Elliptical Galaxies Book Reviews

Elliptical Galaxies by Philip Bosshardt Book Summary

Galaxies are composed of stars and planets and bits of matter floating around. However, astronomers still don’t know what holds them together. There isn’t enough visible matter to keep them from flying apart. Enter a mysterious thing called ‘dark matter.’ No one knows what it is. No one has detected any such thing. But, if the laws of physics are to mean anything, it must be there…and so it is, as a sort of bookkeeping entry until we think of something else.
I like to think of the stories that follow in these terms. What you see is not all there is. Oh, the stories have all the usual parts…characters, a setting, some kind of plot. But it’s what you don’t see that gives them the impact they have.
Picture Og and Grog sitting around the campfire one evening after a dinner of mammoth meat and tree roots. Og is sharpening his spear points. Grog is skinning a hide. Og grunts and gestures at Grog: “If you had followed my orders, you wouldn’t have been injured by that mammoth, you stupid dolt.” After some loud arguing back and forth, and few threats, Slamdok intervenes and, using more gestures and grunts, recounts the events of the day that led to Grog’s injury and tonight’s dinner. Some modifications are made to the account and after awhile, after everyone is stuffed with enough mammoth meat and some fermented berries that Slamdok’s wife made, everybody agrees that this is what happened. The day’s hunt goes down in the annals of the tribe as “the way things happened.”
It becomes a legend. Later, maybe a myth.
I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of big over-arching themes, but perhaps we could say there are some common elements in the stories included in Elliptical Galaxies. Many of the stories deal with explorers and soldiers. One definition of an explorer is one who seeks the unknown, one who seeks to discover and explain the unknown. One definition I have seen of ‘soldier’ is one who seeks to impose his will on the unknown, usually an enemy.
Man can be well defined between these two pillars of discovering and imposing his will on the unknown. Genesis 28 says “…be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.” It seems like expanding into unknown lands and subduing them is a critical part of our nature. Can we subdue the entire Universe? I doubt it. Can we subdue our own nature? That’s what Elliptical Galaxies attempts to find out.
Perhaps that is our real future. To range across eons of time and lightyears of cosmos only to eventually discover ourselves and our true nature. That’s my hope for Elliptical Galaxies. Maybe you’ll be the one who finally uncovers the true secrets of dark matter, the thing that holds all of us together.

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