#bigbang #universe #cosmos #astronomy #science #theory


Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Maryland

The Origin of the Universe

We've all heard of the Big Bang, and yet few of us truly know what it is.

Renowned for making difficult ideas much less difficult than they might first appear, Simon Singh is our perfect guide to explaining why cosmologists believe that the Big Bang is an accurate description of the origin and evolution of the universe.

This highly readable and entertaining book tells the story of the many brilliant, often eccentric scientists who fought against the establishment idea of an eternal and unchanging cosmos. From such early Greek cosmologists as Anaximander to recent satellite measurements taken deep in space, Big Bang is a narrative full of anecdotes and personal histories. With characteristic clarity, Simon Singh tells the centuries-long story of mankind's attempt to understand how the universe came to be, a story which itself begins some 14 billion years ago (give or take a billion years). Simon Singh shows us that it is within the capability of all of us -- in his expert hands -- to understand the Big Bang: the fundamental theory in all of science, and a high point -- perhaps the high point -- of human achievement.

Big Bang

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Introduces the superstring theory that attempts to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics

The Elegant Universe

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Tennessee

Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?

Greene uses these questions to guide us toward modern science’s new and deeper understanding of the universe. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can bridge their spatial separation to instantaneously coordinate their behavior or even undergo teleportation, Greene reveals our world to be very different from what common experience leads us to believe. Focusing on the enigma of time, Greene establishes that nothing in the laws of physics insists that it run in any particular direction and that “time’s arrow” is a relic of the universe’s condition at the moment of the big bang. And in explaining the big bang itself, Greene shows how recent cutting-edge developments in superstring and M-theory may reconcile the behavior of everything from the smallest particle to the largest black hole. This startling vision culminates in a vibrant eleven-dimensional “multiverse,” pulsating with ever-changing textures, where space and time themselves may dissolve into subtler, more fundamental entities.

Sparked by the trademark wit, humor, and brilliant use of analogy that have made The Elegant Universe a modern classic, Brian Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

With 146 illustrations

Jacket photograph by DB Image/Brand X Pictures

The Fabric of the Cosmos

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U.K. Edition. Back cover has some schmutz.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

An Extraterrestrial Perspective

In 1973, Carl Sagan published The Cosmic Connection, a daring view of the universe, which rapidly became a classic work of popular science and inspired a generation of scientists and enthusiasts. This seminal work is reproduced here for a whole new generation to enjoy. In Sagan's typically lucid, lyrical style, he discusses many topics from astrophysics and solar system science, to colonization of other worlds, terraforming and the search for extraterrestrials. Sagan conveys his own excitement and wonder, and relates the revelations of astronomy to the most profound human problems and concerns: issues that are just as valid today as they were 30 years ago. New to this edition are Freeman Dyson's comments on Sagan's vision and the importance of the work, Ann Druyan's assessment of Sagan's cultural significance as a champion of science, and David Morrison's discussion of the advances made since 1973 and what became of Sagan's predictions.

Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection

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Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

From Quarks to the Cosmos

This book explains the fascinating world of quarks and leptons and the forces that govern their behavior. Told from an experimental physicist's perspective, it forgoes mathematical complexity, using instead particularly accessible figures and apt analogies. In addition to the story of quarks and leptons, which are regarded as well-accepted fact, the author who is a leading researcher at the world's highest energy particle physics laboratory also discusses mysteries on both the experimental and theoretical frontier, before tying it all together with the exciting field of cosmology and indeed the birth of the universe itself.

Understanding the Universe

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Mammoth Hardcover (8 to 10 lbs)

California

A Journey to the Beginning of Time and Space

This user-friendly companion to the cosmos is packed with a universe of facts, steering the reader safely through the myriads of exotic celestial objects - from active galactic nuclei to gamma-ray bursters - that lie between our home planet and the very edge of space and time.

Cosmos

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#hardcover #scifi #sciencefiction #space #cosmos #uranus #benbova

FIRST EDITION 

Ben Bova, author ofEarth, continues his exploration of the future of a human-settled Solar System with the science fiction action adventureUranus, the first of his Outer Planets trilogy.

