Showing results for "Ripples" in Astronomy & Space Science

Brought to you by Penguin. How The Solar System Shaped Human History – And May Help Save Our Planet Our solar system is an extraordinary place where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so...

Ripples in Spacetime is an engaging account of the international effort to complete Einstein's project, capture his elusive ripples, and launch an era of gravitational-wave astronomy that promises to explain, more vividly than ever before, our universe's structure and origin. The quest for gravitational waves involved years of risky research and many personal and professional struggles that threatened to derail one of the world's largest scientific endeavors.

Across millennia, cultures and civilizations have envisioned the ability to revisit the past, glimpse the future, or even rewrite fate. From ancient mythologies to modern science fiction epics, the allure of time travel persists as one of humanity’s most profound and enduring fascinations.

At the two four-kilometre long LIGO observatories in the US, scientists developed incredibly sensitive detectors, capable of spotting a movement 100 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. In 2015, they spotted the ripples produced by two black holes spiralling into each other, setting spacetime quivering. This was the first time black holes had ever been directly detected, and it promises far more for the future of astronomy. Brian Clegg presents a compelling story of human technical endeavour and a powerful new path to understand the workings of the universe.

Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our fragile blue planet: Earth. In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, Dagomar Degroot...