Peter Tillett: Consider the Heavens

By MARGIE THOMSON

Maybe you're the kind of person who can easily grasp the concepts of astronomy. Me, I'm with cosmologist Paul Davies, who said: "I believe that the reality exposed by modern physics is fundamentally alien to the human mind, and defies all power of direct visualisation."

However, writers as good as Peter Tillett are probably our best hope of understanding what goes on in those unimaginable distances above and around us. From light years, to black holes ("if humans ever get to travel among the stars in spaceships, the black holes will lie in wait unseen, to draw them into oblivion, just as reefs hidden under the sea lie in wait to wreck ocean-going ships"), to the use of stars for navigation, the Moon's influence on our calendar and the measurement of time, through to literature and music inspired by the stars, and astronomy's impact on religion: it's all here. Tillett teaches not just with facts and theories but also by anecdote, and somehow he makes it all come alive.

New Holland Press

$39.95