Dana Mackenzie

This is an informative and compelling book about the origins of our moon, yet it can stand on its own as a work on science. Its ability to offer the big picture as well as technical questions is probably what makes it so interesting to laymen like myself. But it has a distinctive stamp when compared to a great work that has become the gold standard in popular astronomy, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." Overall, the two books probably have more in common than not. And "The Big Splat" does share Sagan's show more great theme of science as a self-correcting project with a long history, one characterized both by truth and errors. But science is painted a little differently here. In Carl Sagan's works, unmanned exploration of space comes across as the chief scientific success of the space program, and Sagan himself was a critic of manned space flights. In "The Big Splat," it is the Apollo landing on the moon that shines as the pinnacle of scientific gain. The moon rocks returned to Earth, culled on the lunar surface by astronauts trained in what to look for, told scientists that old theories about the moon's formation were untenable, and provided the key to the new and widely accepted theory. The rocks did something very similar for theories about the origin of craters.

Moreover, the sheer size and visibility of the Apollo program revived lunar science when it had fallen out of favor with the scientific mainstream and was ebbing.

If the philosophy behind "Cosmos" has become the new, mainstream view of science, "The Big Splat" differs from it in at least one more important way. It does not rely greatly on the common theme of science-versus-religion (though that theme does appear). Science is presented as having its own fashions and dogmas, such as the onetime disinclination to take lunar science seriously, and the widespread prejudice against theories proposing large-scale impacts. The chief prejudice is one against lifeless planets: in the author's words, scientists as well as laymen had always proposed that there was life on the moon because "it was just too hard for the human intellect to grasp a place that was utterly devoid of life."

In Carl Sagan's works, the greatest challenge to the human mind, and the largest opportunity to extend human knowledge, is said to be the possible discovery, by science, of extraterrestrial life. In this book, what is hardest for the human intellect to comprehend is not extraterrestrial life but instead lifelessness: the discovery by Apollo that the moon was and always had been a lifeless body. show less

I'm not a humongous fan of reading Non-Fiction for pleasure. Non-Fic is to be studied and used in my own creations via notes etc. (or in the past, studied and tests taken on the subjects). That said, when I saw the author, Dana Mackenzie on the TV Show "The Universe" talking about this 'new' theory (hey, it was new to me) that the moon, our moon, was created by a 'great impact', it intrigued me. I realized that I had never really thought about how the moon came to be. I have no doubt that at show more some point in school we learned something about it, but for the life of me I can't remember when, or which theory we learned.

The Big Splat is basically split into four sections. One for each theory. Coaccretion, i.e. the Moon and Earth were formed together from one big mess of primordial gas and dust; capture, i.e. the Moon was minding its own business through our solar system and Earth pulled her in; fission, i.e. the proto-Earth started rotating so fast that it flung off some mass and that eventually became the Moon (wicked big sneeze much?); and Great Impact, where two proto-planets (one bigger than the other) whacked together and the two resulting bodies became Earth and our tidally locked moon. As I read through each theory (by the by, Dana Mackenzie is a fairly good and engaging writer who makes what could be deathly boring info lively and interesting), it only emphasized how little I know about the Moon. After all our parents generation has been there and back and for some reason that, for most of my generation's lives, has been enough for the majority of us.

It is slowly changing though, and it's nice to see a book like this that has a pull (really, who could pass by a book called The Big Splat in a book store without taking a look at it). And it's good to know that there are still scientists out there who are still passionate about that thing that appears nearly every night in our sky. show less

Updating models for predicting the spread of epidemics by explicitly incorporating the international air traffic network and more is the subject of one fascinating article. Other articles cover a geometry based on tropical algebra (where the “Freshman’s Dream” is actually true) and advances, both robotic and theoretical, in speed-solving the basic Rubik’s cube and its variants. The topologically inclined will enjoy articles on open problems solved and conjectures proven regarding show more minimizing surfaces and hyperbolic manifolds.

[see my entire review at MAA Reviews] show less

If you like the history math and science and find certain equations beautiful then you will enjoy this as much as I did. Otherwise I am sure you would never even consider picking it up!