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In June 1925, 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a small, treeless island in the North Sea called Helgoland. It was there that he came up with one of the most transformative scientific concepts: quantum theory. Almost a century later, quantum physics has given us many startling ideas: ghost waves, distant objects that seem magically connected to each other, cats that are both dead and alive. Today our understanding of the world around us is based on this theory. And yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

How does Einstein’s description of space and time compare with Doctor Who? Can James Bond really escape from an armor-plated railroad car by cutting through the floor with a laser concealed in a wristwatch? What would it take to create a fully intelligent android, such as Star Trek’s Commander Data? Exploring Science Through Science Fiction addresses these and other intriguing questions, using science fiction as a springboard for discussing fundamental science concepts and cutting-edge science research. 

In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.  

Peter has motor neurone disease, a condition universally considered by doctors to be terminal. It will destroy his nerve cells, and he is told that within an average of two years, it will take his life, too. But, face to face with death, he decides there is another way. Using his background in science and technology, he navigates a new path, one that will enable him not just to survive but to thrive.

In The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter - all with a new spin informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek. One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant and buoyantly non-traditional.

Given the fact that there are perhaps 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone and perhaps 400 billion galaxies in the universe, it stands to reason that somewhere out there, in the 14-billion-year-old cosmos, there is or once was a civilization at least as advanced as our own. The sheer enormity of the numbers almost demands that we accept the truth of this hypothesis. Why, then, have we encountered no evidence, no messages, no artifacts of these extraterrestrials? 

The Cold War saw scientists in East and West racing to create amazing new technologies, the like of which the world had never seen. Yet not everyone was taken by surprise. This entertaining account, offering a plethora of little-known facts and insights from previously classified military projects, shows how the real-world science of the Cold War followed in the footsteps of SF - and how the two together changed our perception of both science and scientists and paved the way to the world we live in today. 

From novels and short stories to television and film, popular media has made a cottage industry of predicting the end of the world will be caused by particle accelerators. Rather than allay such fears, public pronouncements by particle scientists themselves often unwittingly fan the flames of hysteria. This book surveys media depictions of particle accelerator physics and the perceived dangers these experiments pose. 

We are on the threshold of interplanetary travel: SpaceX just launched the first manned commercial flight to the international space station; NASA’s 5fifh rover landing is due on Mars in 2021. Not since the moon landing in 1969 has space - or the promise of a utopian future for humanity - felt so close. Do we dare to reach for it?