Just Visiting This Planet: Merlin Answers More Questions about Everything under the Sun, Moon, and Stars - Softcover

Neil De Grasse Tyson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385488378 ISBN 13: 9780385488372

Publisher: Main Street Books, 1998

Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry comes a follow-up guide to more of the most popular questions about the universe.

In this companion volume to Merlin's Tour of the Universe, Neil de Grasse Tyson presents a completely new collection of questions and answers about the cosmos for stargazers of all ages. Whether waxing about Earth and its environs, the Sun and its stellar siblings, the world of light, physical laws, or galaxies near and far, Merlin--a fictional visitor from Planet Omniscia and our guide to the universe--is easy to understand, often humorous, and always entertaining.

Merlin fields a wide range of questions from many curious mortals, and in so doing draws on his own vast knowledge as well as the expertise of many close friends, including Archimedes, Galileo, Einstein, and Santa. Merlin hasn't been stumped yet, responding to questions including:

If aliens exploded our moon, what effect would it have on us?
What are your thoughts on the theory that a star named Nemesis is circling our solar system and was responsible for killing off the dinosaurs?
Is it true that if I leave a container on my roof for a period of time, I can actually collect space particles from outer space?

Delightfully illustrated throughout, Just Visiting This Planet is a timeless book for lovers of the universe by one of its brightest lights.

About this title

Review

Merlin, a scholar visiting Earth from the planet Omniscia in the Andromeda galaxy, is familiar to readers of Star Date magazine, published by the McDonald Observatory. Just Visiting This Planet is the second collection of questions and answers written by Merlin's alter ego, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium. (The first collection was Merlin's Tour of the Universe.) Merlin is supersmart, sort of sassy, and he'll answer almost any question about the universe and the curious things in it. He's also really old, having rubbed elbow equivalents with the likes of Archimedes, Galileo, Einstein, and Santa Claus. In this volume, you can find Merlin's explanations for easy puzzlers such as "How many galaxies are visible to the naked eye?" and "Who discovered the planet Saturn?" The smarty-pants extraterrestrial also tackles toughies like "If aliens exploded our moon, what effect would it have on us?" and "What is the meaning of 'apparent magnitude'?" Amateur astronomers and weekend stargazers alike will find a wealth of trivia with which to astound dinner guests, and those who like their science in easily digestible chunks will be pleased--sometimes Merlin gives one-word answers! If you're looking for long explanatory essays, look for a more loquacious little green man. --Therese Littleton

From the Publisher

"Tyson has created a space-age Merlin. An astrophysicist and educator, Tyson weaves together imaginative with straightforward science." --USA Today

Edition details

• Publisher: Main Street Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0385488378
• ISBN 13: 9780385488372
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352
• Illustrator: Stephen J. Tyson