In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science.The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth.

    10,000 first printing.

    

    

    P. J. E. Peebles argues that the evolution proceeded from a nearly uniform initial state to a progressively more irregular and clumpy universe. The discussion centers on the largest known structures, the clusters of galaxies, the empirical evidence of the nature of the clustering, and the theories of how the clustering evolves in an expanding universe.In Chapter One the author provides an historical introduction to the subject. Chapter Two contains a survey of methods used to deal with the Newtonian approximation to the theory of the evolution of the mass distribution. Recent progress in the use of statistical measures of the clustering is described in Chapter Three. Chapters Four and Five return to techniques for dealing with cosmic evolution, in the statistical measures of clustering and under general relativity theory. Lastly, in Chapter Six Professor Peebles assesses the progress in attempts to link theory and observation to arrive at a well established physical picture of the nature and evolution of the universe.

    "Monsters in the Sky" is the sequel to Paolo Maffei's popular "Beyond the Moon" (MIT Press, 1978), which gave lay readers a grand tour of the natural order of the universe.Beginning with comets, "Monsters in the Sky" moves outward from our solar system, from one enigma to the next, ending with those farthest removed, the invisible "hidden mass" of galactic clusters extremely distant from us. Between the comets and the hidden galactic mass, the book's topics include: satellite clouds, dust rings, cyrillids and tektites, the mysterious planet Vulcan, nebulae and novae, super-supernovae, "runaway stars," the future of our own star, X-rays, the probable cause of the dinosaurs' demise, black holes (probably one of the best discussions of this subject), white holes, journeys through space-time, BL Lacertae objects, Markarian, N, and Seyfert galaxies, quasars, and anomalous red shifts.