Oof -- I have a lot of reading coming my way. But it should be fun. :-) Between this and my list reading, I suspect I'm not going to do so much else than read in the next year. Just what I always wanted to do with my life...
Speaking of reading, I am intensely enjoying Dennis Overbye's Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos -- I really owe Mike for referring me to it. I've linked to the Amazon site for it; if you were ever one of those kids who had a vague interest in astronomy, who kinda wanted to go out into space someday, who sorta knows some of the constellations and wishes they knew more, who wondered what that whole Big-Bang thingie was about...this is the book for you. Go buy it! It's extremely readable, with layman-level explanations of the science, and just tons of details about the lives of the people making these discoveries. It gives wonderful historical context for the whole discussion, and often slides into the kind of poetic language (sometimes from the author, sometimes from the cosmologists he interviews) that really gives you a sense of the wonder and privilege they felt at having the opportunity to try to understand how it all began, and where it might end...
It's just a day for wonder and privilege, I suppose. :-)
"What's so amazing, it seems to me, is...you and I," he exclaimed. "Every one of our chemical elements was once inside a star. The same star. You and I are brothers. We came from the same supernova. Well, maybe many supernovas have gone into the mixing of a human being," he mused, then brightened.
"We were all together in the same nebula." -- Allan Sandage, p. 43