Science Cosmology

Stephen Hawking has dazzled listeners worldwide with a string of best sellers exploring the mysteries of the universe. Now, for the first time, perhaps the most brilliant cosmologist of our age turns his gaze inward for a revealing look at his own life and intellectual evolution. My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking’s improbable journey, from his postwar London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. This concise, witty, and candid account introduces listeners to a Hawking rarely glimpsed in previous books.

In his last book, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human anatomy—our hands, our jaws—and the structures in the fish that first took over land 375 million years ago. Now, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, he takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we are the way we are.

Our true origins are not only human, or even terrestrial, but in fact cosmic. Drawing on recent scientific breakthroughs and cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins illuminates the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the cosmos. This newly revised and updated edition features such startling discoveries as the more than 5,000 newly detected exoplanets that shed light on the origins of and possibilities for life in the cosmos.

What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of space-time. However, as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are now giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and to test our theories about what is there. And what we are finding is upending everything we thought we knew about the cosmos and our place in it.

In this thrilling history, David Baker captures the longest possible time span—from the Big Bang to the present day—in an astonishingly concise retelling. His impressive timeline includes the "rise of complexity" in the cosmos and the creation of the first atoms; the origin of all galaxies, stars, and our solar system; and the evolution of life on Earth, from tiny single-celled organisms to human beings.

My beginner's book is your ticket to one of the coolest and most mysterious subjects out there. This isn't your average physics book. It's a portal to understanding the stuff that makes up... well, everything! Subatomic particles. Do not let their size fool you; they have a massive impact on the world around you—the fundamental part of how everything works and not as complex as you might fear.

Christophe Galfard's mission in life is to spread modern scientific ideas to the general public in entertaining ways. Using his considerable skills as a brilliant theoretical physicist and successful young-adult author, The Universe in Your Hand employs the immediacy of simple, direct language to show us, not explain to us, the theories that underpin everything we know about our universe.

In The Universe in a Box, cosmologist Andrew Pontzen explains how physicists model the universe’s most exotic phenomena, from black holes and colliding galaxies to dark matter and quantum entanglement, enabling them to study the evolution of virtual worlds and to shed new light on our reality.

Humanity has long looked to the sky and marveled at the world around us. We've wondered why the world is the way it is and whether it has to be that way. And we dream of a time when we have developed a theory of everything—a theory that answers all questions. Einstein's Unfinished Dream explores the cutting-edge research of modern particle physicists that pushes us slowly towards a theory of everything....

You’ve got questions: about space, time, gravity, and your odds of meeting your older self inside a wormhole. All the answers you need are right here. As a species, we may not agree on much, but one thing brings us all together: a need to know. We all wonder, and deep down we all have the same big questions. Why can’t I travel back in time? Where did the universe come from? What’s inside a black hole? Can I rearrange the particles in my cat and turn it into a dog?

What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon - the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space - appears to be almost magical.

Brad Steiger, the world-renowned authority on unexplained phenomena, presents a collection of UFO encounters and abductions. His provocative theories provide answers to the most puzzling questions: Why are they here? What do they want? And how will they change the fate of the human race?

Years ago, cosmologist Stephon Alexander received life-changing advice: to discover real physics, he needed to stop memorizing and start taking risks. In Fear of a Black Universe, Alexander shows that great physics requires us to think outside the mainstream - to improvise and rely on intuition. His approach leads him to three principles that shape all theories of the universe: the principle of invariance, the quantum principle, and the principle of emergence. Alexander uses them to explore some of physics' greatest mysteries.

Over the past two centuries scientific advances have made it clear that the universe is a story still unfolding. In this thought-provoking book, John F. Haught considers the deeper implications of this discovery. He contends that many others who have written books on life and the universe - including Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins - have overlooked a crucial aspect of cosmic history: the drama of life's awakening to interiority and religious awareness.

Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: We still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history.

Zetetic Astronomy is the magnum opus of Samuel Rowbotham (1816-1884), a self-taught polymath, debater, faith healer, and early advocate of Utopian socialism. Drawing from a wide variety of contemporary sources, Christian scripture, and his own investigative and experimental skills, Rowbotham advocated tirelessly for his thesis that the true shape of the Earth was a plane, refuting all suggestions of rotundity. His arguments continue to captivate, persuade, and entertain up to the present day.

Uma das mentes mais geniais do mundo moderno, Stephen Hawking guia o leitor na busca por respostas a algumas das maiores dúvidas da humanidade: Qual a origem do universo? Ele é infinito? E o tempo? Sempre existiu, ou houve um começo e haverá um fim? Existem outras dimensões além das três espaciais? E o que vai acontecer quando tudo terminar? Com ilustrações criativas e texto lúcido e bem-humorado, Hawking desvenda desde os mistérios da física de partículas até a dinâmica que movimenta centenas de milhões de galáxias por todo o universo.

One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive - an aggregate lifeform.

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this "beautiful question". With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek's groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature.

You are reading the word now right now. But what does that mean? What makes the ephemeral moment "now" so special? Its enigmatic character has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. Einstein showed that the flow of time is affected by both velocity and gravity, yet he despaired at his failure to explain the meaning of now. Equally puzzling: Why does time flow? Some physicists have given up trying to understand and call the flow of time an illusion.