the concepts through lay-man language. Perhaps you could write a short summary of this topic in lay-man language to help people like me along? Thanks.

 

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