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic, and illegal, methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus's ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.

Humans can't live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites "the tired, the sick, the poor" of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world.


The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, even hunting human prey.



Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the "oceans" of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can't have that.

Uranus

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Oklahoma

A foremost string theorist discusses such topics as Newton's perspectives on space, Einstein's fusion of space and time, and recent breakthroughs on multidimensional universe theory.

#paperback #nonfiction #nyt #bookclub #bigbang #physics #cosmos #history #science #universe


Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Washington

A half century ago, a shocking Washington Post headline claimed that the world began in five cataclysmic minutes rather than having existed for all time; a skeptical scientist dubbed the maverick theory the Big Bang. In this amazingly comprehensible history of the universe, Simon Singh decodes the mystery behind the Big Bang theory, lading us through the development of one of the most extraordinary, important, and awe-inspiring theories in science.

#paperback #astrology #cosmos #personality 

Alabama

Astrology, Our Icons, and Our Selves

"Not just a shimmering guide to our personal cosmologies written in precise and lucid prose, this book is also a devastating collection of cultural-criticism essays cum meditations on the very nature of being alive."--Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl

A soulful exploration of the twelve astrological signs embodied by our living "stars"--from divas to philosophers, poets to punks--and the ways they can help us better understand ourselves and each other, from the wildly popular astrology columnist for New York magazine's The Cut.

Whether you believe in it or not, astrology's job has never been to give us a preordained vision of the future, nor to sort us into twelve neat personality types, but to provide the tools and language for delving into our weirdest, best, most thorny contradictions, and for understanding ourselves and each other in our full complexity. The stars and the planets then are more like mirrors that show us who we are, that give us an understanding of how to be and how to move through the world; how certain people do it differently, and what we can learn by studying them.

In Madame Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars, Claire Comstock-Gay brings the sky down to Earth and points to our popular "stars"--from Aretha Franklin to Mr. Rogers, from poets in Cancer to punk singers in Scorpio--to reveal what the sky has to teach us about being human. In this wise, lyrically written guide, she examines the twelve astrological signs, illuminating the ways each one is more complicated, beautiful, and surprising than you might have been told. Claire suggests that actually it's okay, and even important, to be a seeker, to hunger for self-knowledge, and if astrology is the vehicle for that inquiry, so be it.

Madame Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars offers a clear introduction to the basics and an innovative new framework for creatively using astrology to illuminate our lives on earth. It's a road map to our internal world, yes, but Claire also reminds us that it's still our job to navigate it. Combining both heavenly insights and the earthly wisdom of writers like Cheryl Strayed and Heather Havrilesky and the poetry of Patricia Lockwood and Mary Oliver, Madame Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars offers a fresh, profound, and fun way to look at ourselves and others, and perhaps see each more clearly. And in that way, this book is not just beautiful, but transformative.

Madame Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars

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#science #nonfiction #cosmos this is a new book, but has some shelf wear

and other cosmic quandaries.

Death by black hole 

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The Portable Stanford

Cosmic Horizons

#hardcover #science #cosmos #bigbang #multiverse #Everett #universe #physics #Albania #women #Communism

New York

The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond

"A riveting tour of the cosmos from one of the brightest minds in astrophysics." --The Washington Post

A revolutionary new account of our universe's creation--and a breathtaking exploration of the landscape from which we sprang--from one of the world's most celebrated cosmologists

What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of space-time. However, as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are now giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and to test our theories about what is there. And what we are finding is upending everything we thought we knew about the cosmos and our place in it.

Mersini-Houghton is no stranger to boundaries--or to pushing through them. As a child growing up in Communist Albania, she discovered a universe beyond her walled-off world through the study of math and science, and through music. As a female cosmologist in a male-dominated field, she transcended the limits that society and her profession tried to place on her. And as a trailblazing researcher, she helped to revolutionize the study of our universe by revealing that, far from living in a cosmic Albania, with a world that ends at its borders, we are part of a larger family of universes--a multiverse--that holds wonders we are only beginning to unlock. Mersini-Houghton's groundbreaking research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and even hold the secret to the origins of existence itself. Recent evidence has revealed the signatures of such sibling universes in our own night sky, confirming Mersini-Houghton's theoretical work and offering humbling evidence that our universe is just one member of an unending cosmic family.

