Astronomy History

Albert Einstein described Relativity as a "popular explosion" of his famous theory. Written in 1916, it introduced the lay audience to the remarkable perspective which had overturned theoretical physics. Einstein's genius was to express this perspective in understandable terms.

Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.

Right now, you are orbiting a black hole. The Earth goes around the Sun, and the Sun goes around the centre of the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole—the strangest and most misunderstood phenomenon in the galaxy. In A Brief History of Black Holes, University of Oxford astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst charts the scientific breakthroughs that have uncovered the weird and wonderful world of black holes, from Hawking radiation to the iconic first photographs of a black hole in 2019.

On a cold January morning in 1986, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger, despite warnings against doing so by many individuals including Allan McDonald. The fiery destruction of Challenger on live television moments after launch remains an indelible image in the nation's collective memory. In Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, relives the tragedy from where he stood at Launch Control Center.

What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed that it did - and in doing so, put at risk everything we know about the fundamental laws of the universe. Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft realized the threat and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics.

A Russian dissident, a Jesuit priest, and an American mule skinner are but a few of the bold visionaries who crafted the scientific story of cosmic origins. The collective insights of these and numerous creative thinkers advanced human understanding from mythology to mathematics, yielding falsifiable alternatives to ancient folklore and campfire tales. Listening to the Big Bang tells the dramatic human story—filled with colorful characters, unsung catalysts, and glorified heroes—which made the Big Bang the leading cosmological theory.

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

This fascinating new volume tells the story of contact between aliens and humans from all across the globe, dating back to 1932, including meetings with military personnel and American presidents such as Eisenhower and Kennedy. For the first time, a former member of MI6 reveals her conversation with Neil Armstrong at a NASA conference, when she confirmed that there were "other" spacecraft on the moon when Apollo 11 landed in 1969. Armstrong also confirmed that the CIA was behind the cover-up.

For more than half a century, physicists and astronomers engaged in heated dispute over the possibility of black holes in the universe. The weirdly alien notion of a space-time abyss from which nothing escapes - not even light - seemed to confound all logic. This engrossing audiobook tells the story of the fierce black hole debates and the contributions of Einstein, Hawking, and other leading thinkers who completely altered our view of the universe.

Stephen Hawking’s worldwide best seller A Brief History of Time remains a landmark volume in scientific writing. But for those who have asked for a more accessible formulation of its key concepts - the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, and the history and future of the universe - A Briefer History of Time is Professor Hawking’s response.

Few perspectives epitomize the sheer drama and sacrifice of combat more perfectly than those of the fighter pilots of World War II. As romanticized as any soldier in history, the World War II fighter pilot was viewed as larger than life: a dashing soul waging war amongst the clouds. In the 65-plus years since the Allied victory, stories of these pilots' heroics have never been in short supply. But what about their adversaries - the highly skilled German aviators who pushed the Allies to the very brink of defeat?

This is a fascinating introduction to the history of Western astronomy, from prehistoric times to the origins of astrophysics in the mid-19th century. Historical records are first found in Babylon and Egypt, and after two millennia the arithmetical astronomy of the Babylonians merged with the Greek geometrical approach to culminate in the Almagest of Ptolemy. This legacy was transmitted to the Latin West via Islam and led to Copernicus's claim that the Earth is in motion.

In April 1970, during the glory days of the Apollo space program, NASA sent Navy Captain Jim Lovell and two other astronauts on America's fifth mission to the moon. Only 55 hours into the flight of Apollo 13, disaster struck: a mysterious explosion rocked the ship, and soon its oxygen and power began draining away. Written with all the color and drama of the best fiction, Apollo 13 (previously published as Lost Moon) tells the full story of the moon shot that almost ended in catastrophe.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times best sellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage, and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in Central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe.

On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on reentry before the nation's eyes, and all seven astronauts aboard were lost. Author Mike Leinbach was a key leader in the search and recovery effort as NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens more federal, state, and local agencies combed an area of rural east Texas the size of Rhode Island for every piece of the shuttle and her crew they could find. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it would become the largest ground search operation in US history.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster, based on fascinating in-depth reporting and new archival research—a riveting history that flows like a thriller.

From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies. Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds.

How to Love the Universe is a new kind of science writing by an author truly enamored of the world around him. In 10 short chapters of lyrical prose - each one an ode to a breathtaking realm of discovery - Stefan Klein uses everyday objects and events as a springboard to meditate on the beauty of the underlying science.