Science Cosmology

"Imagine if a Martian showed up, all big ears and big nose like a child’s drawing, and he asked to be baptized. How would you react?" Pope Francis posed that question - without insisting on an answer! - to provoke deeper reflection about inclusiveness and diversity in the Church. But it's not the first time that question has been asked.

A Degree in a Book: Cosmology is the perfect introduction to cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics, written by one of NASA's leading astronomers and educators. Filled with helpful diagrams, suggestions for further reading and easily digestible history sections, this audiobook makes it easier than ever to understand the workings of the Universe. Featuring the most important ideas in the field, including the theory of relativity, the standard model, loop quantum gravity, and supersymmetry, it covers the whole breadth of cosmology.

We've all asked ourselves the question. It's impossible to look up at the stars and NOT think about it: Are we alone in the universe? Books, movies, and television shows proliferate that attempt to answer this question and explore it. In Out There, Space.com senior writer Dr. Michael Wall treats that question as merely the beginning, touching off a wild ride of exploration into the final frontier. He considers, for instance, the myriad of questions that would arise once we do discover life beyond Earth (an eventuality which, top NASA officials told Wall, is only drawing closer).

Is it science? Is it religion? What exactly is the Design Revolution? This book answers the toughest questions about Intelligent Design. As the Intelligent Design movement has gained momentum over recent years, questions have naturally arisen to challenge its provocative claims. With clarity and concision, William Dembski responds to the most vexing questions and objections raised by experts and non-experts.

What does it mean to be human, to live on planet Earth, in the universe as it is now understood? Best-selling author and mathematical cosmologist Brain Swimme takes us on a journey through the cosmos in search of the “new story” that is developing in answer to this age-old question.

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.

"The Accelerating Universe is not only an informative book about modern cosmology. It is rich storytelling and, above all, a celebration of the human mind in its quest for beauty in all things." (Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams)

Let us journey, with beloved physicist Carlo Rovelli, into the heart of a black hole. Let us slip beyond its boundary, the horizon, and tumble - on and on - down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we'll see geometry fold, we'll feel the equations draw tight around us. Eventually, we'll pass it: the remains of a star, deep and dense and falling further far. And then - the bottom. Where time and space end, and the white hole is born.

This book gets into the history of the JWST, the instruments it carries, new observations, and ideas of what these anomalies mean. We review some of the most important observations made to date, and finally, some theories of how to explain these incredible views of the early reality of the Universe.

Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were, for centuries, at the center of the North American universe. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science.

Once dismissed as a mathematical curiosity, black holes are so strange they almost defy belief. Since their existence was confirmed, research into the nature of black holes has opened up new vistas in physics. In this audiobook, we examine some of the most fascinating discoveries about black hole formation and behavior, the new and evolving research in gravitational wave astronomy, theoretical possibilities such as wormholes, and much more.

What's the nature of reality? Does the universe ever end? What is time, and does it even exist? These are the biggest imagination-stretching, brain-staggering questions in the universe - and here are their fascinating answers. From quantum weirdness to freaky cosmology (like white holes - which spew out matter instead of sucking it in), This Book Will Blow Your Mind takes you on an epic journey to the furthest extremes of science, to the things you never thought possible.

Human life is a staggeringly strange thing. On the surface of a ball of rock falling around a nuclear fireball in the blackness of a vacuum, the laws of nature conspired to create a naked ape that can look up at the stars and wonder where it came from. What is a human being? Objectively, nothing of consequence. Particles of dust in an infinite arena, present for an instant in eternity.

How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.

Instead of “what if the South won the Civil War?” cosmologists ask, “what if the constants that make up the fundamental building blocks of physics were different?” Physicists argue that any slight change to the laws of physics would mean a disruption in the evolution of the universe - and our existence. With the many factors that had to align for us to exist, it can seem like the laws of physics might seem finely tuned to make our existence possible. Instead of a supernatural or divine explanation, this book explores the possibility is that our universe isn’t the only one.

Black holes are the most extreme objects in the universe, and yet they are ubiquitous. Frighteningly enigmatic, these dark giants continue to astound even the scientists who spend their careers studying them. Einstein’s Monsters reveals how our comprehension of black holes is intrinsically linked to how we make sense of the universe and our place within it. From the small questions to the big ones - from the tiniest particles to the nature of space-time itself - black holes might be the key to a deeper understanding of the cosmos.

A physicist speeds across space, time, and everything in between showing that our elegant universe from the Higgs boson to antimatter to the most massive group of galaxies is shaped by hidden symmetries that have driven all our recent discoveries about the universe and all the ones to come. Why is the sky dark at night? Is it possible to build a shrink-ray gun? If there is antimatter, can there be antipeople? Why are past, present, and future our only options? Are time and space like a butterfly's wings? No one but Dave Goldberg, the coolest nerd physicist on the planet, could give a hyper-drive tour of the universe like this one.

The product of research around the globe and interviews with dozens of prominent scientists, God's Equation tells us it is almost as though Einstein were God's mouthpiece, revealing the most fundamental truths about our larger environment, truths scientists are just now confirming.

Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious – comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants.

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.