The only question is when. In the meantime, we need to get much better at finding objects hurtling our way, and if they’re large enough to penetrate the atmosphere without burning up, figure out what to do about them. We owe many of science’s most important discoveries to the famed Meteor Crater, a mile-wide dimple on the Colorado Plateau created by an asteroid hit 50,000 years ago. In his masterfully researched Fire in the Sky, Dillow unpacks what the Crater has to tell us. Prior to the early 1900s, the world believed that all craters—on the Earth and Moon—were formed by volcanic activity. Not so. The revelation that Meteor Crater and others like it were formed by impacts with space objects has led to a now accepted theory about what killed off the dinosaurs, and it has opened up a new field of asteroid observation, which has recently brimmed with urgency. Dillow looks at great asteroid hits of the past and spends time with modern-day asteroid hunters and defense planning experts, including America’s first Planetary Defense Officer. Satellite sensors confirm that a Hiroshima-scale blast occurs in the atmosphere every year, and a smaller, one-kiloton blast every month. While Dillow makes clear that the objects above can be deadly, he consistently inspires awe with his descriptions of their size, makeup, and origins. At once a riveting work of popular science and a warning to not take for granted the space objects hurtling overhead, Fire in the Sky is, above all, a testament to our universe’s celestial wonders.

    These are not inventions of fantasy or science fiction, but are places that really exist-in our own solar system.Now with 190,000 copies in print, here is a spectacular Grand Tour of the solar system featuring a unique blend of science and art-photographs along with dazzling full-color paintings, drawings, and maps based on years of astronomer William Hartmann's research, personal observation, and interviews with colleagues. In text and diagrams, too, The Grand Tour explains how the strange and uncanny worlds on the journeys came to be, and what it would be like to actually set foot upon them today. The book includes an atlas of the planets and their satellites, and of the Earth's moon. Complete with a selection of previously unpublished photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts, and by the Mariner, Viking, and Pioneer planetary probes, The Grand Tour is unique and breathtaking, majestic and eerie, and wonderful, taking the reader to more, and to the beyond. Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, and Newbridge Book Club.

    In the last few years, scientists have made huge strides towards answering that question. In The Aliens are Coming!, comedian and bestselling science writer Ben Miller takes us on a fantastic voyage of discovery, from the beginnings of life on earth to the very latest search for alien intelligence. What soon becomes clear is that the hunt for extra-terrestrials is also an exploration of what we actually mean by life. What do you need to kickstart life? How did the teeming energy of the Big Bang end up as frogs, trees and quantity surveyors? How can evolution provide clues about alien life? What might it look like? (Probably not green and sexy, sadly.) As our probes and manned missions venture out into the solar system, and our telescopes image Earth-like planets with ever-increasing accuracy, our search for alien life has never been more exciting - or better funded. The Aliens are Coming! is a comprehensive, accessible and hugely entertaining guide to that search, and our quest to understand the very nature of life itself.

    From how to prepare for take-off and the experience of leaving Earth’s atmosphere, to the reality of living in the confines of a spaceship and the strange sensation of weightlessness, this is an adventure like no other.Suit up, strap in, and enjoy the ride!

    QFT is the only physics theory that makes sense and that dispels or resolves the paradoxes of relativity and quantum mechanics that have confused and mystified so many people.

    To shape debates over health care, energy policy, space travel, and other vital issues, ordinary citizens must engage directly with research rather than relying on pundits’ and politicians’ interpretations. Otherwise, fringe opinions that have been discredited in the scientific community can take hold in the public imagination. At the same time, scientists must understand their roles as communicators and ambassadors as well as researchers.Rees not only diagnoses this central problem but also explains how scientists and the general public can deploy a global, long-term perspective to address the new challenges we face. In the process, he reveals critical shortcomings in our current system—for example, the tendency to be overly anxious about minor hazards while underrating the risk of potential catastrophes. Offering a strikingly clear portrait of the future of science, Rees tackles such diverse topics as the human brain, the possibility that humans will colonize other planets, and the existence of extraterrestrial life in order to distinguish between what scientists can hope to discover and what will always lie beyond our grasp.A fresh perspective on science’s significance and potential, From Here to Infinity will inspire and enlighten.

