Explorer l'Espace pour Remonter le Temps
Publication date: 02 April 2006
Authors: Bignami, G.
Page: pp. 190
Year: 2006
Enthusiasm and commitment for a strong European scientific programme are expressed in Giovanni Bignami's book "Explorer l'Espace pour Remonter le Temps' (Exploring space to go back in time), by Odile Jacob, Paris, published in January 2006. This book follows his other book "La Storia nello Spazio" (History in Space), published in Italian by Mursia, Milano, in 2001.
His latest book tells science stories of several past, present and future space missions (Giotto, Galileo, Cassini, BeppoSAX, RossiXTE, BepiColombo) of the ESA, NASA and ASI space agencies.
These missions address a vast panorama of science in space, from planets to comets and from black holes to explosive events in the Universe. Bignami also gives room to the lives, times and innovative spirit of each mission namesakes, from the early 1300s, with a taste of Giottos painting (including Halleys comet) in the Papal Europe, to the 1600s of Galileo and Gian Domenico Cassini, who left Bologna to go to Paris in the service of the Roi Soleil.
The overview moves onto the twentieth century, with Beppo Occhialini, Italian physicist at the Fermi school, and Bruno Rossi, who fled Fascist Italy to become the founder, in the United States, of astronomy in space. Finally, the book moves onto Bepi Colombo, the great scientist and celestial mechanics visionary of the University of Padova.
G.F. Bignami is chairman of ESA's Space Science Advisory Committee. He is the Director of the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (CNRS-Universitè de Toulouse) and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Pavia. He is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei and of the Academia Europaea.
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