Space Engineering

When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the Moon became a legend. In First Man, author James R. Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite into orbit around the Earth. Little more than a month later, the Soviets launched Sputnik II. News of Sputnik created panic in Washington, D.C. Within days, the U.S. military began a madcap race to space full of crashes, skullduggery, and backstabbing - until Eisenhower's secret civilian program surpassed the Soviets by putting the first American, a hero monkey named Gordo, into orbit.

Let us journey, with beloved physicist Carlo Rovelli, into the heart of a black hole. We slip beyond its horizon and tumble down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we see geometry fold. Time and space pull and stretch. And finally, at the black hole’s core, space and time dissolve, and a white hole is born. Rovelli has dedicated his career to uniting the time-warping ideas of general relativity and the perplexing uncertainties of quantum mechanics. In White Holes, he reveals the mind of a scientist at work.

Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious Universe. Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore - there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the Universe: The enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available.

In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century?

Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing? Krauss’ answers to these and other timeless questions, in a wildly popular lecture on YouTube, has attracted almost a million viewers. One of the few prominent scientists to have actively crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss reveals that modern science is indeed addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing—with surprising and fascinating results.

Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: The Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists has been found. In The Particle at the End of the Universe, Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event.

In this audiobook, astrophysicist Janna Levin blends memoir and visionary science to provide a groundbreaking personal account of her life and ideas.

Professor Brian Cox uncovers some of the most extraordinary natural events on Earth and in the universe and beyond. From the immensity of the universe and the roundness of Earth to the form of every single snowflake, the forces of nature shape everything we see. Pushed to extremes, the results are astonishing. In seeking to understand the everyday world, the colours, structure, behaviour and history of our home, we develop the knowledge and techniques necessary to step beyond the everyday.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, here shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity. According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; and God exists only as an idea in human minds.

In Into the Unknown, astrophysicist Kelsey Johnson takes us to the edge of scientific understanding about the universe: What caused the Big Bang? What happens inside black holes? Are there other dimensions? She doesn’t just celebrate what we know but rather what we don’t, and asks what it means if we never find that knowledge. Exploring the convergence of science, philosophy, and theology, Johnson argues we must reckon with possibilities—including those that may be beyond human comprehension.

According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and life is an accident devoid of meaning. Thanks to a new understanding of evolution, as well as recent advances in our understanding of the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature’s simplest “parts” come together to form ever-greater “wholes” in a process that has no end in sight. Bobby Azarian explains the science behind this new view of reality and explores what it means for all of us.

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.

Did you know there are 88 constellations in the night sky? Which one looks like a hunter? Find out more in Constellations.

Since its 2009 launch, the Kepler satellite has discovered more than 2,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. More exoplanets are being discovered all the time, remarkable in their variety. Astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore these remarkable recent discoveries: planets revolving around pulsars, planets made of diamond, planets that are mostly water, and numerous rogue planets wandering through the emptiness of space.

Audie Award, History/Biography, 2016. On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 of the 24 moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, A Man on the Moon conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail.

Based on a series of lectures given at Cambridge University, The Theory of Everything presents the most complex concepts of physics—both past and present—in a clear and accessible manner. Stephen Hawking enlightens readers and exposes them to the rich history of scientific thought and the complexities of the universe in which we live.

We are living in a golden age in astronomy and in the search for life the universe. Over the last few decades, space exploration has shown that not only are there habitable environments within our solar system, but there are millions of exoplanets within our galaxy that could support life. We are on the cusp of breakthroughs that will revolutionize our understanding of our place in the cosmos in. In The Secret Life of the Universe, astrobiologist and the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute Nathalie A. Cabrol takes us to the frontiers of the search for life.

In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes—and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing. Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos.