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Book Review, © Copyright 1998, Jim Loy
This book is subtitled, "Chaos in the Solar System." Newton's clock is the solar system, by the way. The book tells the story of the frustrating efforts, of astronomers, down through history, to describe the motions of the planets. These efforts never seem to quite work, until Newton. Then the solar system seemed to become a very complicated, but fully understood clock, except for the moon. The moon's orbit frustrated even Newton. Mathematicians and astronomers continued to refine the data, aiming for the time when the solar system would be fully predictable. Then Henri Poincare (in winning a mathematics contest) showed that the solar system is not stable. Nowadays, we would say that the solar system is chaotic.
There are two possible kinds of chaos here. It might be a kind of mild chaos, in which the positions and motions of the planets may be unpredictable, in the distant future. Or, it might be more dramatic; we may lose one or more planets, in the distant future. So far, the computer simulations seem to show that it is the milder form of chaos that rules the solar system.
This is a very interesting book.
To order this book, click Amazon.com (goes directly to this book). This one is paperback. It is also available in hardcover.