Download or read book Discovering the Expanding Universe written by Harry Nussbaumer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the history of the discovery of the expanding universe, one of the most exciting exploits in astronomy.
Download or read book At the Edge of Time written by Dan Hooper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe 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. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.
Download or read book Finding Our Place in the Universe written by Helene Courtois and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astrophysicist recounts how her team of researchers surfed the cosmos to map our local universe—and discovered the Laniakea supercluster, home of the Milky Way. You are here: on Earth, which is part of the solar system, which is in the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is within the extragalactic supercluster Laniakea. And how can we pinpoint our location so precisely? For 20 years, astrophysicist Hélène Courtois surfed the cosmos with international teams of researchers, working to map our local universe. In this book, Courtois describes this quest and the discovery of our home supercluster. Courtois explains that Laniakea (which means “immense heaven” in Hawaiian) is the largest galaxy structure known to which we belong; it is huge, almost too large to comprehend—about 500 million light-years in diameter. It contains about 100,000 large galaxies like our own, and a million smaller ones. Writing accessibly for nonspecialists, Courtois describes the visualization and analysis that allowed her team to map such large structures of the universe. She highlights the work of individual researchers, including portraits of several exceptional women astrophysicists—presenting another side of astronomy. Key ideas are highlighted in text insets; illustrations accompany the main text. The French edition of this book was named the Best Astronomy Book of 2017 by the astronomy magazine Ciel et espace. For this MIT Press English-language edition, Courtois has added descriptions of discoveries made after Laniakea: the cosmic velocity web and the Dipole and Cold Spot repellers. An engaging account of one of the most important discoveries in astrophysics in recent years, her story is a tribute to teamwork and international collaboration.
Download or read book A Grand and Bold Thing written by Ann K. Finkbeiner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LATE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, what had been a fevered pace of discovery in astronomy for many years had slowed. The Hubble Space Telescope continued to produce an astonishing array of images, but the study of the universe was still fractured into domains: measuring the universe’s expansion rate, the evolution of galaxies in the early universe, the life and death of stars, the search for extrasolar planets, the quest to understand the nature of the elusive dark matter. So little was understood, still, about so many of the most fundamental questions, foremost among them: What was the overall structure of the universe? Why had stars formed into galaxies, and galaxies into massive clusters? What was needed, thought visionary astronomer Jim Gunn, recently awarded the National Medal of Science, was a massive survey of the sky, a kind of new map of the universe that would be so rich in detail and cover such a wide swath of space, be so grand and bold, that it would allow astronomers to see the big picture in a whole new way. So was born the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a remarkable undertaking bringing together hundreds of astronomers and launching a new era of supercharged astronomical discovery, an era of “e-science” that has taken astronomy from the lonely mountaintop observatory to the touch of your fingertips. Critically acclaimed science writer Ann Finkbeiner tells the inside story of the Sloan and how it is revolutionizing astronomy. The Sloan stitched together images of deep space taken over the course of five years, providing a remarkably detailed, three-dimensional map of a vast territory of the universe, all digitized and downloadable for easy searching on a personal computer, and available not only to professional astronomers but to the public as well. Bringing together for the first time images of many millions of galaxies—including the massive structure known as the Sloan Great Wall of galaxies, never seen before—the Sloan is allowing astronomers and armchair enthusiasts alike to watch the universe grow up, providing so many discoveries at such a fast pace that, as one astronomer said, it’s like drinking out of a fire hose. They are watching galaxies forming and galaxies merging with other galaxies, seeing streams of stars swirling out from galaxies, and forming a new understanding of how the smooth soup of matter that emerged from the Big Bang evolved into the universe as we know it. Ann Finkbeiner brings the excitement and the extraordinary potential of this new era of astronomy vividly to life and allows all readers to understand how they, too, can become part of the discovery process. A Grand and Bold Thing is vital reading for all.
Download or read book The End of Everything written by Katie Mack and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mack looks at five ways the universe could end, and the lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology. --From publisher description.
Download or read book The Day We Found the Universe written by Marcia Bartusiak and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting and mesmerizing story behind a watershed period in human history, the discovery of the startling size and true nature of our universe. On New Years Day in 1925, a young Edwin Hubble released his finding that our Universe was far bigger, eventually measured as a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed. Hubble’s proclamation sent shock waves through the scientific community. Six years later, in a series of meetings at Mount Wilson Observatory, Hubble and others convinced Albert Einstein that the Universe was not static but in fact expanding. Here Marcia Bartusiak reveals the key players, battles of will, clever insights, incredible technology, ground-breaking research, and wrong turns made by the early investigators of the heavens as they raced to uncover what many consider one of most significant discoveries in scientific history.
Download or read book Edwin Hubble The Discoverer of the Big Bang Universe written by Alexander S. Sharov and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-10-14 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first complete account of the scientific life and work of Edwin Hubble, whose discoveries firmly established the United States as the leading nation in observational astronomy. One of the outstanding astronomers of the twentieth century, Hubble discovered the expansion of the Universe. He opened the world of galaxies for science when he showed that spiral nebulae beyond the Milky Way are galaxies extending to the limits of the Universe, and participating in a general expansion of the cosmos. The exploding Universe of Hubble, now termed the Big Bang, determined the origin of the elements, of galaxies and of the stars. The second part of the book describes the fundamental discoveries on the nature of the Universe made subsequently, and thus sets his achievements in context. Written by two prominent astronomers who have built on Hubble's work, this book is a classic of science, setting out the thrilling story of the exploding Universe.
