Stuart Clark, author of our terrific book THE SUN KINGS: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began, shortlisted in 2008 for the the 2008 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books, General Prize, will begin a series of weekly popular science/astronomy Twitter chats next Tuesday, November 24. Five chats are planned for 2009, on Tuesdays beginning November 24 at 1PM EST (10AM PST, 6PM GMT).  Each week the chat will focus on a different popular astronomy topic.

Sharon Begley has a terrific piece on Newsweek.com about the just-published THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF ALBERT EINSTEIN, VOLUME 12, The Berlin Years: Correspondence: January-December 1921, edited by Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze’ev Rosenkranz, Tilman Sauer, József Illy & Virginia Iris Holmes, and the Einstein Papers Project.  You can read this piece here.

Bob Zimmerman is the author of THE UNIVERSE IN A MIRROR: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It, a terrific history of the Hubble, focusing on the people who fought for the creation of this flawed, but ultimately great space telescope. The Hubble has been in the news again lately as the Atlantic Space Shuttle is currently on a service mission for Hubble until May 22. The hope is that the service will extend the working life of Hubble until 2013, after which it will gradually shut down and eventually fall to Earth at the end of a long and distinguished career.

Bob Zimmerman has been interviewed and the book featured on Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log, which appears on the MSNBC.com site. In addition, the Astroguyz.com site has been following the mission and features a review of the book. Finally, the San Jose Mercury News did a story on some of the people involved with the mission, and Bob is featured in this article, as well.

Our resident rocket scientist Ed Belbruno and his colleague from Princeton University, Richard Gott, are searching for the origins of the moon, using a theory they’ve proposed called the “Theia hypothesis.”  The “Theia hypothesis” starts with the popular Great Impact theory of the Moon’s origin. Many astronomers hold that in the formative years of the solar system, a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. Debris from the collision, a mixture of material from both bodies, spun out into Earth orbit and coalesced into the Moon. This scenario explains many aspects of lunar geology including the size of the Moon’s core and the density and isotopic composition of moon rocks.

As NASA’s STEREO probes approach the Lagrange point, it is thought that remnants of the Mars-size protoplanet remain here.  Read all about this potentially-explosive discovery here on NASA’s webpage.

To read more about the fascinating science of space travel and the career of a mathematician at work in space exploration, read Belbruno’s captivating book FLY ME TO THE MOON: An Insider’s Guide to the New Science of Space Travel.

If you have any questions for Ed, leave them here and he’ll answer!

I’m pleased to introduce a new semi-monthly column by writer, physicist, and Princeton University lecturer Tony Rothman.  His most recent book, with Fukagawa Hidetoshi, is called SACRED MATHEMATICS: Japanese Temple Geometry.  Please enjoy his inaugural post!

“Do The Math”

Tony Rothman

The word “metaphysics” derives from the Greek meta ta physika. It was originally used by Aristotle’s Hellenistic editors merely to refer to his books that came after the books on physika—the things of nature. Thus “metaphysics”—after the things of nature. In this series I do not intend primarily to discuss the things of nature, the latest and most dazzling scientific discoveries, trends and fashions. I would like instead to explore how our world looks through the eyes of a professional physicist, one trained in mathematics and steeped in analytical habits. My particular area of expertise is cosmology, the study of the early universe, but like any physical scientist I value facts and data over opinion, pay close attention to the logic of an argument and show an appreciation for a carefully designed experiment or an elegant mathematical demonstration. To those of us raised in the scientific community such an outlook seems reasonable. When we listen to the news, we learn we do not think much like journalists, talk show hosts or politicians. Sometimes we wonder whether we are space aliens.