The first conflict in the book, that between Harlow Shapely and Haber Curtis, sheds some light on the nature of science. We know a great deal about the universe, but then in 1920 less data had accumulated. Astronomical equipment was not as capable of resolving fine structure or subtle detail as is the equipment of today. Yet still now as then top thinkers in all areas of endeavor engage in heated debate. That Curtis and Shapely were neither completely wrong or correct suggests that science is a battlefield upon which differing ideas continually struggle for acceptance based on their agreement with observation and common sense.
Some ideas eventually fade, while others tend to evolve to defend challenges from newer ideas.
As the book carries on, topics such as the nature of galaxies, the apparent expansion of the universe, the nature of quasars, the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, just to name a few. It was rewarding to discover that the night sky is not filled with bright light from stars because the universe is so big that many stars are too far away to illuminate our eye just yet, as their light hasn t had time to get here. And that stars don t last forever, so as new stars appear in our field of view, old ones are winking out in their cyclic twilight. One thing I missed about the book was the complete and absolute absence of any mention of Stephen Hawking. I recall a reading a discussion of pairs of virtual particles which most certainly could appear and then annihilate in a period of time so short that we wouldn t be able to detect them at all.