Review

I don’t remember now why I picked this book. Perhaps because the cover looked awesome. Or I had received a recommendation somewhere. Or because I am always on the lookout for new science books to read.

Pillars of creation is about astrophysics, cosmology and finding the answer to the question of how did the universe come into being. It details the history of the JWST, the years it took to actually launch, the people involved, the science involved. It was plagued with constant delays and overshot its budget a bunch of times.

JWST is awesome, the sunshield on it blocks sunlight and reduces temperature for the sensor unit so that it can detect even fainter objects in infrared range.

I remember when it had actually launched in 2021. There were so many single point of failures. One thing going wrong would have put the entire project at risk, reduced its lifetime and so on. But they did it. The scientists and engineers managed to get it to Lagrange point (L2), unfurl its primary lenses, unfurl the solar shield, and get it working.

If you enjoy reading science books, you will enjoy reading this. I surely did.