From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Fri Feb 22 2002 - 08:17:04 MST
>From: Amara Graps <Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de>
>When I first received the advert for this book, from Amazon last
>July, I passed it around our dust group, and nobody in my group
>was interested enough to buy the book.
>>Review by amazon.com July 2001
>>What is dust? It's more than the generic "stuff" that lightly
>>covers our tabletops if we're not diligent cleaners, writes
>>Hannah Holmes. In fact, dust comes from such exotic places as
>>stars, volcanoes, the evaporating seas, the clothing of kings,
>>and even dead people. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes
>>destructive, dust is a little bit of everything. Holmes puts all
>>kinds of dust under the microscope in this short, sweet book.
>Most household 'dust' is pieces of human skin, mites, junk.
>Finding cosmic dust in your home is not that common. For our
>group, when we think of 'dust', it's cosmic, so we have a bit of
>an image problem and the book description (above) was discouraging
>for us. Secret? Hmm.
I don't blame you, that review sucks...
I've only just started this book, but it's dealt with little except
the cosmic origin of dust so far. I thought it was so interesting
I went to the back to see if your name was listed.
>The origin of dust is late-evolved stars, and what we have in our
>solar system is heavily processed material (because the dust
>lifetime is tens of thousands of years), which is mostly generated
>from comets and asteroids.
In the book.
>The exciting aspect of dust for us is that we are both observers
>on the dust evolution process (dust being tracers of the
>Universe's evolution, like photons), as well as its result. I am
>guessing that the author she didn't go into too much detail about
>that ..?
Actually so far the book has talked about little else.
Don't let that lousy review sway you, at least glance through it at
a bookstore and give it your professional review.
I don't have it with me today, but tell you what, if the first 40
pages don't change your mind, I'll buy you the book.
In one example they talked about how through optical telescopes
there were areas that just appeared to be large dust clouds, but
that an infrared telescope brought to light the fact that such
clouds were in fact interstellar nurseries, where stars are
actually formed (I almost said created).
I thought this made an excellent case to the public for the need of
such instruments as infrared telescopes.
"We know all the labels, but never taste the wine"
Deal stands...
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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