Science Cosmology

With his signature wit and thought-provoking insights, Neil deGrasse Tyson - one of our foremost thinkers on all things space - illuminates the past, present, and future of space exploration and brilliantly reminds us why NASA matters now as much as ever. As Tyson reveals, exploring the space frontier can profoundly enrich many aspects of our daily lives, from education systems and the economy to national security and morale.

In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the Moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: The far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail. How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot. When the Earth Had Two Moons is an astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world’s most innovative planetary geologists.

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.

In his first book since 2002's acclaimed The Hidden Face of God, popular scientist Gerald Schroeder combines decades of scientific research and biblical study to present a groundbreaking new paradigm of how to understand God. Fans of Jack Miles' God: A Biography, Francis Collins' The Language of God, and Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible will find much to contemplate in God According to God.

In Journey Through The Solar System, you can join the experience of a lifetime without leaving your home. Get ready for an unforgettable space holiday! You're about to launch on a voyage beyond your wildest dreams, touring the marvels of our Solar System (the sun, planets, comets, and asteroids) and the mysteries of the cosmos.

Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: We still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history.

Through his extensive research into the interconnected wisdom of the ancients, Scranton shows that the forgotten instructional tradition at the source of this knowledge was deliberately encoded to survive for countless generations. By piecing it back together, we can discover the ancient plan for guiding humanity forward toward greater enlightenment.

Discover the science behind the most popular sci-fi franchise of all time. Capturing the imagination and hearts of crowds worldwide, Star Wars is a fantastic feat of science fiction and fantasy. We marvel at the variety of creatures and technology and the mystery behind the force. But how much of the Star Wars world is rooted in reality? Could we see some of the extraordinary inventions materialize in our world?

How big is the universe? In the early twentieth century, scientists took sides. One held that the entire universe was contained in the Milky Way galaxy. Their champion was the strong-willed astronomer Harlow Shapley. Another camp believed that the universe was so vast that the Milky Way was just one galaxy among billions—the view that would prevail, proven by the equally headstrong Edwin Hubble.

When Stephen Hawking died, he was widely recognized as the world's best physicist, and even its smartest person. He was neither. In Hawking Hawking, science journalist Charles Seife explores how Stephen Hawking came to be thought of as humanity's greatest genius. Hawking spent his career grappling with deep questions in physics, but his renown didn't rest on his science. He was a master of self-promotion, hosting parties for time travelers, declaring victory over problems he had not solved, and wooing billionaires.

On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency released a map of the afterglow of the big bang. Taking in 440 sextillion kilometers of space and 13.8 billion years of time, it is physically impossible to make a better map: We will never see the early universe in more detail. On the one hand, such a view is the apotheosis of modern cosmology; on the other, it threatens to undermine almost everything we hold cosmologically sacrosanct.

You are reading the word now right now. But what does that mean? What makes the ephemeral moment "now" so special? Its enigmatic character has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. Einstein showed that the flow of time is affected by both velocity and gravity, yet he despaired at his failure to explain the meaning of now. Equally puzzling: Why does time flow? Some physicists have given up trying to understand and call the flow of time an illusion.

Egypt's civilization can be traced back to the time 300 years before and after the advent of modernity, though there is no agreement on its origins. Egypt's sequential conquest of Persia, Greece, and Rome ushered in the Graeco-Roman Period. During this period of Roman expansion, polytheistic religions predominated, monotheistic faiths emerged, Greek philosophy saw into science and technology, and diverse cultures coexisted in a tolerant atmosphere.

Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores these questions and more - from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.

In this special thematic anthology, we traverse the solar system, the galaxies and the multiverse, voyaging across space to explore 25 celestial objects and phenomena. Included are programmes on the universe, the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets - among them our near neighbours, Venus and Mars. Also featured are discussions on comets, asteroids and black holes, as well as eclipses, exoplanets and the mysterious, invisible substance known as 'dark matter'.

Letters from the Universe presents a new, simplistic framework for this vast expanse we exist in. By understanding the cosmos and knowing how everything began, we can emulate the ways of the universe and orchestrate a beautiful symphony of life, love, and happiness.

You're no idiot, of course. You know Heisenburg's uncertainty principle has nothing to do with where you put your car keys. But modern cosmology is relatively complicated. The mystery of the universe definitely isn't one we can flip to the end to see whodunit. That hasn't stopped physicists, astronomers, and philosophers from searching for clues! The topic is infinite (literally), but once you've listened to this audiobook, you'll have a solid idea of our place in the universe and even where the cosmos itself might be headed.

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.

“As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.” So begins Alan Lightman’s playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter - then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas.

Calling upon fascinating areas of alternative science, Wilcock's unique philosophy connects the human species and the rest of the cosmos, proposing that it is in our power to usher in the Golden Age prophesied in so many ancient cultures and spiritual traditions. Unlike the doom-and-gloom viewpoints depicted in big-budget disaster films, Wilcock believes that 2012 may be a watermark for when a widespread acceptance of a greater reality will begin to occur—and in his book, he lays out many of the blueprints for such a Golden Age.