    Dark matter. These strange and invisible substances don't just sound mysterious: their unexpected appearance in the cosmic census is upending long-held notions about the nature of the Universe. Astronomers have long known that the Universe is expanding, but everything they could see indicated that gravity should be slowing this spread. Instead, it appears that the Universe is accelerating its expansion and that something stronger than gravity--dark energy--is at work. In Einstein's Telescope Evalyn Gates, a University of Chicago astrophysicist, transports us to the edge of contemporary science to explore the revolutionary tool that unlocks the secrets of these little-understood cosmic constituents. Based on Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravitational lensing, or "Einstein's Telescope," is enabling new discoveries that are taking us toward the next revolution in scientific thinking--one that may change forever our notions of where the Universe came from and where it is going.

    With superb color sky charts, diagrams, or photographs on almost every page, and clear and engaging writing, Stars and Planets is the most user-friendly and informative guide to the night sky. The product of more than twenty years' collaboration between one of the world's leading astronomy writers and the world's foremost celestial mapmaker, the new Stars and Planets features a slightly larger (but still compact) size, a more spacious and attractive design, and much new material, including more information on galaxies and star types. Simply put, Stars and Planets is indispensable. Don't leave home--at night--without it. Detailed charts covering all 88 constellations in the Northern and Southern hemispheres Data and notes on all bright stars and other objects of interest Detailed Moon maps and descriptions of the main lunar features Tips on choosing and using binoculars and telescopes, to suit any budget The only guide to provide annual planetary data as a downloadable Web resource

    Our Big Bang, our distant future, parallel worlds, the sub-atomic and intergalactic - none of them are what they seem. But there is a way to understand this immense strangeness - mathematics. Seeking an answer to the fundamental puzzle of why our universe seems so mathematical, Tegmark proposes a radical idea: that our physical world not only is described by mathematics, but that it is mathematics. This may offer answers to our deepest questions: How large is reality? What is everything made of? Why is our universe the way it is?Table of ContentsPreface 1 What Is Reality? Not What It Seems • What’s the Ultimate Question? • The Journey Begins Part One: Zooming Out 2 Our Place in Space Cosmic Questions • How Big Is Space? • The Size of Earth • Distance to the Moon • Distance to the Sun and the Planets • Distance to the Stars • Distance to the Galaxies • What Is Space? 3 Our Place in TimeWhere Did Our Solar System Come From? • Where Did theGalaxies Come From? • Where Did the Mysterious MicrowavesCome From? • Where Did the Atoms Come From? 4 Our Universe by NumbersWanted: Precision Cosmology • Precision Microwave-Background Fluctuations • Precision Galaxy Clustering • The Ultimate Map of Our Universe • Where Did Our Big Bang Come From? 5 Our Cosmic Origins What’s Wrong with Our Big Bang? • How Inflation Works • The Gift That Keeps on Giving • Eternal Inflation 6 Welcome to the Multiverse The Level I Multiverse • The Level II Multiverse • Multiverse Halftime Roundup Part Two: Zooming In 7 Cosmic Legos Atomic Legos • Nuclear Legos • Particle-Physics Legos • Mathematical Legos • Photon Legos • Above the Law? • Quanta and Rainbows • Making Waves • Quantum Weirdness • The Collapse of Consensus • The Weirdness Can’t Be Confined • Quantum Confusion 8 The Level III Multiverse The Level III Multiverse • The Illusion of Randomness • Quantum Censorship • The Joys of Getting Scooped • Why Your Brain Isn’t a Quantum Computer • Subject, Object and Environment • Quantum Suicide • Quantum Immortality? • Multiverses Unified • Shifting Views: Many Worlds or Many Words? Part Three: Stepping Back 9 Internal Reality, External Reality and Consensus Reality External Reality and Internal Reality • The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth • Consensus Reality • Physics: Linking External to Consensus Reality 10 Physical Reality and Mathematical Reality Math, Math Everywhere! • The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis • What Is a Mathematical Structure? 11 Is Time an Illusion? How Can Physical Reality Be Mathematical? • What Are You? • Where Are You? (And What Do You Perceive?) • When Are You? 12 The Level IV Multiverse Why I Believe in the Level IV Multiverse • Exploring the Level IV Multiverse: What’s Out There? • Implications of the Level IV Multiverse • Are We Living in a Simulation? • Relation Between the MUH, the Level IV Multiverse and Other Hypotheses •Testing the Level IV Multiverse 13 Life, Our Universe and Everything How Big Is Our Physical Reality? • The Future of Physics • The Future of Our Universe—How Will It End? • The Future of Life •The Future of You—Are You Insignificant? Acknowledgments Suggestions for Further Reading Index

