A complete introduction to the heavens through the tales of these 21 key stars.

'A delight and a triumph ... A thing of beauty ... Truly, truly magical' Mark Dolan, talkRADIO Expert science writer Giles Sparrow guides you through 21 stars you can see in the night sky and what they can teach us about our universe. On a clear evening, if you look up you can see thousands of stars shining in the dark sky, each with a story of their own. Taking 21 stars (and three imposters, that cheekily aren't technically stars), expert science writer Giles Sparrow offers a complete introduction to what is happening up in the night sky. Sparrow draws 'star maps' to help you easily identify the celestial bodies and then explains (for anyone not an astronomer themselves) what this particular pinprick of light can tell us about the birth, life and death of our universe. From red giants, quasars and supernovae to black holes, multiple stars and even our own Sun, this fascinating book tells the intriguing, inspiring and sometimes incredible story of how we came to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, and what we learnt along the way. So look up at the sky and marvel at its wonders with this exciting new book.

In 1957, as Americans obsessed over the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, another less noticed space-based scientific revolution was taking off. That year, astrophysicists solved a centuries-old quest for the origins of the elements, from carbon to uranium. The answer they found wasn’t on Earth, but in the stars. Their research showed that we are literally stardust. The year also marked the first conference that considered the origin of life on Earth in an astrophysical context. It was the marriage of two of the seemingly strangest bedfellows—astronomy and biology—and a turning point that award-winning science author Jacob Berkowitz calls the Stardust Revolution. In this captivating story of an exciting, deeply personal, new scientific revolution, Berkowitz weaves together the latest research results to reveal a dramatically different view of the twinkling night sky—not as an alien frontier, but as our cosmic birthplace. Reporting from the frontlines of discovery, Berkowitz uniquely captures how stardust scientists are probing the universe’s physical structure, but rather its biological nature. Evolutionary theory is entering the space age. From the amazing discovery of cosmic clouds of life’s chemical building blocks to the dramatic quest for an alien Earth, Berkowitz expertly chronicles the most profound scientific search of our era: to know not just if we are alone, but how we are connected. Like opening a long-hidden box of old family letters and diaries, The Stardust Revolution offers us a new view of where we’ve come from and brings to light our journey from stardust to thinking beings.

This book gives an accessible account of the history of the Universe; not only what happened, but why it happened. An author of textbooks on the early Universe and inflation, David Lyth now explains both cosmology and the underlying physics to the general reader. The book includes a detailed account of the almost imperceptible structure in the early Universe, and its probable origin as a quantum fluctuation during an early epoch known as the epoch of inflation. It also explains how that early structure is visible now in the cosmic microwave radiation which is our main source of information about the early Universe, and how it gave rise to galaxies and stars. The main text of the book assumes no knowledge of mathematics or physics so that it is accessible to everybody, while an appendix contains more advanced material. As a result the book will be useful for a wide spectrum of readers, including high-school students, undergraduates, postgraduates and professional physicists working in areas other than cosmology. It will also serve as “additional reading” for university courses in general astronomy, astrophysics or cosmology itself.

Visit one hundred extraordinary stars that unveil the mysteries of the universe Our own Sun—a source of awe, myth, and mystery for untold generations of sky-gazers—is just one of roughly two hundred billion trillion stars. Together, they’re a window into the profoundest questions in physics—overturning, again and again, how we understand light, matter, time, and existence itself. Florian Freistetter explains all this and more, in brief, easy-to-read profiles of the hundred most history-making stars, inviting readers to gaze into the past and future of the universe alongside a stellar cast of scientists— from Annie Jump Cannon, who revolutionized how we classify the stars, to Dorrit Hoffleit, who first counted them. Enjoy your journey through the cosmos . . . GRB 080319B, the farthest we’ve seen into space with the naked eye V1364 CYGNI, pivotal in the discovery of dark matter 72 Tauri, definitive evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity Algol, called the Demon Star for its mysterious blinking—and many more! Publisher’s note: 100 Stars That Explain the Universe was previously published in hardcover as The Story of the Universe in 100 Stars.

The latest discoveries about our universe to keep readers updated on the latest developments in space.