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.

The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe - from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars - constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known as dark matter and dark energy, because their precise identities are unknown. The Cosmic Cocktail is the inside story of the epic quest to solve one of the most compelling enigmas of modern science - what is the universe made of? - told by one of today’s foremost pioneers in the study of dark matter.

A breakout best seller in Italy, now available for American listeners for the first time, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began is a short, humanistic tour of the origins of the universe, earth, and life - drawing on the latest discoveries in physics to explain the seven most significant moments in the creation of the cosmos.

Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books.

Sometimes our understanding of our universe is given a huge boost by one insightful thinker. Such a boost came in the first half of the 20th century, when an obscure Belgian priest put his mind to deciphering the nature of the cosmos. The Day Without Yesterday covers the modern history of an evolving universe, and how Georges Lemaître convinced a generation of thinkers to embrace the notion of cosmic expansion and the theory that this expansion could be traced backward to the cosmic origins, a starting point for space and time that Lemaître called "the day without yesterday".

Who are we, and how did we get here? These are two of the most fundamental and far-reaching questions facing scientists and cosmologists alike and have rested at the center of human intellectual endeavor since its beginning. They are questions that stretch across numerous disciplines. Philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and mathematics are just some of the fields looking to explain the emergence of human life.

Black holes, predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity more than a century ago, have long intrigued scientists and the public with their bizarre and fantastical properties. Although Einstein understood that black holes were mathematical solutions to his equations, he never accepted their physical reality - a viewpoint many shared. After introducing the basics of the special and general theories of relativity, this book describes black holes both as astrophysical objects and theoretical "laboratories".

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.

Highly esteemed astrophysicist Joseph Silk explores the vast mysteries and speculations of the field of cosmology in a way that balances an accessible style for the general reader and enough technical detail for advanced students and professionals. Indeed, while the physical laws and origins of the universe can be endlessly complex, even Einstein once mused that they could be explained simply enough to be grasped by nonspecialists.

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.

In a time when our political and cultural perspectives feel more divisive than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin engines of enlightenment—a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science. After thinking deeply about how a scientist views the world and about what Earth looks like from space, Tyson has found that terrestrial thoughts change as our brain resets and recalibrates life's priorities, along with the actions we might take in response.

In his phenomenal bestseller A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking literally transformed the way we think about physics, the universe, reality itself. In these thirteen essays and one remarkable extended interview, the man widely regarded as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein returns to reveal an amazing array of possibilities for understanding our universe.

What is the meaning of life? Why is there something instead of nothing? Why do so many people drink coffee? This book has answers, but not to those questions. Instead, Richard Nixon's Guide to the Multiverse gives you a clearer picture of all the things you never really wanted to know about life in the multiverse. Join Richard Nixon and a merry band of adventure seekers as they navigate between every conceivable cosmological architecture, find new sources of coffee and prevent the destruction of existence.

On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency released a map of the afterglow of the big bang. Taking in 440 sextillion kilometers of space and 13.8 billion years of time, it is physically impossible to make a better map: We will never see the early universe in more detail. On the one hand, such a view is the apotheosis of modern cosmology; on the other, it threatens to undermine almost everything we hold cosmologically sacrosanct.

Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes - good and bad - are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and best-selling author Martin Rees argues that humanity’s prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow.

Uncover the Genius of Anaxagoras—The Philosopher Who Changed the Course of History Have you ever wondered how the world shifted from mythological tales to scientific reasoning? Step into the world of Anaxagoras, the pioneering thinker who dared to look beyond the heavens and see the universe as it truly is—a place governed by reason, logic, and discovery. Explore the Revolutionary Ideas: Dive deep into Anaxagoras' groundbreaking theories that transformed ancient Greek thought. Discover how he introduced the concept of Nous, the cosmic mind, and challenged the notion of divine ...

Impact argues that Earth would be a lifeless, inhospitable piece of rock without being fortuitously assaulted with meteorites throughout the history of the planet. These bombardments transformed Earth’s early atmosphere and delivered the complex organic molecules that allowed life to develop on our planet.

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.

In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.

Nikola Tesla (1856 -1943) was a Serbian American inventor, engineer, and physicist. In his work Talking with Planets, the prodigious inventor describes receiving radio waves from nonterrestrial sources.