The incredible scientific saga of one woman's mind-expanding journey through the multiverse, Before the Big Bang will reshape our understanding of humanity's place in the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos.

Before the Big Bang

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#paperback #earthscience #geology #science #cosmos #astrobiology

Vermont

The First 4. 5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

Hailed by The New York Times for writing "with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along," nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planet's living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologist's imagination, a historian's perspective, and a naturalist's eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earth's many iterations in vivid detail--from the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet. Lucid, controversial, and on the cutting edge of its field, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order.

"A sweeping rip-roaring yarn of immense scope, from the birth of the elements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world." -Science

"A fascinating story." -Bill McKibben

The Story of Earth

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#paperback #nonfiction #paralleluniverse #cosmos #science 

Colorado

Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

Discusses recent discoveries in physics and cosmology to explore a range of multiverse proposals, and examines how the knowledge that some aspects of reality may lie beyond human comprehension might affect scientific progress.

The Hidden Reality

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#nonfiction #hardcover #science #physics #philosophy #universe #nature #reality #cosmos #earth 

Pennsylvania

Why Are We Here?

Internationally renowned, award-winning theoretical physicist, New York Times bestselling author of A Universe from Nothing, and passionate advocate for reason, Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world of reality—a grand poetic vision of nature—and how we find our place within it. In the beginning there was light. But more than this, there was gravity. After that, all hell broke loose… In A Universe from Nothing, Krauss revealed how our entire universe could arise from nothing. Now, he reveals what that something—reality—is. And, reality is not what we think or sense—it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive; it’s hidden beneath everyday experience; and its inner workings seem even stranger than the idea that something can come from nothing. In a landmark, unprecedented work of scientific history, Krauss leads us to the furthest reaches of space and time, to scales so small they are invisible to microscopes, to the birth and rebirth of light, and into the natural forces that govern our existence. His unique blend of rigorous research and engaging storytelling invites us into the lives and minds of the remarkable, creative scientists who have helped to unravel the unexpected fabric of reality—with reason rather than superstition and dogma. Krauss has himself been an active participant in this effort, and he knows many of them well. The Greatest Story challenges us to re-envision ourselves and our place within the universe, as it appears that “God” does play dice with the universe. In the incisive style of his scintillating essays for The New Yorker, Krauss celebrates the greatest intellectual adventure ever undertaken—to understand why we are here in a universe where fact is stranger than fiction.

The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far

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Oregon

The New Story of Our Origin in the Stars

Three great scientific revolutions have shaped our understanding of the cosmos and our relationship to it. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the Copernican Revolution, which bodychecked the Earth as the pivot point of creation and joined us with the rest of the cosmos as one planet among many orbiting the Sun. Three centuries later came the second great scientific revolution: the Darwinian Revolution. It removed us from a distinct, divine biological status to place us wholly in the ebb and flow of all terrestrial life.

This book describes how we're in the midst of a third great scientific revolution, five centuries in the making: the Stardust Revolution. It is the merging of the once-disparate realms of astronomy and evolutionary biology, and of the Copernican and Darwinian Revolutions, placing life in a cosmic context.

The Stardust Revolutionnbsp;takes readers on a grand journey that begins on the summit of California's Mount Wilson, where astronomers first realized that the universe is both expanding and evolving, to a radio telescope used to identify how organic molecules--the building blocks of life--are made by stars. It's an epic story told through a scientific cast that includes some of the twentieth century's greatest minds--including Nobel laureate Charles Townes, who discovered cosmic water--as well as the most ambitious scientific explorers of the twenty-first century, those racing to find another living planet.

Today, an entirely new breed of scientists--astrobiologists and astrochemists--are taking the study of life into the space age. Astrobiologists study the origins, evolution, and distribution of life, not just on Earth, but in the universe. Stardust science is filling in the missing links in our evolutionary story, ones that extend our family tree back to the stars.

