Science Universe

I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to be some kind of hero. But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado - taking you with it - you have no choice but to go along, you know? Sure, I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little bluebirds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can’t be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion.

For a physicist, all the world is information. The universe and its workings are the ebb and flow of information. We are all transient patterns of information, passing on the recipe for our basic forms to future generations using a four-letter digital code called DNA. In this engaging and mind-stretching account, Vlatko Vedral considers some of the deepest questions about the universe and considers the implications of interpreting it in terms of information.

What if saving Earth meant rewriting its entire history? Solaya’s sun is dying. Earth is next. Only a secret team of scientists—and one humble historian—can rewrite both their futures. For generations, the planet Solaya was consumed by war and chaos—until the world's greatest minds united to build a better future. Their breakthroughs led to unimaginable technology, including the ability to shift matter—and even living beings—into a neighboring universe. Now faced with extinction, Solaya’s leaders turn to a parallel Earth for salvation. Through powerful devices called ...

This omnibus volume contains two Alliance-Union novels, Merchanter's Luck and Forty Thousand in Gehenna.

The Jaegers are pushing deep into Star Force territory on an exploratory mission, bypassing the V'kit'no'sat Grand Border. The only question is, how far will they get before the might of the Empire whittles down their planet-sized Baseship to the point where they can destroy it.

'Are you happy in your life?' Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. Before he wakes to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before the man he's never met smiles down at him and says, 'Welcome back, my friend.' In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

I’m Cora Marek, and I’ve royally screwed up. I failed my semester final and exposed the angels and demons to the human world. Luckily, the Alliance is giving me a chance to fix things. If I go on record stating it was all a hoax, I’ll be free to return to Harris Academy. But I’m not sure I’ve made the right choice. War is mounting outside the academy. The humans are afraid of us, and they want to take us down. If only we could show them they don’t have to be afraid. But Kellan - my partner and the guy I’m hopelessly pining for - insists exposing ourselves is a mistake.

The year is 3030. For the past 300 years, since the Star League collapse and the rise of the Five Successor States, these mortal enemies have fought over space, land, and politics. But a new threat looms just outside the Inner Sphere. The descendants of an old Star League general, the Clans, bred to be the best military force humanity has ever seen, have come to take what they believe is rightfully theirs.

When humanity expanded beyond the safety of Earth to new stars and horizons, it never dreamed what dangers would be encounter there. When the theocratic alien juggernaut known as the Covenant declared war upon the fragile human empire, millions of lives were lost - but millions of heroes also rose to the challenge. This collection of 11 stories dives into the depths of the vast Halo universe, not only from the perspective of those who fought and died to save humanity, but also from those who vowed to wipe it out of existence.

When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last ones left – and whatever came for the others will one day come for them. Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals – anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable.

Storm is born into a world of secrets - an island no one visits, names no one will say, and deaths that no one will talk about. The answers are locked in his species' troubled past, guarded by the fierce creasia cats. But when Storm's friends are threatened, he decides that he must act, pitting himself against the creasia to show that they can be resisted and outwitted. To prove his point, he must stay one step ahead of clever hunters, who have more to lose than Storm imagines.

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most illuminating scientific thinking about these and other abiding mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by brilliance and simplicity.

No one knows the true motives of Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. He's a mastermind criminal who gave up his place at the head of the dark underworld to become a legitimate member of Evenwaith's cities. But soon he was reaching out to powerful enemies - the slimy aliens called the Nuel. Loo-Macklin negotiates an illusory peace agreement and gains precious alien secrets in the process. Is he after peace, power or pure evil? With enemy starships beginning to amass, we won't have to wait long to find out.

Our universe has been growing for nearly 14 billion years. But almost everything about it, from the elements that forged stars, planets, and lifeforms, to the fundamental forces of physics, can be traced back to what happened in just the first three minutes of its existence. In this book, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg describes in wonderful detail what happened in these first three minutes.

Blood Legacy continues the saga of the Clan invasion begun in 3030. Jaime Wolf has brought all the key leaders of the Inner Sphere together to put to rest old blood feuds and power struggles. But old hatreds and suspicions die hard.

Twelve year old Jake's middle school is about to be shut down—unless Jake and his friends can figure out how to save it. When Jake spies a bowl of jellybeans at the hotel where his mom works, he eats them. But those weren't just jellybeans. One of the scientists at his mom's conference is developing the world's first ingestible information pills. And that's what Jake ate.

With origins in the Old Universe, the malevolent, acquisitive intelligence of Tinsori Light sought to infect others with itself and send those agents out into the wide new universe to infect even more. For centuries, two heroes stood between Tinsori Light and the vulnerable universe—Light Keepers Jen Sin yos'Phelium and Lorith of the Sanderat. Just when it seemed that they—merely human—must fail, Tinsori Light, enfeebled by aged systems, succumbed to the stress of a unique spatial event—and died, leaving the station a shell. Luckily, the light keepers have back-up.

A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.

Michael and Melanie Anderle are hauling a tanker full of oil with their Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler when they're struck by a temporal irregularity that sends them, the truck, and their daughter back in time a thousand years. The bubble that transports them also grabs a chemist and her two young children, along with half a convenience store in the middle of the United States. They just want to make a decent life for themselves in this new world of the past, with their Peterbilt and its oil providing a means of transportation, a generator, and shelter.

In the 300 years after defeating the Thandol Empire, Mirikami formed the Galactic Police Force. It isn’t a cop-on-the-corner force. The GPF is paramilitary with naval assets, patrolling the Federation and the former Empire. The GPF guards against threats by the old Empire’s most aggressive species.