Product Description

With the discovery in 1995 of the first planet orbiting another star, we know that planets are not unique to our own Solar System. For centuries, humanity has wondered whether we are alone in the Universe. We are now finally one step closer to knowing the answer. The quest for exoplanets is an exciting one, because it holds the possibility that one day we might find life elsewhere in the Universe, born in the light of another sun. Written from the perspective of one of the pioneers of this scientific adventure, this exciting account describes the development of the modern observing technique that has enabled astronomers to find so many planets orbiting around other stars. It reveals the wealth of new planets that have now been discovered outside our Solar System, and what this means in terms of finding other life in the Universe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #557906 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-25
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 260 pages

Review
‘Mayor and Frei present an account of this remarkable transformation that is personal, comprehensive and at all times understandable.’ Nature

‘Find a space on your bookshelf for this one.’ Astronomy Now

‘… an inspiring account of one of the most exciting fields of modern astronomy and therefore thoroughly recommended to anyone with the slightest interest in the possibility of life elsewhere in the Galaxy.’ The Observatory

About the Author
Michel Mayor is Director of the Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland. In 1995, together with Didier Queloz, he discovered the first extrasolar planet (51 Peg b) around a main sequence star, and has discovered many more since. His work earned him the prestigious Balzan Prize in 2000, for Instrumentation and Techniques in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Pierre-Yves Frei is a science journalist with the Swiss newspaper, Lausanne Hebdo. In 1998 he was awarded the Media Prize of the Swiss Natural Sciences Academy for science popularisation.

Customer Reviews

Lively account by a main player in the field
Michel Mayor's claim to astronomical immortality is that he is the co-discoverer of the first confirmed planet orbiting a Sun-like star other than the Sun itself. Consequently, this lively account of the discovery and properties of extrasolar planets is a partially first-person narrative and gives a real insider's view. There are some interesting insights to be had as a result - I had never realised how important Roger Griffin (author of countless indistinguishable papers on spectroscopic binary stars in Observatory magazine) was to the development of the high-precision spectroscopy techniques used by Mayor and rival groups in planet searches. This sort of personal touch lifts the book above the many other "discovery of exoplanets" titles to be found in the popular astronomy literature. The book also has the advantage of being written slightly later than the rash of books which came out immediately following Mayor and Queloz's discovery, and therefore has a clearer view of the properties of exoplanets (for example, Ken Croswell's Planet Quest, while a fine and thoroughly researched book, was written when we had discovered only a handful of planets, and so cannot say much about the general properties of the breed). It's not a long book, but has enough detail to make its explanations clear to the non-specialist and is pitched at the right level for a popular account.

Downsides? Well, in this fast-moving field some sections are already outdated, despite the book's comparative youth: in particular, the chapter on future space missions makes sad reading, with several of the missions discussed either cancelled (Eddington) or failed (Beagle 2), and most of the others suffering from the usual space-mission schedule creep. The last section on prospects for life is pedestrian compared to the rest of the book - this is not his field of speciality, and the personal insights are missing. I guess he felt he had to cover this material, because his readers would expect it, but there's nothing here that you won't find equally well discussed elsewhere.

The main fault, as far as I'm concerned, is that Mayor is let down by his translator. I don't think Boud Roukema is a native English speaker, and that's always a mistake - when translating, it's essential that you have a complete command of the language you're translating INTO, otherwise the result won't sound natural. And this doesn't. The most obvious and (to anyone with some interest in astronomy, which is anyone likely to read this book) annoying fault is that he has not properly translated any of the proper names. In English, the Latin constellation names are correctly inflected for star names: star 51 in the constellation Pegasus is 51 Pegasi. In this book this is rendered "51 Pegasus" - it's just wrong, and it looks wrong. I think in French there is a tendency to translate the constellation names from Latin to French, which obviously loses the inflections: Roukema knows English doesn't do this (we talk about Taurus and Virgo, not the Bull and the Virgin), but he doesn't know what English does instead. For a translator of an astronomy book, this is a bit of a problem! There are also some wordings which I'm sure sound better in French than in English, and should have been "naturalised": Mayor uses nationalities a lot, so you get "The German's contribution..." or "the Briton's approach". Again, this just sounds wrong: it is probably literally what Mayor wrote, but a competent translator would have made adjustments. There's even the odd wrong word - I'm really not sure what the original French was that got rendered as "primordial discovery" ("original"? "initial"? "critical"? "pre-eminent"?), but certainly "primordial" makes no sense. My own French is very rusty (an 'A' in Higher French circa 1975), but I could have done a better translation than this. How much it interferes with your enjoyment depends very much on how sensitive you are to niceties of language - I know I'm a bit of a fusspot in this respect - but really the book deserved better from a reputable publisher.

So, summary: fine book, shame about the translation. If you read French, I'm sure you should get the original!