Meet the stars in the poetic distance

"The Legend of Chasing Stars", by Bian Yulin, shanghai science popularization publishing house, june 2021, first edition, 68.00 yuan

The poet Yin Dongzhu once had the sentence "Love everything that is dying with the heart of the stars", and when I read them, I remembered an interesting story by the British astronomer William Herschel: The English poet Campbell was surprised by the poetry of william Herschel after a conversation with William Herschel, because at that meeting, Herschel said that many distant stars may have ceased to exist millions of years ago, so when people look up at the stars, what they see is not really real, the sky is full of ghosts." The stars are gone, but the light is still moving." Some of the feelings about time and space are expressed by poets and astronomers in their respective languages. This incident tells us that astronomers and poets may at some point be only one step away; it also tells us that when looking at the starry sky, astronomers may think not only of numerical formulas and the structure and scale of the Milky Way, but of much more than astronomy, because they are also real people like us, with a rich inner world and emotions.

I think of these poetic people when I read The Legend of Star Chasing, because this book is also about such people, who live as authentically and passionately as we do, but perhaps different from us is that they focus on one thing more permanently - "chasing stars". The author, Mr. Bian Yulin, is also such a star chaser, focusing on "chasing stars" for decades, so there is "Chasing Stars" many years ago and today's "Star Chasing Legends".

Mr. Bian is an elder of mine who has known each other for more than 20 years, has all the characteristics of a good elder in my mind, and is serious, gentle, interesting and childlike. The text is like its own person. Looking back at the past of the development of astronomy so far, Mr. Bian's narration is peaceful and interesting. However, unlike other popular science books based on the history of science, "The Legend of Chasing Stars" is not only "history", or in the author's retracement of history, its narrative clues are extended all the way to yesterday or even this moment not far from us; and those who have only lived in the historical record in the past have become more vivid.

For example, the discovery of Neptune is an important event in the history of science and one of the verifications of Newton's law of universal gravitation. Adams from England and Le Veriet from France each independently calculated the orbits of unknown planets, but the two British observatory directors were careless and missed the success; and Le Weier's calculations, although a few months later than Adams, he was fortunate enough to submit to reliable people: Galle of the Berlin Observatory had both a suitable star map and a passion for discovery, and he proved Le Weiye's calculations with telescopes, and the honor of discovering new planets finally fell to France. After this incident, the British once proposed that Adams and Le Verie share the honor, but this proposal was not only snubbed in Paris, but the French cartoonist also drew a cartoon in a flash. As a teacher of the history of science, I have spoken about this story many times in my classroom, but each time it ends with a Cartoon by the Frenchman. It was the rise of natural mechanics, and there were too many discoveries to tell, and I really never wanted to go any further to explore the living people behind this important discovery. So when I read more details about the characters in Star Chaser, I was naturally drawn.

Adams was born in 1819 to a poor peasant family. He was humble and never participated in the controversy between scientists from both countries around himself", and when the Queen wanted to award him a knighthood for his contribution to the study of the new planet, he politely declined: "This is the honor that the giant of science Newton once received, and I cannot compare with Newton." Le Vier was born in 1811 into a family of petty civil servants, and his father sold his house to get him to school. Le Veriele initially worked as a chemical experiment, but it turned out time and again that he was a truly good astronomer... He and Adams each contributed to a common cause and later became good friends." About Adams and LeWeer, just a few dozen words outline the growth of the two astronomers, and their gentleness and modesty jump out of the paper, and this originally competitive story has become a good story.

Although Adams did not care, history did not fail the astronomer who had given his heart and wisdom. In October 1998, a document proving that Adams had indeed sent his calculations about Neptune to Astronomer Royal Airy—a note adams left in Airy's mailbox in 1846 (giving the number of roots in the orbits of the new planet)—was found at the Institute of Astronomy of Chile. At this point, this story about the discovery of Neptune finally has a more perfect ending.

Keeping track of events and constantly updating progress is a particularly prominent feature of this book. For example, the Arecibo telescope, familiar with modern astronomy is probably familiar with its name, such as it is housed in a valley, many important discoveries have been made by it, and it was once the world's largest stationary radio telescope. But as I read this book, I suddenly realized that almost all of the above my knowledge of Arecibo was at least ten or even twenty years ago, and in The Legend of the Stars, the story about it does not stop there. Arecibo's discoveries in the following decades and the "wind and rain" book he experienced are described, and the news of Arecibo's "retirement" six months before the publication of this book has also been updated in time. For readers like me, these follow-up texts are like a letter from a distant friend, connecting the past and the present, but also reminding me of the beautiful dreams of the stars in the past.

Arecibo's status as the world's largest stationary radio telescope was replaced in 2016 by the "Chinese Sky Eye", a 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope. In this book, the author not only tells the construction of the "Chinese Heavenly Eye" and its principles, but also the characters behind the Heavenly Eye are naturally the protagonists of the story. However, as a former colleague of Nan Rendong, mr. Bian's story is naturally different from other reports. The warm and intimate reminiscences about the Nan Rendong he knew and the experience of working with Nan Rendong also brought readers closer to scientists. (Wu Yan)

Source: China Reading Daily