The Stardust Revolution

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#hardcover #science #space #universe #galaxy #cosmos #photo #photography #planets #moon #stars #nebula #blackhole

Hawaii

Science

A Journey from Earth to the Edge of the Cosmos

This beautiful book leads us into a celestial panorama that extends for 130 billion trillion kilometres (80 billion trillion miles) in every direction, and allows us to explore nearly 200 of the most extraordinary astronomical views ever uncovered. Complementing these up-to-date and spectacular images are enlightening descriptions of the planets, stars, nebulae, white dwarfs, supernovae, black holes and other exotica that populate our universe.

Universe

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does have some highlights throughout. See photos

Utah

(Astrophysically Speaking)

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY * THE WASHINGTON POST * THE ECONOMIST * NEW SCIENTIST * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * THE GUARDIAN

From one of the most dynamic rising stars in astrophysics, an "engrossing, elegant" (The New York Times) look at five ways the universe could end, and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology.

We know the universe had a beginning. With the Big Bang, it expanded from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life as we know it. But what happens to the universe at the end of the story? And what does it mean for us now?

Dr. Katie Mack has been contemplating these questions since she was a young student, when her astronomy professor informed her the universe could end at any moment, in an instant. This revelation set her on the path toward theoretical astrophysics. Now, with lively wit and humor, she takes us on a mind-bending tour through five of the cosmos's possible finales: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay (the one that could happen at any moment!), and the Bounce. Guiding us through cutting-edge science and major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, The End of Everything is a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of all that we know.

The End of Everything

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#paperback #nonfiction #cosmos #briangreene #science #thefabricofthecosmos 

There is on the last page where previous reader made pencil notes-photo above. Otherwise bar and new!

Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution

Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian

"Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator... This is the place where science comes to life." ―Neil Gaiman

"One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book" ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal

A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time.

One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving.

Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness.

Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.

Helgoland

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A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe

Previously published: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858.

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A great introduction to the edges of science. #paperback #nonfiction #cosmos #quantum #science #stringtheory #Einstein #inthebeginning #Mtheory  

Time is perhaps the greatest mystery in physics. Despite the fact that the fundamental laws of physics don't distinguish between past and future, we do. And so, for over a century the greatest minds have sought to understand why time seems to flow in one direction, ever forward. 
In this book, Professor Julian Barbour offers a radically new answer: it doesn't.

#science #science #cosmos #time #past #future #physics #space #galaxies #space 

A New Theory of Time

In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time -- and shapes the destiny of the universe.
 
Time is among the universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward? Physicists have long appealed to the second law of thermodynamics, held to predict the increase of disorder in the universe, to explain this. In The Janus Point, physicist Julian Barbour argues that the second law has been misapplied and that the growth of order determines how we experience time. In his view, the big bang becomes the "Janus point," a moment of minimal order from which time could flow, and order increase, in two directions. The Janus Point has remarkable implications: while most physicists predict that the universe will become mired in disorder, Barbour sees the possibility that order -- the stuff of life -- can grow without bound.
 
A major new work of physics, The Janus Point will transform our understanding of the nature of existence.

Simon Singh

Big Bang

Brian Greene

The Elegant Universe

Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Carl Sagan; Freeman J. Dyson (Foreword by); David Morrison (Epilogue by); Ann Druyan (Contribution by); Jerome Agel (Editor)

Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection

Don Lincoln

Understanding the Universe

Giles Sparrow

Cosmos

Ben Bova

Uranus

Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Simon Singh

Big Bang

Claire Comstock-Gay

Madame Clairevoyant's Guide to the Stars

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Death by black hole

Robert V. Wagoner Donald W. Goldsmith

Cosmic Horizons

Laura Mersini-Houghton

Before the Big Bang

Robert M. Hazen

The Story of Earth

Brian Greene

The Hidden Reality

Lawrence M. Krauss

The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far

Jacob Berkowitz

The Stardust Revolution

Nicholas Cheetham

Universe

Katie Mack

The End of Everything

Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Carlo Rovelli; Erica Segre (Translator); Simon Carnell (Translator)

Helgoland

Alexander von Humboldt

Cosmos

Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Julian Barbour

The Janus Point