Pillars of Creation - by Richard Panek (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In Pillars of Creation, award-winning science writer Richard Panek presents the first complete account of the James Webb Space Telescope-the $10 billion NASA instrument whose stunning images have captured the world's imagination and are revolutionizing our understanding of the cosmos. Moving from the near and now to the farthest and earliest, Panek shows how everything we thought we knew about our own solar system, our galaxy, and the birth of the universe itself has been touched and transformed by the Webb's findings. Drawing on access to the project's most senior scientists and featuring a selection of the most astonishing color images taken by Webb, Pillars of Creation explains the big theoretical takeaways that the mission has already generated, and points to future areas of research-and even future missions-that will expand our horizons further still. A celebration of mankind's biggest leap yet into the cosmos, Pillars of Creation unveils the genius and contingency behind this groundbreaking invention and reveals, in glittering detail, how it has ushered in a thrilling new era of celestial knowledge"--

Book Synopsis

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes--and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing.

Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. Award-winning science writer Richard Panek stands us shoulder to shoulder with senior scientists as they conceive the mission, meet decades-long challenges to bring it to fruition, and, now, use its unprecedented technology to yield new discoveries about the origins of our solar system, to search for life on planets around other suns, and to trace the growth of hundreds of billions of galaxies all the way back to the birth of the first stars. The Webb telescope has captured the world's imagination, and Pillars of Creation shows how and why--including through sixteen pages of awe-inspiring, full-color photos.

At once a testament to human ingenuity and a celebration of mankind's biggest leap yet into the cosmos, Panek's eye-opening book reveals our universe as we've never seen it before--through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope, a marvel that is itself a pillar of creation.

Review Quotes

"Richard Panek lays out the brave new world of the just-dawned Webb era and how the instrument is already opening fresh astronomical and cosmological vistas....Panek's style is brisk, breezy, and rather lighthearted....He uses novelistic touches to tell the story--snippets of dialogue here or a participant's ostensible thoughts there--gleaned from his interviews with the key players, which give the book a humanistic feel instead of a dry historical stuffiness."--Undark

"An engaging tale of ideas clashing with reality that places the reader inside the rooms where the telescope was born... [Panek's] journalistic training is apparent, in smooth sentences, seamless storytelling, and a knack for conveying just enough scientific detail to keep the reader educated and motivated to continue."--Science Magazine

"[An] accessible account of how the Webb telescope has revolutionized the field of astronomy.... Panek tells the story with infectious enthusiasm... An essential read for anyone interested in the new frontiers of science, written with clarity and authority."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"In this stellar account, science writer Panek...offers a wondrous overview of Webb's major breakthroughs... Brimming with the excitement of scientific discovery, this soars."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Richard Panek is the author of numerous books including The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, which won the American Institute of Physics communication award and was longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. The recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (in Science Writing) and the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as an Antarctic Artists and Writers grant from the National Science Foundation, he is also the co-author with Temple Grandin of The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, a New York Times bestseller. His own books have been translated into sixteen languages, and his writing about science and culture has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American, Discover, Smithsonian, Natural History, Esquire, and Outside. He lives in New York City.