Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Astronomy & Space Science

Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.

This new and long-awaited sequel to Carl Sagan's international best seller continues the electrifying journey through space and time, linking worlds within and worlds billions of miles away and envisioning a future of science tempered with wisdom. Based on National Geographic's internationally-renowned television series, this groundbreaking and visually stunning book explores how science and civilization grew up together.

In Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these discoveries: the rivalries, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.

There are deep connections between stars and atoms, between the cosmos and the microworld. Just six numbers, imprinted in the "Big Bang", determine the essential features of our entire physical world. Moreover, cosmic evolution is astonishingly sensitive to the values of these numbers. If any one of them were "untuned", there could be no stars and no life. This realization offers a radically new perspective on our universe, our place in it, and the nature of physical laws. 

The heart of this course examines the planets themselves, and reveals how they are constructed and how they differ from one another. By studying the physical astronomy of all the planets in the Solar System, we can attempt to understand their true nature. Ultimately, these lectures will bring us to a greater understanding of the Solar System's creation, which brings us again back to the beginning and what it means to us as we look outward from our rotating Earth.

As far as we can see there are countless other galaxies of all shapes and sizes set within an ever-expanding space that was created in a "Big Bang" nearly 14 billion years ago. Along with solutions to old puzzles, however, come new riddles, as most of our Universe appears to be in the form of some kind of unseen "dark matter" and incomprehensible "dark energy" whose natures and origins remain unfathomable.

In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built.

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. 

Ragnarok. Armageddon. Doomsday. Since the dawn of time, man has wondered how the world would end. In The Last Three Minutes, Paul Davies reveals the latest theories. Voiced in clear language that makes the cutting-edge science of quarks, neutrinos, wormholes, and metaverses accessible to the layman, The Last Three Minutes treats listeners to a wide range of conjectures about the ultimate fate of the universe.   

This course guides listeners through the sights of the naked- eye sky, wherein we directly witness the effects of the turning and revolving of the Earth, the artistry painted by the human mind using the sky and stars, and how the view changes with time and with our place on the planet.

In 1927 Georges Lemaître argued that our universe is expanding, a conclusion rendered more startling by the astronomical data that backed it up, presented two years later by Edwin Hubble. The speed of this expansion is governed by Hubble's constant, and Discordance tells its troubled history.

There is no more profound, enduring, or fascinating question in all of science than that of how time, space, and matter began. Now John Barrow, who has been at the cutting edge of research in this area and has written extensively about it, guides us on a journey to the beginning of time, into a world of temperatures and densities so high that we cannot recreate them in a laboratory.  

In her graceful, compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles the history of the Copernican Revolution, relating the story of astronomy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. In its midst will be her play, And the Sun Stood Still, imagining the dialogue that would have transpired between Rheticus and Copernicus in their months together. As she achieved with her bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel expands the bounds of science writing, giving us an unforgettable portrait of scientific achievement.

One of Kenyon College’s most honored professors, Timothy B. Shutt is widely renowned as a gifted polymath and lecturer. The night sky was the ancient world’s cinema, and storytellers have used this panorama to weave fascinating tales since the earliest days of mankind. This captivating series of lectures explores the mythological sagas found in the night sky and the history behind the names of the great constellations.

Two questions guide this seven-year project: First, how can we approach the phenomenon, representation, and interpretation of total solar eclipses? Second, how can we heal the historical divide separating the natural sciences from the humanities, arts, history, music, and theology? The result of this interdisciplinary investigation into eclipses is an exciting look behind the scenes—into labs, archives, museums, studies, around fieldwork in astronomy, meteorology, animal behavior, and ecophysiology.

In Apollo's Legacy, space historian Roger D. Launius explores the many-faceted stories told about the meaning of the Apollo program and how it forever altered American society. The Apollo missions marked the first time human beings left Earth's orbit and visited another world, and thus they loom large in our collective memory. Many have detailed the exciting events of the Apollo program, but Launius offers unique insight into its legacy as seen through multiple perspectives.  

Some 4.6 billion years ago, a planetary system was born from a disc of gas and dust surrounding a young star. Specks of dust, pushed into dense clumps, collided, stuck together, and grew. While the gas disappeared, the growing bodies clashed in a final violent phase, leaving a series of planets, and much debris.

On April 11, 1970, astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert were launched into space as the crew of Apollo 13. Their mission, like the missions of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, was to explore the lunar surface. But that mission was never completed. As they began the procedure for landing on the Moon, the spacecraft was rocked by a violent explosion. Oxygen began pouring out of the Service Module, and the spacecraft began to lose power. Jim Lovell radioed Mission Control with the now-famous words, "Houston, we have a problem."

If the United States couldn’t catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War. On February 20, 1962, when John Glenn blasted into orbit aboard Friendship 7, his mission was not only to circle the planet; it was to calm the fears of the free world and renew America’s sense of self-belief. Mercury Rising recreates the tension and excitement of a flight that shifted the momentum of the space race and put the United States on the path to the moon.