'Includes exciting recent advances in studying gravity and its cosmic manifestations.' Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, former President of the Royal Society A fascinating historical account of how we have reached our current understanding of gravity. There have been sensational developments in gravitational physics in recent years. The detection of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space - has opened a new window on the universe. These waves are produced by the most cataclysmic events in the universe - the collisions and mergers of black holes and neutron stars. There have also been great strides in our understanding of supermassive black holes. We now know that a black hole with a gargantuan mass lies at the heart of every galaxy, and we even have an image of one such beast. Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes provides an engaging and accessible account of how we have reached our current understanding of gravity and places these amazing discoveries in their true context. Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes is written in a captivating historical style with stories about the researchers of the past and present that illuminate many key ideas in astronomy and physics. The historical material leads from discussions of the early cosmologies to the great breakthroughs of Tycho and Kepler. We then consider Galileo's contributions to astronomy and mechanics, and the significance of Jeremiah Horrocks's ideas to the Newtonian revolution that would follow. Newton's theories brought about a new scientific age and his description of gravity was unrivalled for over two centuries until it was superseded by Einstein's description in terms of curved spacetime. The outlandish predictions of Einstein's theory have been confirmed again and again, including black holes and gravitational waves. Finally, we move on to more speculative ideas including Hawking radiation and primordial black holes and attempts to find a quantum theory of gravity.

What is the origin of the universe? What was there before the universe appeared? We are currently witnessing a second Copernican revolution: neither our Earth and Sun, nor our galaxy, nor even our universe, are the end of all things. Beyond our world, in an endless multiverse, are innumerable other universes, coming and going, like ours or different. Fourteen billion years ago, one of the many bubbles constantly appearing and vanishing in the multiverse exploded to form our universe. The energy liberated in the explosion provided the basis for all the matter our universe now contains. But how could this hot, primordial plasma eventually produce the complex structure of our present world? Does not order eventually always lead to disorder, to an increase of entropy? Modern cosmology is beginning to find out how it all came about and where it all might lead. Before Time Began tells that story.

A Seminary Co-op Notable Book A BBC Sky at Night Best Book “An impressively comprehensive bird’s-eye view of a research topic that is both many decades established and yet still at the very cutting edge of astronomy and physics.” —Katie Mack, Wall Street Journal “Schilling has craftily combined his lucid and accessible descriptions of science with the personal story of those unlocking the finer details of the missing mass mystery. The result is enthralling...A captivating scientific thriller.” —BBC Sky at Night “Fascinating...A thorough and sometimes troubling account of the hunt for dark matter...You will come away with a very good understanding of how the universe works. Well, our universe, anyway.” —Michael Brooks, New Scientist When you train a telescope on outer space, you can see luminous galaxies, nebulae, stars, and planets. But if you add all that together, it constitutes only 15 percent of the matter in the universe. Despite decades of research, the nature of the remaining 85 percent is unknown. We call it dark matter. Physicists have devised huge, sensitive instruments to search for dark matter, which may be unlike anything else in the cosmos—some unknown elementary particle. Yet so far dark matter has escaped every experiment. It is so elusive that some scientists are beginning to suspect there might be something wrong with our theories about gravity or with the current paradigms of cosmology. Govert Schilling interviews believers and heretics and paints a colorful picture of the history and current status of dark matter research. The Elephant in the Universe is a vivid tale of scientists puzzling their way toward the true nature of the universe.

How did the universe begin? What are gravitational waves all about? Will we find life on other planets? 'The Cosmic Mystery Tour' is a brilliant, entertaining introduction to the discoveries of physics and astronomy. Stories, explanations, and illustrations open up the exciting frontiers of science to any beginner.

This book journeys into one of the most fascinating intellectual adventures of recent decades - understanding and exploring the final fate of massive collapsing stars in the universe. The issue is of great interest in fundamental physics and cosmology today, from both the perspective of gravitation theory and of modern astrophysical observations. This is a revolution in the making and may be intimately connected to our search for a unified understanding of the basic forces of nature, namely gravity that governs the cosmological universe, and the microscopic forces that include quantum phenomena. According to the general theory of relativity, a massive star that collapses catastrophically under its own gravity when it runs out of its internal nuclear fuel must give rise to a space-time singularity. Such singularities are regions in the universe where all physical quantities take their extreme values and become arbitrarily large. The singularities may be covered within a black hole, or visible to faraway observers in the universe. Thus, the final fate of a collapsing massive star is either a black hole or a visible naked singularity. We discuss here recent results and developments on the gravitational collapse of massive stars and possible observational implications when naked singularities happen in the universe. Large collapsing massive stars and the resulting space-time singularities may even provide a laboratory in the cosmos where one could test the unification possibilities of basic forces of nature.

Budding astronomers and scientists will love this humorous introduction to the extremely complex concept of black holes. With space facts and answers about the galaxies (ours, and others) A Black Hole is NOT a Hole takes readers on a ride that will stretch their minds around the phenomenon known as a black hole. In lively and text, the book starts off with a thorough explanation of gravity and the role it plays in the formation of black holes. Paintings by Michael Carroll, coupled with real telescopic images, help readers visualize the facts and ideas presented in the text, such as how light bends, and what a supernova looks like. Back matter includes a timeline which sums up important findings discussed throughout, while the glossary and index provide a quick point of reference for readers. Children and adults alike will learn a ton of spacey facts in this far-out book that’s sure to excite even the youngest of astrophiles.

Driven by discoveries, and enabled by leaps in technology and imagination, our understanding of the universe has changed dramatically during the course of the last few decades. The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are making new connections to physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Based on a broad and comprehensive survey of scientific opportunities, infrastructure, and organization in a national and international context, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics outlines a plan for ground- and space- based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010's. Realizing these scientific opportunities is contingent upon maintaining and strengthening the foundations of the research enterprise including technological development, theory, computation and data handling, laboratory experiments, and human resources. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics proposes enhancing innovative but moderate-cost programs in space and on the ground that will enable the community to respond rapidly and flexibly to new scientific discoveries. The book recommends beginning construction on survey telescopes in space and on the ground to investigate the nature of dark energy, as well as the next generation of large ground-based giant optical telescopes and a new class of space-based gravitational observatory to observe the merging of distant black holes and precisely test theories of gravity. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics recommends a balanced and executable program that will support research surrounding the most profound questions about the cosmos. The discoveries ahead will facilitate the search for habitable planets, shed light on dark energy and dark matter, and aid our understanding of the history of the universe and how the earliest stars and galaxies formed. The book is a useful resource for agencies supporting the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the Congressional committees with jurisdiction over those agencies, the scientific community, and the public.