Accidental Astronomy: How Random Discoveries Shape the Science of Space

In this stimulating study, Lintott (The Crowd and the Cosmos), an astrophysics professor at Oxford University, surveys occasions “when astronomers have stumbled on new truths about the cosmos, either through unexpected discoveries or by suddenly finding new ways to explore.” For example, Lintott explains how in the 1960s two engineers attempting to build a massive antenna for terrestrial radio communication ended up detecting microwave radiation from the big bang, proving the event’s immediate aftermath “left the Universe in a hot dense state.” In the late 2010s, a Cardiff University researcher trying to show that Hawaii’s James Clerk Maxwell Telescope could make observations at a certain frequency range unexpectedly found evidence of phosphine molecules (considered a signature of life) in Venus’s atmosphere, suggesting that the planet may have at one time harbored living organisms. Abundant footnotes aim to amuse but end up distracting (one laments the “extortionate” data roaming fees that would result from bringing a cell phone to Jupiter). However, they don’t detract from detailed case studies that depict the scientific process as detective work. For instance, Lintott describes how astronomers deduced the elongated shape and possible composition of the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua, whose passage through our solar system in 2017 took scientists by surprise, from data showing it varied in brightness and lacked a comet’s tail. The result is an illuminating look at chance’s role in science. Photos. Agent: Will Francis, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)