Burston's Science Book Blog

I'm a professional scientists working on the physics of naturally occurring plasmas. Here's my blog on science-related books. It includes textbooks, popular science books and memoirs and biographies of or by scientists. Enjoy!

Reading progress update: I've read 199 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Heliotail; short but fascinating chapter that I was looking forward to. It's short because experimental observations only started with the arrival of Voyager at the termination shock and the subsequent IBEX observations. These observations have radically altered our conception of the heliotail from being a gigantic equivalent of either Earth or Jupiter's magnetotail to   two short lobed structures termed Alfvén wings.

Reading progress update: I've read 189 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

These "Tutorials" are really reviews; they aren't the same thing. Genuine tutorials would have been more useful to me, but still, I'm learning as lot.

Reading progress update: I've read 159 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

The Moon: Since it has no atmosphere and no global magnetic field, the moon acts as a solid obstacle to the solar wind, leaving an almost empty wake which is refilled as one gets further down-stream. Interestingly, the re-filling is not through ambi-polar diffusion because of the effects of the inter-planetary magnetic field.

Reading progress update: I've read 149 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Key difference between planets' magnetospheres and their satellites' magnetospheres: Planets travel in the solar wind which is super-sonic. Almost all major planetary satellites travel within their parent planet's magnetosphere which is sub-sonic. Hence planets have bow-shocks and most major satellites don't.

Reading progress update: I've read 135 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

The magnetotails of Uranus and Neptune are radically different from those of all the other planets. The tails are much shorter and have a strongly time dependent topology. This is because of the steep angle between the dipole magnetic fields and the rotational axis of these planets.

Reading progress update: I've read 119 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Saturn: the author of this chapter doesn't know the difference between "intense" and "intensive." Saturn's magnetotail "intermediate between that of Earth and Jupiter." The latter in terms of solar-wind versus atmospheric co-rotational dominance of tail dynamics.

Reading progress update: I've read 99 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Jupiter's magnetotail is so long it stretches at least as far as the orbit of Saturn! That's twice as far as the Earth is from the sun!

Reading progress update: I've read 85 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Earth, cont.: Further illustration of the blight of solar-terrestrial physics; people unable to agree on the definitions or even names of anything. You can't progress in understanding a phenomenon if you're not even studying the same phenomenon.

Reading progress update: I've read 68 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Earth: Ongoing controversy surrounding the question of where and when substorms commence. It doesn't help that nobody ever defines their terms properly...

Reading progress update: I've read 60 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Chapter 3: Mars and Venus. Neither planet has a strong intrinsic magnetic field, in contrast to the other planets. Nevertheless a magnetotail forms and appears to experience magnetic reconnection/substorms in both cases.

Reading progress update: I've read 38 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Chapter 2: Mercury. Mercury plasmoids travel towards the planet as well as away?! Seriously? How does that happen?!

Reading progress update: I've read 23 out of 424 pages.

Magnetotails in the Solar System (Geophysical Monograph Series) - Peter Delamere, Caitr?ona Jackman, Andreas Keiling

Chapter 1: Apparently we don't know what force maintains the stretched magnetotail surrounding planets' night sides!

Ionospheres: Physics, Plasma Physics, and Chemistry Ionospheres by Schunk & Nagy

Ionospheres: Physics, Plasma Physics, and Chemistry - Robert W. Schunk

A good introduction to the underpinning plasma physics of ionospheres and to ionospheres across the solar system. The greatest coverage is of the Terrestrial ionosphere, simply because of our more extensive knowledge as compared with other solar system objects, but it is can only be considered as complementary to other books when it comes to Earth.

Tensor Analysis on Manifolds

Tensor Analysis on Manifolds - Samuel I. Goldberg, Richard L. Bishop Abandoned after two chapters, that is after chapter 1: when a book that starts at chapter 0 it acts as a warning sign to me and I was right to be wary. This is a book by a mathematician for mathematicians and it might very well be excellent for its intended audience. I am not a mathematician, however, and I found it completely useless for my needs. Hence, I haven't rated the book because it may not actually be bad, just inappropriate for me.

Classical Mechanics

Classical Mechanics - Herbert Goldstein I'm parking this one because it doesn't cover what I need. I'm not rating it because it might be good or bad and I haven't read enough of it to judge. The fact that it assumes what I wanted to learn just means it isn't the book I need.

The first chapter presents a very austere but elegant exposition of the basic principles of Newtonian mechanics. It would probably not suit beginners but this isn't a book for beginners anyway. That's about all I can say.

Clouds

Clouds - Eric M. Wilcox A fun and fluffy visual survey of the major cloud designations of meteorology aiming at an audience with no prior knowledge. The photos are the best part, managing to convey the beauties of the more subtle formations as well as the drama of cumulonimbus, mammatus and co. At the back a more detailed technical description of how and where the various cloud types form is given along with a discussion of the more common atmospheric optical phenomena (rainbows and halos) that should be comprehensible to anybody with the desire to read the book in the first place.

Currently reading

Magnetic Reconnection: Concepts and Applications
Walter Gonzalez, Eugene N. Parker
A Student's Guide to Lagrangians and Hamiltonians
Patrick Hamill
Linear Algebra: Step by Step
Kuldeep Singh
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering
Steven H. Strogatz
Progress: 166/512 pages
Gravitation (Physics Series)
Kip Thorne;Kip S. Thorne;Charles W. Misner;John Archibald Wheeler;John Wheeler
Progress: 48/1215 pages
General Theory of Relativity
Paul A.M. Dirac
Poetical Works
George Gordon Byron