Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all--from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel. Describing the latest discoveries in astrophysics, the informative and entertaining...

Conversing with the Planets is the first popular work of astronomical anthropology, a field pioneered by Anthony Aveni, who has taught anthropology and astronomy at Colgate University for over twenty-five years. It interweaves the astronomy, mythology, and anthropology of ancient cultures by showing how to discover the harmony between their beliefs and their study of the sky. Modern scientists often dismiss the scientific contributions of archaic...

Provides an introduction to today's scientific ideas about the cosmos and reviews past theories. Also covers black holes, quarks, antimatter, and other mysteries of physics.

"Internationally known theoretical physicist and bestselling author Lawrence Krauss offers provocative, revelatory answers to the most basic philosophical questions: Where did our universe come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? And how is it all going to end? Why is there something rather than nothing?" is asked of anyone who says there is no God. Yet this is not so much a philosophical or religious question as it is a question about...

Travel through spacetime. Copious four-color illustrations help calrify this journey into a surreal wonderland where particles, sheets, and strings move in eleven dimensions, where black holes evaporate and disappear, taking their secret with them, and where the original cosmic seed from which our own universe sprang was a tiny nut.

Examines the forces at work in the universe from classical Newtonian physics to the implications of relativity, theories on the cosmos, and the end of the universe.

Introduces the big bang theory, describing how the universe began and how elementary particles combined to form our solar system and eventually Earth's simplest organisms, which in turn evolved to becomes complex forms of life and human beings.

Presents essays based on lectures given by mathematics professors Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose in which they debate the foundations of quantum mechanics, discussing in mathematical and physical terms how to combine quantum theory with the theory of general relativity.

Despite the steady avalanche of scientific discovery, scientists still only understand 4% of the mass that makes up the universe. A science journalist documents the recent efforts to explain the ninety-six percent of the universe not comprised of known matter, drawing on interviews with leading figures to describe the rivalries, collaborations, and discoveries that are redefining current understandings. .

A collection of essays on the cosmos, written by an American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist, includes "Holy Wars," "Ends of the World," and "Hollywood Nights."