Science Fiction Physics

Did NASA really spend millions creating a pen that would write in space? Is chocolate poisonous to dogs? Does stress cause gray hair? These questions are a sample of the urban lore investigated in this audiobook, Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths. Drawing from Scientific American’s “Fact or Fiction” and “Strange But True” columns, we’ve selected 58 of the most surprising, fascinating, useful, and just plain wacky topics confronted by our writers over the years.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future...unbeknownst to Earth, the galaxy is home to a number of spacefaring societies. This confederation enforces a strict protocol forbidding any contact with civilizations that have not yet achieved both a substantial spacefaring capability and sufficient maturity to control the technology explosion before triggering their own extinction.

Four sci-fi short stories where you'll find good computers, people who regret their past, and an explanation for something you're familiar with.

Southern Africa, 2065. Liyan Madikizela is four months pregnant when her partner Tym, a deep-web researcher, reads out a puzzling entry from an Englishwoman's 1836 travel journal. While visiting a lush farm with a manor house set below a loaf-shaped mountain, the writer reportedly saw men in futuristic suits and helmets carrying armaments, some of which seemed to emit light. But when Tym tries to view remnants of the farm via satellite imagery, it remains a mystery. Finding the place becomes his obsession, and later, when city inhabitants flee to the countryside after a solar storm, he ...

Under the Stars: Bedtime Astrophysics transports curious kids and inquisitive adults on an incredible journey through the night sky. Explore our solar system from the comfort of your cosy bedroom. Find out why the sky is blue. Fly around a black hole and peer inside! Learn why Jupiter has stripes. When astrophysicist Lisa Harvey-Smith isn't looking skyward, she is answering the smart questions of school kids. Her engaging storytelling brings the night sky to life, giving amazing new perspectives to young explorers who are always asking, 'Why?'

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

In a world where death has become predictable, one girl holds the key to saving time itself. Sixteen-year-old Lena Mitchell has always seen people's death dates floating above their heads—a curse she's kept secret her entire life. But when everyone in her small town suddenly shares the same expiration date, she realizes her curse might be the only thing standing between her community and annihilation. As a shadowy tech corporation's temporal experiment spirals out of control, Lena must join forces with Marcus, a mysteriously immune teenage barista, and Jimmy, the son of a brilliant ...

Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk, a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate, became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane.

String Theory.Quantum Mechanics.Joey Ramone.Zoe Stanton’s life used to be normal. Which is to say normal, but by no means average. Then her mother died and with her passing came the era of the new normal; one that was anything but.And now her father was gone too.Zoe arrived home from school one afternoon to discover her father missing and his basement office in ruin. What’s more, there was a curious new addition to the Stanton family home. An old utility closet had mysteriously transformed into a portal to the infinite. Zoe was about to venture deep into the weird world of quantum theory.

Mark Maxwell Series #1117 By Garry Higgins In 2087, Earth's atmosphere has collapsed and humanity's survivors cling to existence inside Sanctuary, the last functioning biodome. When former NASA quantum physicist Mark Maxwell is conscripted to investigate mysterious energy fluctuations threatening the facility, he uncovers a secret that defies comprehension—a quantum gateway capable of manipulating time itself. As Sanctuary's life support systems rapidly fail, Mark discovers a horrifying truth: this isn't humanity's first apocalypse, but the sixth iteration of a time loop created by Dr. ...

What if reality isn't what we think it is—and someone found a way to prove it? When brilliant physicist Dr. Marcus Emerson demonstrates a technology capable of altering the fabric of reality itself, he feels he has invented humanity's next big leap forward. However, as test subjects begin to experience vivid other worlds that refuse to remain contained in the laboratory, perception psychologist Dr. Aria Vance learns a horrifying truth: the machine isn't simply altering how people perceive the world; it's fragmenting existence itself. Following the strange disappearance of their most ...

In Zoom, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an informative and entertaining style and a knack for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone.

What’s scarier than a vampire? That’s right physics. Add both together, add a murder mystery, some time travel, a battle between two classic muscle cars and you have a story. Another body was found in the park. Same details as the others, odd clothing from centuries ago, no ID, and all of his blood had been drained. Detective Dani Foster put the puzzle pieces together and realized this serial killer was not only hiding in the distant future, he used his ability to time-travel as a weapon. This body was different. It was a message. She would be the killer’s next victim. What this ...

How does Einstein’s description of space and time compare with Doctor Who? Can James Bond really escape from an armor-plated railroad car by cutting through the floor with a laser concealed in a wristwatch? What would it take to create a fully intelligent android, such as Star Trek’s Commander Data? Exploring Science Through Science Fiction addresses these and other intriguing questions, using science fiction as a springboard for discussing fundamental science concepts and cutting-edge science research.

The afterlife doesn't come with a manual. In fact, Hart and Bowler (two ordinary but dead men) have had to work out the rules of their new existence for themselves. It's that fact (along with being unable to leave the boundaries of their city center, unable to communicate with the other lost souls, unable to rest in case The Beast catches up with them) that makes getting out of their situation a priority. But Hart and Bowler don't know why they're there in the first place; if they ever want to leave, they will have to find all the answers to be able to understand the physics of the dead.

Discovery & Destruction In the electrifying second installment of the Galactic Travelers series, Frank Bryant returns to his home planet, now a bustling urban center transformed by human expansion. As a key figure in the Wormhole Initiative, Frank is immediately thrust into turmoil when his team comes under attack on their research station. Frank’s homecoming is bittersweet. While he reconnects with family and revisits his childhood haunts, he cannot escape the looming crisis. Powerful corporations and government agencies vie for control of the Initiative’s groundbreaking discoveries, ...

Dream Breach: First Contact (The Dream Breach Series, Book 0) 🔹 What if your dreams weren’t just dreams? What if they were the key to unlocking the deepest mysteries of existence? Dr. Sandra Chen believes in facts, data, and logic. But when her sister Emily vanishes after working on a classified consciousness experiment, Sandra is forced to confront a terrifying possibility—what if reality isn’t what we think? At Greenstone Medical Center, coma patients exhibit impossible brainwave patterns—as if their minds are communicating across dimensions. As Sandra investigates, she ...

A desperate voyage across the galaxy to save the human race... What could go wrong? "Like Hitchhiker's Guide... but they have no Guide!" "What's crazier than Alice jumping down the rabbit hole? Zaggar and Robbins' journey through a Wormhole! "Full of original ideas!" Will Ziegfeld Zaggar and his reluctant sidekick, Jack Robbins, finally get a few minutes to relax after their journey across parallel worlds trying to save the Multiverse from a bad case of accelerated entropy? Or will they be interrupted by a dirty rotten alien invasion? In their second outing, our mismatched duo will be ...

When the Alpha Event struck Earth, the rules of reality itself were rewritten. Millions died as the world was transformed into a lethal realm of magic and monsters. Yet somehow, an overweight, out-of-shape construction supervisor managed not just to survive the apocalypse, but inadvertently became an reluctant hero after saving thousands from one of the many monsters spawned by the mana storm.