cover image Voyage to the Great Attractor: Exploring Intergalactic Space

Voyage to the Great Attractor: Exploring Intergalactic Space

Alan Dressler. Alfred A. Knopf, $25 (355pp) ISBN 978-0-394-58899-5

Dressler, an astronomer on the staff of the Carnegie Institution in Pasadena, Calif., recounts his part in a ``big science'' project: radio astronomy's search for so-called ``large structures'' of matter that could account for the gravitational forces holding the universe together. Although Dressler offers an almost diary-level view of the five-year project, he scrupuloulsy incorporates the work of his six colleagues, a scattered working group that dubbed themselves the ``Seven Samurai.'' Their efforts exemplify true-grit 20th-century science: low on romance but high on logistics and management of mountains of ephemeral data spanning great distances and diverse bureaucracies. The survival of the Samurai as a group is a science success story in itself, a bonus tacked on to their controversial findings that ``galaxies over a large volume of space are moving, drawn by the force of gravity to a `Great Attractor.'"" Dressler offers a true-to-life portrait of workaday astronomy, from grandiose goals to the human faces of its practitioners. Illustrations. Library of Science and Astronomy Book Club selections. (Oct.)