Infinite Worlds: An Illustrated Voyage to Planets Beyond Our Sun is a nonfiction book by Ray Villard and Lynette Cook about extrasolar planets, featuring Lynette Cook's artwork. The book covers topics from the Big Bang, to extrasolar planets (the main focus of the book), and the ultimate fate of the universe.
From the book's description on the back cover:
The newly discovered planets are boggling astronomers' minds with their bizarre characteristics, including an unimagined diversity of sizes and orbits. In Lynette Cook's illustrations - many newly created for this book - we glimpse the landscapes and atmospheres that might adorn these planets. Ray Villard's text describes the state of astronomy today, imagines where it will take us in the coming years, ponders the chances of success for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and explores the survivability of life in the context of an evolving and accelerating universe. Infinite Worlds is a cosmic adventure that brings the drama of creation and the beauty of the universe to anyone who has wondered at the night sky
Famous quotes containing the words infinite, illustrated, planets and/or sun:
“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“This has been illustrated copiously each day with photographs taken by the author, reproduced by means of cuts such as only French newspaper-engravers can make, presumably etched on pieces of bread.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky?
Was there a father?
Or have the planets cut holes in their nets
and let our childhood out,
or are we the dolls themselves,
born but never fed?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Thir dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a Towr; his form had yet not lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than Arch Angel ruind, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)