Showing titles in Cosmology

Scientists tell us that ninety-six percent of the universe is unexplained dark matter and dark energy. Also, they admit that no unifying “theory of everything” exists in physics. This shaky foundation is the basis of modern thinking about the cosmos and Earth’s place in it. Something big seems to be missing. Thus, we’re left with no choice but to question the “consensus” cosmological model. Are we really flying through space on a spinning ball within an expanding universe, while free-falling around the Sun—all as a consequence of a “Big Bang” that supposedly occurred 13.8 billion years ago?

A Journey Through the Universe is a grand tour of the most amazing celestial objects and how they fit together to build the cosmos. There's a whole universe out there.... Imagine you had a spacecraft capable of travelling through interstellar space. You climb in, blast into orbit, fly out of the solar system and keep going. Where do you end up, and what do you see along the way? The answer is: mostly nothing. Space is astonishingly, mind-blowingly empty.

Reality is not what it seems. Not fixed. Not silent. Not separate from the one who observes it. Quantum experiments reveal seams in the world… places where information appears without traveling… where outcomes wait for attention… where time behaves like something far more flexible than a river. These seams form a doorway. A narrow line where darkness gives way to light… where the familiar dissolves into the possible… where a question becomes the beginning of understanding. This book does not claim answers. It offers a key. If you have ever sensed something beneath the surface… Step closer.

We have long fantasized about finding life on planets other than our own. Yet even as we become aware of the vast expanses beyond our solar system, it remains clear that Earth is exceptional. The question is: Why? In Lucky Planet, astrobiologist David Waltham argues that Earth’s climate stability is what makes it uniquely able to support life, and it is nothing short of luck that made such conditions possible. The four-billion-year stretch of good weather that our planet has experienced is statistically so unlikely that chances are slim that we will ever encounter intelligent extraterrestrial others.

The hunt for the Higgs particle has involved the biggest, most expensive experiment ever. So exactly what is this particle? Why does it matter so much? What does it tell us about the universe? Was finding it really worth all the effort? The short answer is yes. The Higgs field is proposed as the way in which particles gain mass - a fundamental property of matter. It's the strongest indicator yet that the Standard Model of physics really does reflect the basic building blocks of our universe. Little wonder the hunt and discovery of this new particle produced such intense media interest.

The New York Times bestseller from the author of The Order of Time and Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander “One of the year’s most entrancing books about science.”—The Wall Street Journal “Clear, elegant...a whirlwind tour of some of the biggest ideas in physics...

"A porthole into another world." —Scientific American The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions...

With all the passion, curiosity, and precise yet lyrical prose that have marked his previous books, Alan Lightman here explores the emotional and philosophical questions raised by discoveries in science, focusing most intently on the human condition and the needs of humankind. He looks at the difficult dialogue between science and religion, the conflict between our human desire for permanence and the impermanence of nature, the possibility that our universe is simply an accident, the manner in which modern technology has separated us from direct experience of the world, and our resistance to the view that our bodies and minds can be explained by scientific logic and laws.

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.

What is the nature of the material world? How does it work? What is the universe and how was it formed? What is life? Where do we come from and how did we evolve? How and why do we think? What does it mean to be human? How do we know? There are many different versions of our creation story. This book tells the version according to modern science. It is a unique account, starting at the Big Bang and travelling right up to the emergence of humans as conscious intelligent beings, 13.8 billion years later.

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.

Quasars are the brightest sustained phenomena in the known universe—engines of light powered by supermassive black holes devouring matter at the centers of distant galaxies. But they are more than cosmic spectacles. Every beam of quasar light that crosses the universe accumulates an extraordinarily detailed record of the gas, matter, and structure it passes through. The intergalactic medium writes its autobiography in the spectra of quasars, using absorption lines as words and sightlines as sentences.

Can you ever truly experience your own death? Quantum physics says no. Everyone dies. But what if, from your own perspective, death is impossible to experience? Reality doesn't follow one timeline. Every quantum event creates branching worlds where all outcomes happen. You exist in branches where you survived—but not in branches where you died.

My beginner's book is your ticket to one of the coolest and most mysterious subjects out there. This isn't your average physics book. It's a portal to understanding the stuff that makes up... well, everything! Subatomic particles. Do not let their size fool you; they have a massive impact on the world around you—the fundamental part of how everything works and not as complex as you might fear.

THE PLANETS is Dava Sobel's sweeping look at our heavenly galaxy. In the spirit of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel once again brings science and history deftly to life as she explores the origins of the planets and reveals the exotic environments that exist in each of these fascinating...

A boundary-breaking astrophysicist reimagines the universe—and our place within it—in this audacious journey through the Nine Realms of the cosmos. The universe gave rise to everything: stars and cells, minds and memories, purpose and pain. But it doesn’t care about us. It follows its own...

The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014 A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014 An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014 A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff Pick In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth...

Stargazing has shaped the entire course of human civilization. The rhythm of our ancestors' lives revolved around the stars, from cycles of agriculture to patterns of birth. How radically different would humanity be if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen...nothing? In lyrical yet evidence-grounded meditations, Trotta imagines a world without stars, a dramatic alternate history in which we wouldn't understand gravity, where couldn't navigate or have much sense of time, and where our sense of the profound - of art and of the divine - was altered beyond recognition.

In this thrilling history, David Baker captures the longest possible time span—from the Big Bang to the present day—in an astonishingly concise retelling. His impressive timeline includes the "rise of complexity" in the cosmos and the creation of the first atoms; the origin of all galaxies, stars, and our solar system; and the evolution of life on Earth, from tiny single-celled organisms to human beings.

Our scientists might be armed with giant telescopes and powerful particle accelerators, yet their goal is the same one that has impelled the human imagination since ancient times: to show us our place in the universe. The result of their collective efforts is a complex story. At times it stretches the imagination just as much as the old creation myths. But its building blocks give us the power to work marvels our predecessors could scarcely comprehend. In Genesis, Guido Tonelli sets out 'to do justice to the great origin story that modern science gives us'.