Earth Space Science

With wonder, wit, and flair - and in record time and space - geophysicist David Bercovici explains how everything came to be everywhere, from the creation of stars and galaxies to the formation of Earth's atmosphere and oceans to the origin of life and human civilization. Bercovici marries humor and legitimate scientific intrigue, rocketing listeners across nearly 14 billion years and making connections between the essential theories that give us our current understanding of topics as varied as particle physics, plate tectonics, and photosynthesis.

Satellites may exist out in space, but they let us study Earth from the outside looking in. From climate change to natural disasters and more, find out how scientists are using satellites to tackle some of our world's most challenging problems.

Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions have revealed that some of the most habitable real estate may actually lie farther away. Beneath the frozen crusts of several of the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn lurk vast oceans that may have been in existence for as long as Earth, and together may contain more than 50 times its total volume of liquid water. Could there be organisms living in their depths?

It finally happened. Commander Thrax Ti Ix created a hyper-spatial tube for the Swarm Imperium. Across thousands of light-years, a vast armada of warships is heading for Earth to burn the homeworld down to its bedrock as the Swarm begins its genocidal campaign against the human race. No one - not the New Men, the Spacers, the Wahhabi Caliphate, or Star Watch - has faced such staggering odds. Alone or united, it makes no difference.

On Sept 5, 2019, a Space Futures conference was hosted by the US Air Force Space Command which analyzed evolving conditions in space up to 2060. Eight possible negative and positive futures were identified, the optimal being a “Star Trek Future” which would involve countries with space programs forming a multinational alliance collaborating in civil, military, and commercial affairs in space.

They came from deep space. They came to destroy us. Fifty years ago bloodthirsty aliens devastated the Earth. Most of humanity perished. We fell into darkness. But now we rise from the ashes. Now we fight back. Marco Emery was born into the war. After his mother is killed, he joins the Human Defense Force, Earth's ragtag army. Emery must survive basic training, become a soldier, and finally face the aliens in battle. Against the alien onslaught, Earth stands alone. But we will fight. We will rise. We will win.

They’re here. They’ve arrived. And they’re all eyes. The Voltarian scouting party - illegal aliens extraordinaire - on a top-secret expedition led by one Jettero Heller, Royal Officer of the Fleet. His mission: rescue the planet from pollution - and make it safe for the upcoming invasion. His problem: The planet may not want to be saved - and the invasion may just be a trick.

Return to the greatest contest in the galaxy in this “beguiling, bewitching” (Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of the October Daye series) sequel to the hilarious USA TODAY bestseller Space Opera from New York Times bestselling author and finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World...

They destroyed the civilization of the ancient alien Elders thousands of years ago, and now they’re following Andy Clanton and the crew of the James Bowie back from the edge of the galaxy and into Alliance space, bent on wiping out all intelligent life in the galaxy. The Bugs probe for weakness, attacking new friends and old enemies, and forcing Andy and the others into union with forces that had tried to destroy them only months before and putting a wedge between the Earth and the Alliance.

Concerned with questions of aging and mortality, A Second Space furthers 93-year-old Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz’s reputation as “arguably the greatest living poet” (Edward Hirsch, New York Times Book Review). “Milosz continues exploring his own version of the meditative lyric...

Recruited to follow the last signal of the mysterious Elders to a system halfway across the galaxy, Andy joins the crew of the James Bowie for another adventure into the unknown. The journey will be filled with mystery and wonder, with strange life seeded on far-flung worlds by the godlike Elders…and with danger. For the Elders didn’t leave our galaxy of their own accord. They were driven out by an implacable enemy, something beyond their understanding…and ours.

In 1977, two extraordinary spacecraft called Voyager were launched to the stars. Affixed to each Voyager craft was a gold-coated copped phonograph record as a message to possible extra-terrestrial civilizations that might encounter the spacecraft in some distant space and time.

Earth is in turmoil. The enemy is bearing down on us with every warship they have, and our only allies are in chaos. Our one hope for survival is Andy Clanton - a hack science fiction writer trying to convince some aliens that humans are worth saving. It’s an uphill battle, because to the aliens, we are the monsters. We look just like their sworn enemies, the Tevynians, who’ve sworn to wipe out both our civilizations. When everything falls apart and the fate of the galaxy is on the line, can Andy Clanton pull our fat out of the fire?

Dalton Thorne just wanted his cargo ship back. Maybe a bowl of noodles. Definitely some peace and quiet on humanity's newly liberated fragment of Earth. But when Little Earth's miraculous transformation starts turning deadly, he discovers that saving the world was the easy part. Now he has to survive in it. Which would be a lot easier if a faction of powerful beings known as Chi Hunters weren’t hell bent on hunting him down.

Mordecai The Brown was content to move on. He'd had his fun, had his vengeance, and had his next adventure all planned out. Then someone had to get it into their head to extort him for help overthrowing a planet. With a friend's life on the line, simple reprisal just won't do. With the help of his honorary niece and nephew, Jessie and Eric, Mort devises a plan of both rescue and vengeance, involving an elaborate deception to disguise a galactic-scale betrayal.

Today, we take for granted that a telescope allows us to see galaxies millions of light years away. But before its invention, people used nothing more than their naked eye to fathom what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the 1500s - of different nationality, age, religion, and class - collaborate to discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun? With this radical discovery that went against the Church, they created our contemporary world. Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family.

In this epic conclusion to the first series in the Human Chronicles Saga, Adam Cain and his band of Human warriors are presented to the Supreme Leader of the Galaxy. With only minutes to live, Adam convinces the Juirean leader that Humans are not the enemy, but that both their races have been part of a diabolical plot for galactic domination orchestrated by the Klin. And yet just when the truth dawns on the Juireans, the planet Juir is attacked by Kracori forces, which leads to a whole new set of problems for Adam and his band of Human Super-Men.

Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." ( Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.

I thought the hard part of helping the Helta defeat the rampaging Tevynians would be the fighting. How wrong I was. To the Helta, we Earthers look just like the Tevynians, their mortal enemies. And convincing their government to ally with humans may be even beyond the crew of the starship James Bowie. But the clock is ticking, because the Tevynian fleet is bearing down on the Helta homeworld. If we can’t talk the Helta into accepting our help to fight them off, then Helta Prime will fall.... And Earth will be next.

In this deeply original book, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy sets out in search of the telescopes and detectors that promise to answer the biggest questions in modern cosmology. Why is the universe expanding at an ever faster rate? What is the nature of the "dark matter" that makes up almost a quarter of the universe? Why does the universe appear fine-tuned for life? Are there others besides our own?