Download or read book Cosmic Horizons written by Steven Soter and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scientists offer a collection of essays that furnish illuminating explanations of recent discoveries in modern astrophysics--from the Big Bang to black holes--the possibility of life on other worlds, and the emerging technologies that make such research possible, accompanied by incisive profiles of such key figures as Carl Sagan and Georges Lemaetre. Original.
Download or read book The Extravagant Universe written by Robert P. Kirshner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Extravagant Universe tells the story of a remarkable adventure of scientific discovery. One of the world's leading astronomers, Robert Kirshner, takes readers inside a lively research team on the quest that led them to an extraordinary cosmological discovery: the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of a dark energy that makes space itself expand. In addition to sharing the story of this exciting discovery, Kirshner also brings the science up-to-date in a new epilogue. He explains how the idea of an accelerating universe--once a daring interpretation of sketchy data--is now the standard assumption in cosmology today. This measurement of dark energy--a quality of space itself that causes cosmic acceleration--points to a gaping hole in our understanding of fundamental physics. In 1917, Einstein proposed the "cosmological constant" to explain a static universe. When observations proved that the universe was expanding, he cast this early form of dark energy aside. But recent observations described first-hand in this book show that the cosmological constant--or something just like it--dominates the universe's mass and energy budget and determines its fate and shape. Warned by Einstein's blunder, and contradicted by the initial results of a competing research team, Kirshner and his colleagues were reluctant to accept their own result. But, convinced by evidence built on their hard-earned understanding of exploding stars, they announced their conclusion that the universe is accelerating in February 1998. Other lines of inquiry and parallel supernova research now support a new synthesis of a cosmos dominated by dark energy but also containing several forms of dark matter. We live in an extravagant universe with a surprising number of essential ingredients: the real universe we measure is not the simplest one we could imagine.
Download or read book Cosmology and Controversy written by Helge Kragh and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-14 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1920 and 1970, cosmology became a branch of physics. This text examines how the big bang theory drew inspiration from, and eventually triumphed over, rival views, mainly the steady-state theory and its concept of a stationary universe.
Download or read book Unveiling Galaxies written by Jean-René Roy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought provoking study of the powerful impact of images in guiding astronomers' understanding of galaxies through time.
Download or read book A History of the Apocalypse written by Catalin Negru and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every generation of people think that their problems are the most important ever. As history flows without interruption and doomsday scenarios fail, the following generations focus on their own contemporary events, ignoring or underestimating the past. In this way people always see "signs" in their times and the end of the world is constantly a fresh subject.
Download or read book Hubble Humason and the Big Bang written by Ron Voller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2021-12-05 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Hubble and Humason is one for the ages—and in particular, the Cosmic Age. In this compelling book, science writer Ron Voller digs deep into how and why the two scientists continued to investigate their theory of universal expansion in the face of persistent doubt, contrary theories, and calamitous world events. The evolution of this dynamic duo’s tenuous friendship and professional partnership is in many ways as intriguing as their groundbreaking work on the evolution of the universe. The book therefore traces their lives from their childhoods into their burgeoning careers, revealing how a World War and their own personal differences stood in the way of initial cooperation. It then shows how despite all this, the two opposites eventually came together in the pursuit of something far greater than themselves. This grand story is inextricably interwoven with that of Albert Einstein, Willem de Sitter, and other great physicists of the era, all of whom took part in the staggering quest to make sense of the Big Bang and what followed. “Edwin Hubble has often been considered as an island of sorts—a lone wolf of astronomy. But Voller’s book shows otherwise, as he examines Milt Humason’s essential contributions to our understanding of the expanding universe.” - Daniel Lewis, Dibner Senior Curator, History of Science & Technology, The Huntington Library
Download or read book The View From the Center of the Universe written by Joel R. Primack and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this strikingly original book, a world-renowned cosmologist and an innovative writer of the history and philosophy of science uncover an astonishing truth: Humans actually are central to the universe. What does this mean for our culture and our personal lives? The answer is revolutionary: a science-based cosmology that allows us to understand the universe as a whole and our extraordinary place in it.
Download or read book The Wraparound Universe written by Jean-Pierre Luminet and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2008-03-21 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What shape is the universe? Is it curved and closed in on itself? Is it expanding? Where is it headed? Could space be wrapped around itself, such that it produces ghost images of faraway galaxies? Such are the questions posed by Jean-Pierre Luminet in The Wraparound Universe, which he then addresses in clear and accessible language. An expert in bl
Download or read book The Expanding Universe written by William D. Heacox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-26 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of modern cosmology, accessible to undergraduate students, with emphasis on physical foundations and relations to modern observations.
Download or read book A Brief Welcome to the Universe written by Neil deGrasse Tyson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pocket-style edition based on the New York Times bestseller A Brief Welcome to the Universe offers a breathtaking tour of the cosmos, from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes and time loops. Bestselling authors and acclaimed astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott take readers on an unforgettable journey of exploration to reveal how our universe actually works. Propelling you from our home solar system to the outermost frontiers of space, this book builds your cosmic insight and perspective through a marvelously entertaining narrative. How do stars live and die? What are the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How did the universe begin? Why is it expanding and accelerating? Is our universe alone or part of an infinite multiverse? Exploring these and many other questions, this pocket-friendly book is your passport into the wonders of our evolving cosmos.
