Joshua N Winn
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Princeton University Press
Language
English
Description
"The first detection in 1995 of a planet orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system marked the dawn of a new age of discovery-one that has rapidly transformed astronomy and our broader understanding of our place in the universe. Nearly five thousand exoplanets have been identified since then, with the pace of discovery only accelerating following the launch of missions like NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey and others to come. We...
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English
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Joshua Winn is professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University and a coinvestigator in NASA's ongoing Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission.
In this audiobook, astrophysicist Joshua Winn provides an accessible introduction to exoplanets and explains the cutting-edge science behind recent discoveries
For centuries, people have speculated about the possibility of planets orbiting distant stars, but only since the 1990s has technology...
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Look inside a star that weighs several solar masses to chart its demise after fusing all possible nuclear fuel. Such stars end in a gigantic explosion called a supernova, blowing off outer material and producing a super-compact neutron star, a billion times denser than a white dwarf. Study the rapid spin of neutron stars and the energy they send beaming across the cosmos.
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Survey representative planets in our solar system with an astrophysicist's eyes, asking what makes Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Jupiter so different. Why doesn't Mercury have an atmosphere? Why is Venus so much hotter than Earth? Why is Jupiter so huge? Analyze these and other riddles with the help of physical principles such as the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
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Use your analytical skill and knowledge of gravity to probe the strange properties of black holes. Learn to calculate the Schwarzschild radius (also known as the event horizon), which is the boundary beyond which no light can escape. Determine the size of the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy and learn about an effort to image its event horizon with a network of radio telescopes.
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Define the difference between astrophysics and astronomy. Then study the vast range of scales in astrophysics - from nanometers to gigaparsecs, from individual photons to the radiation of suns. Get the big picture in a breathtaking series of exponential jumps - zooming from Earth, past the planets, stars, galaxies, and finally taking in countless clusters of galaxies.
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Trace stellar evolution from two points of view. First, dive into a protostar and witness events unfold as the star begins to contract and fuse hydrogen. Exhausting that, it fuses heavier elements and eventually collapses into a white dwarf - or something even denser. Next, view this story from the outside, seeing how stellar evolution looks to observers studying stars with telescopes.
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Discover how astrophysicists map the universe. Focus on the tricky problem of calculating distances, seeing how a collection of overlapping techniques provide a "cosmic distance ladder" that works from nearby planets (by means of radar) to stars and galaxies (using parallax and Cepheid variable stars) to far distant galaxies (by observing a type of supernova with a standard intrinsic brightness).
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Starting with the spectrum of sunlight, notice that thin, dark lines are present at certain wavelengths. These lines reveal the composition and temperature of the Sun's outer atmosphere, and similar lines characterize other stars. More diffuse phenomena such as nebulae produce bright emission lines against a dark spectrum. Probe the quantum and thermodynamic events implied by these clues.
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Take stock of the wide range of stellar luminosities, temperatures, masses, and radii using spectra and other data. In the process, construct the celebrated Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, with its main sequence of stars in the prime of life, including the Sun. Note that two out of three stars have companions. Investigate the orbital dynamics of these binary systems.
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Continue your exploration of motion by discovering the law of gravity just as Newton might have - by analyzing Kepler's laws with the aid of calculus (which Newton invented for the purpose). Look at a graphical method for understanding orbits, and consider the conservation laws of angular momentum and energy in light of Emmy Noether's theory that links conservation laws and symmetry.
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Why are the rings around Saturn and the much fainter rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune at roughly the same relative distances from the planet? Why are large moons spherical? And why are large moons only found in wide orbits? These problems lead to an analysis of tidal forces and the Roche limit. Close by calculating the density of the Sun based on Earth's ocean tides.
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After touring the universe on a macro scale in the previous episode, now zoom in on the microcosmos - advancing by powers of ten into the realm of molecules, atoms, and nuclei. Learn why elementary particles are just as central to astrophysics as stars and galaxies. Then review the four fundamental forces of nature and perform a calculation that explains why atoms have to be the size they are.
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Embark on Professor Winn's specialty: extrasolar planets, also known as exoplanets. Calculate the extreme difficulty of observing an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star in our stellar neighborhood. Then look at the clever techniques that can now overcome this obstacle. Review the surprising characteristics of many exoplanets and focus on five that are especially noteworthy.
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Discover the fate of solar mass stars after they exhaust their nuclear fuel. The galaxies are teeming with these dim "white dwarfs" that pack the mass of the Sun into a sphere roughly the size of Earth. Venture into quantum theory to understand what keeps these exotic stars from collapsing into black holes, and learn about the Chandrasekhar limit, which determines a white dwarf's maximum mass.
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The Big Bang theory is one pillar of modern cosmology. Another is the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the faint "echo" of the Big Bang, permeating all of space and discovered in 1965. The third pillar is the cosmic abundances of the lightest elements, which tell the story of the earliest moment of nucleosynthesis taking place in the first few minutes of the Big Bang.
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Get a crash course in nuclear physics as you explore what makes stars shine. Zero in on the Sun, working out the mass it has consumed through nuclear fusion during its 4.5-billion-year history. While it's natural to picture the Sun as a giant furnace of nuclear bombs going off non-stop, calculations show it's more like a collection of toasters; the Sun is luminous simply because it's so big.
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Take in our entire galaxy, called the Milky Way. Locate Earth's position; then survey other galaxies, classifying their structure. Use the virial theorem to analyze a typical galaxy, which can be thought of as a "collisionless gas" of stars. Note that galaxies themselves often collide with each other, as the nearby Andromeda Galaxy is destined to do with the Milky Way billions of years from now.
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Non-visible wavelengths compose by far the largest part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Even so, many astronomers assumed there was nothing to see in these bands. The invention of radio and X-ray telescopes proved them spectacularly wrong. Examine the challenges of detecting and focusing radio and X-ray light, and the dazzling astronomical phenomena that radiate in these wavelengths.
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Learn how stars work by delving into stellar structure, using the Sun as a model. Relying on several physical principles and sticking to order-of-magnitude calculations, determine the pressure and temperature at the center of the Sun, and the time it takes for energy generated in the interior to reach the surface, which amounts to thousands of years. Apply your conclusions to other stars.