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Kelvin and the Age of the Universe

By Yuri Heymann

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An interesting collection of essays surrounding the universe and the math and physics behind it that's worth checking out.

Synopsis

This booklet is a compilation of texts from the author covering a variety of themes as the cosmic-distance duality, the cosmological ladder, quantum electrodynamics, the connection between Bohr model and Larmor formula, the ladder to the hypersphere, the connection between the cosmic horizon and Bohr radius, ring theory, etc.

Among the key characters of the narrative, Euclid presents his axioms of geometry with dots and lines traced on a tablet of clay, the wish list exhausted by Aristotle during one of his travels. As Icarus was In love, he constructed wings from feathers and wax in hope to fly and reach Venus. The temperature of the Sun was so hot that it caused the wax to melt leaving Icarus deprived of his feathers and ornaments in love of Venus.

An early cataclysm caused by the fall of a meteor or an eyeball from the sky, also referred to as the third eye of Shiva in Hindu mythology, happened not far away, as the battle roars when king of Aššuria was expanding his Kingdom. Sopdet deity of Sirius is dedicated to the bounty of the harvest indicating the annual flood of the Nile river, and guiding the lost souls at sea..

This is less of a cohesive and continuous book and more a series of mathematical and scientific essays aimed at understanding the universe. Do I understand any of it? Not really. The science and calculations flew right over my head, but it was something quite interesting from the prospect of an amateur hobbyist looking to learn more about the universe.

 

Just about the only part I understood was the first essay, and that was more because it was a field of interest I used to be involved in. However, that didn’t stop me from actually enjoying the book. I liked seeing the equations graphed out in a way that I could sort of understand, and the author tied in the history of the physics he was exploring with, well, the physics he was exploring.

 

It was also really well-written and comprehensible to me, for the most part. Where I couldn’t understand something, it was because mathematical and physical jargon was unavoidable. Otherwise, the author kept it simple and as straightforward as he possibly could. This was a definite benefit for the book, given that it’s designed more as a text for advanced study than anything else.

 

That being said, I do wish that it was divided more evenly or even split into two books. Where I could see how some essays were related, I couldn’t really say that for others, and it really cut into my reading experience. A better organisational flow would have greatly benefitted the author in producing a work that was more comprehensible and accessible.

 

However, I do think students of both math and physics will find some use in this. Basic concepts are explained well and mapped out visually, not to mention the pictures at the beginning of the book serving to illustrate the history behind the field just as well. As such, it could come in handy for research purposes. There’s definitely a use for it.


Reviewed by

A lifelong reader, I've decided to share my opinions, my likes and my loves with the world. Fantasy and science fiction have long been passions of mine, but so has bringing minority voices to the forefront.

Synopsis

This booklet is a compilation of texts from the author covering a variety of themes as the cosmic-distance duality, the cosmological ladder, quantum electrodynamics, the connection between Bohr model and Larmor formula, the ladder to the hypersphere, the connection between the cosmic horizon and Bohr radius, ring theory, etc.

Among the key characters of the narrative, Euclid presents his axioms of geometry with dots and lines traced on a tablet of clay, the wish list exhausted by Aristotle during one of his travels. As Icarus was In love, he constructed wings from feathers and wax in hope to fly and reach Venus. The temperature of the Sun was so hot that it caused the wax to melt leaving Icarus deprived of his feathers and ornaments in love of Venus.

An early cataclysm caused by the fall of a meteor or an eyeball from the sky, also referred to as the third eye of Shiva in Hindu mythology, happened not far away, as the battle roars when king of Aššuria was expanding his Kingdom. Sopdet deity of Sirius is dedicated to the bounty of the harvest indicating the annual flood of the Nile river, and guiding the lost souls at sea..

Ancient Astronomy

Since the dawn of time, the sky, the stars, the Sun, the Moon and planetary motions marked the seasons and important events for mankind in relation to agriculture, celebrations, rituals and for geolocation. Such records having a relation with astronomical observations are found in various regions of the globe, either in archaeological sites, temples, or by such written forms. For instance, the Stone Age is referring to a prehistoric time, in which ancestors built monuments out of large stones. The Stonehenge, a Neolithic site of about 3,000 BC in Wiltshire, England consists of such stones disposed on the floor, which are aligned in the direction of the sunrise of the summer solstice and the sunset of the winter solstice. The lack of written records from that epoch is what makes archeoastronomy the science of stars and stones, see [5]. As an example, the precession of the Earth’s axis is completing over cyclical patterns of different time scales affecting images of the sky in the past. This was in winter 1863-64, when Lord Kelvin was lecturing at the Glasgow University that he estimated an age of Earth of a hundred million years from a model built on the geothermal gradient and thermal diffusivity of Earth’s crust [2]. While Kelvin estimate was away from the 6,000 years in the Bible, the latter remains the consensus for the time scale of early mankind civilisations uncovered by archaeological records, as part of the Holocene period. The mineral age of Earth itself is about 4.53 billion years, from radioactive decay of isotopes in zircon and similar techniques applied to remnant fossils such as cyanobacteria and stromatolites of the Archean, e.g. [13]. Nonetheless, archeoastronomy is part of some common heritage, reminding us of the short time scale of post-modern dynasties relative to Earth. The aim of the present text is to provide some context in relation to scientific works in the field of astronomy and related topics through narrations taking place in a range of civilisations, periods and regions such as the Mayan in South America, Indian, Chinese, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Islamic, medieval and septentrional, of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. 

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About the author

Yuri Heymann was born in 1974 and studied engineering in Switzerland and the United States. He his now working as a professional software engineer. view profile

Published on April 21, 2022

50000 words

Genre:Earth, Space, & Environmental Sciences

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