    In What If the Earth Had Two Moons, Neil Comins leads us on a fascinating ten-world journey as we explore what our planet would be like under alternative astronomical conditions. In each case, the Earth would be different, often in surprising ways. The title chapter, for example, gives us a second moon orbiting closer to Earth than the one we have now. The night sky is a lot brighter, but that won't last forever. Eventually the moons collide, with one extra-massive moon emerging after a period during which Earth sports a Saturn-like ring. This and nine and other speculative essays provide us with insights into the Earth as it exists today, while shedding new light on the burgeoning search for life on planets orbiting other stars. Appealing to adult and young adult readers alike, this book follows on the author's previous bestseller, What If the Moon Didn't Exist?, with completely new scenarios backed by the latest astronomical research.

    Breaking down the symbols themselves, they pose a series of questions: What is energy? What is mass? What has the speed of light got to do with energy and mass? In answering these questions, they take us to the site of one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted. Lying beneath the city of Geneva, straddling the Franco-Swiss boarder, is a 27 km particle accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider. Using this gigantic machine—which can recreate conditions in the early Universe fractions of a second after the Big Bang—Cox and Forshaw will describe the current theory behind the origin of mass.Alongside questions of energy and mass, they will consider the third, and perhaps, most intriguing element of the equation: 'c' - or the speed of light. Why is it that the speed of light is the exchange rate? Answering this question is at the heart of the investigation as the authors demonstrate how, in order to truly understand why E=mc2, we first must understand why we must move forward in time and not backwards and how objects in our 3-dimensional world actually move in 4-dimensional space-time. In other words, how the very fabric of our world is constructed. A collaboration between two of the youngest professors in the UK, Why Does E=mc2? promises to be one of the most exciting and accessible explanations of the theory of relativity in recent years.

    In the hands of one of today’s hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself, a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child’s play. Carroll’s scenario is not only elegant, it’s laid out in the same easy-to- understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net. From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It’s an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.

     Astronomer Paul Murdin's inside guide will help you learn all about the solar system and its planets and satellites. It looks at the universe from a longer perspective and reveals how Saturn's moon, Titan, boasts lakes which contain liquid methane surrounded by soaring hills and valleys (exactly as the earth did before life evolved); Mercury is the shyest planet; and that the biggest volcano on Mars is 10 times the depth of the Grand Canyon.

    What will happen if humanity makes contact with another civilization on a different planet? In The Contact Paradox, space journalist Keith Cooper tackles some of the myths and assumptions that underlie SETI--the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilizations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilizations really exist. But for the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers, inspired by the Arecibo transmission, to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilizations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact. We look for qualities such as altruism and intelligence in extraterrestrial life, but what do these mean to humankind? Can we learn something about our own history when we explore what happens when two civilizations come into contact? Finally, do the answers tell us that it is safe to transmit, even though we know nothing about extraterrestrial life, or as Stephen Hawking argued, are we placing humanity in jeopardy by doing so?In The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before--where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.

    Every massive star leaves behind a black hole when it dies, and every galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole at its center. Frighteningly enigmatic, these dark giants continue to astound even the scientists who spend their careers studying them. Which came first, the galaxy or its central black hole? What happens if you travel into one—instant death or something weirder? And, perhaps most important, how can we ever know anything for sure about black holes when they destroy information by their very nature?In Einstein’s Monsters, distinguished astronomer Chris Impey takes readers on an exploration of these and other questions at the cutting edge of astrophysics, as well as the history of black holes’ role in theoretical physics—from confirming Einstein’s equations for general relativity to testing string theory. He blends this history with a poignant account of the phenomena scientists have witnessed while observing black holes: stars swarming like bees around the center of our galaxy; black holes performing gravitational waltzes with visible stars; the cymbal clash of two black holes colliding, releasing ripples in space-time.Clear, compelling, and profound, 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.