Florian Freistetter - Böcker

From the Big Bang to the Gaia Mission, this is a very personal history of the universe through the author's favourite 100 stars.Astronomer Florian Freistetter has chosen 100 stars that have almost nothing in common. Some are bright and famous, some shine so feebly you need a huge telescope. There are big stars, small stars, nearby stars and faraway stars. Some died a while ago, others have not even yet come into being. Collectively they tell the story of the whole world, according to Freistetter. There is Algol, for example, the Demon Star, whose strange behaviour has long caused people sleepless nights. And Gamma Draconis, from which we know that the earth rotates around its own axis. There is also the star sequence 61 Cygni, which revealed the size of the cosmos to us.Then there are certain stars used by astronomers to search for extra-terrestrial life, to explore interstellar space travel, or to explain why the dinosaurs became extinct.In 100 short, fascinating and entertaining chapters, Freistetter not only reveals the past and future of the cosmos, but also the story of the people who have tried to understand the world in which we live.

A blunt and humorous profile of Isaac Newton focusing on his disagreeable personality and showing that his offputting qualities were key to his scientific breakthroughs.Isaac Newton may have been the most important scientist in history, but he was a very difficult man. Put more bluntly, he was an asshole, an SOB, or whatever epithet best describes an abrasive egomaniac. In this colorful profile of the great man--warts and all--astronomer Florian Freistetter shows why this damning assessment is inescapable.Newton's hatred of fellow scientist Robert Hooke knew no bounds and he was strident in expressing it. He stole the work of colleague John Flamsteed, ruining his career without a second thought. He carried on a venomous battle with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the invention of calculus, vilifying him anonymously while the German scientist was alive and continuing the attacks after he died. All evidence indicates that Newton was conniving, sneaky, resentful, secretive, and antisocial. Compounding the mystery of his strange character is that he was also a religious fanatic, a mystery-monger who spent years studying the Bible and predicted the apocalypse.While documenting all of these unusual traits, the author makes a convincing case that Newton would have never revolutionized physics if he hadn't been just such an obnoxious person. This is a fascinating character study of an astounding genius and--if truth be told--an almighty asshole as well.

Stephen Hawking was one of the most important astrophysicists of the last fifty years. After the publication of A Brief History of Time, he became an international celebrity. Though the book sold in the millions, few readers really grasped the significance of his groundbreaking work. Now popular Austrian science blogger Florian Freistetter, himself an astronomer, makes Hawking's contributions accessible to everyday readers in this concise, very readable book.By focusing on the essentials, Freistetter deftly and entertainingly makes Hawking's complex theoretical accomplishments understandable. Avoiding technicalities and jargon, he elucidates the great scientist's fascinating work on black holes, gravitational waves, the big bang, and singularities. Concluding with an appreciation of Hawking as a science communicator and popularizer, Freistetter conveys the importance of Hawking's scientific research in terms that nonspecialists can follow.