Space Engineering

The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design.

From Schrodinger's cat to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, this book untangles the weirdness of the quantum world. Quantum mechanics underpins modern science and provides us with a blueprint for reality itself. And yet it has been said that if you're not shocked by it, you don't understand it. But is quantum physics really so unknowable? Is reality really so strange? And just how can cats be half alive and half dead at the same time?

When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth, they had two big questions: “Is it habitable?” and “How do we get there?” To answer the first, they had to answer the second, and so began a vivacious team’s twenty-year odyssey to mount a mission to Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter. Standing in their way: NASA, the White House, Congress, rivals in academia, and even Jupiter itself. Written with verve, humor, and uncanny empathy, The Mission is an exuberant masterclass in how a few determined cogs can change an entire machine.

In this astonishing rediscovery of the final Apollo moon landings, the acclaimed author of Chesapeake Requiem reveals that these extraordinary yet overshadowed missions - distinguished by the use of the revolutionary lunar roving vehicle - deserve to be celebrated as the pinnacle of human adventure and exploration.

Survival isn’t easy on a planet controlled by a rogue AI, but beating the odds is Sergeant Pace Nix’s speciality. Pace and his war dog Riot were betrayed by the survivors living in the sewer city called Low Town. Disarmed, taken captive, and handed over to NERO the AI system that controls everyone on Rastamus III. It’s ultimate goal is to spread to other worlds, but it needs the passengers of the NGO ship The Philadelphia that crashed on NERO’s world to help navigate the galaxy. But they all underestimated who Pace is, and the extreme violence he is truly capable of. Ghost ...

In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.

Book 5: Free the North!: Peace in the south. People settling in. Intelligent creatures moving to Vii from the RV Traveler. Soon, meat will be in short supply. Hungry people will fight for what they need. Braden knows that livestock abounds in the north. It's time to go get some. But free trade in the north has been declared illegal by a new governor.

Blending cutting-edge ideas with incisive spiritual insights, Evolutionaries is the first popular presentation of an emerging school of thought called "evolutionary spirituality". Carter Phipps, the former executive editor of EnlightenNext magazine, asserts that evolution is not only a scientific but also a spiritual idea in an audiobook whose message has the power to bring new meaning and purpose to life as we know it.

Star Bound is a book for anyone who wants to learn about the American space program but isn’t sure where to start. First and foremost, it’s a history—short, sweet, and straightforward. From rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard’s primitive flight tests in 1926 through the creation of NASA, from our first steps on the moon to construction of the International Space Station and planning a trip to Mars, listeners will meet the people and projects that have put the United States at the forefront of space exploration. Along the way, they’ll learn:

Astrobiology is an exciting new subject, and one, arguably, more interdisciplinary than any other. Astrobiologists seek to understand the origin and evolution of life on Earth in order to illuminate and guide the search for life on other planets. In this Very Short Introduction, David C. Catling introduces the subject through our understanding of the factors that allowed life to arise and persist on our own planet, and for the signs we are looking for in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Captain Hammond Roystan is a simple cargo runner who has stumbled across the find of a lifetime: the Hassim, a disabled exploration ship - and its valuable record of unexplored worlds. His junior engineer, Josune Arriola, said her last assignment was in the uncharted rim. A renowned body-modification artist, Nika Rik Terri has run afoul of clients who will not take no for an answer, and she is dragging along a rookie modder. Together this mismatched crew will end up on one ship, hurtling through the lawless reaches of deep space with Roystan at the helm.

Cosmogenesis is one of the greatest discoveries in human history, and yet most science books do not explore the effects it has had on our individual minds. In Cosmogenesis, Brian Thomas Swimme narrates the same cosmological events that we agree are fact but offers a feature unlike all other writings on this topic. He tells the story of the universe while simultaneously telling the story of the storyteller.

Humanity's first reusable spacecraft and the most complex machine ever built, NASA's space shuttle debuted with great promise and as a dependable source of wonder and national pride. But with the Challenger catastrophe in 1986, the whole space shuttle program came into question, as did NASA itself, so long an institution that was seemingly above reproach. Wheels Stop tells the stirring story of how, after the Challenger disaster, the space shuttle not only recovered but went on to perform its greatest missions.

The final book from Professor Stephen Hawking, the best-selling author of A Brief History of Time and arguably the most famous scientist of our age, Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a profound, accessible and timely reflection on the biggest questions in science. Professor Hawking was a brilliant theoretical physicist, an influential author and thinker and a great popular communicator.

For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations. For Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe.

The Queen Bitch returns to the planet of her birth, and gathers the heroes who rose up to defend Irth in her absence. Meanwhile, the Federation is under attack from all sides. While Bethany Anne’s rage scorches the Irth, Lance gets to experience the unity he always dreamed of. Long awaited family reunions must take place under the shadow of the final war. Old faces and new faces come together to fight for what is theirs....and no one is immune from the consequences of war. Don’t miss out on the universe-shattering conclusion to The Kurtherian Endgame series.

With all the passion, curiosity, and precise yet lyrical prose that have marked his previous books, Alan Lightman here explores the emotional and philosophical questions raised by discoveries in science, focusing most intently on the human condition and the needs of humankind. He looks at the difficult dialogue between science and religion, the conflict between our human desire for permanence and the impermanence of nature, the possibility that our universe is simply an accident, the manner in which modern technology has separated us from direct experience of the world, and our resistance to the view that our bodies and minds can be explained by scientific logic and laws.

Haven was colonized by humans who fled from Earth centuries earlier to avoid a conflict. They built an advanced, thriving civilization on Haven and began construction of modern cities around the planet. Life was good and a far departure from the former lives they lived on Earth. However, ninety years after the planet was colonized, an extremely aggressive civilization known as the Vrang attacked the planet destroying all the cities and carrying off ninety percent of the population enslaving them. All that remained of the once beautiful cities were blackened ruins towering above what was ...

Who are we, and how did we get here? These are two of the most fundamental and far-reaching questions facing scientists and cosmologists alike and have rested at the center of human intellectual endeavor since its beginning. They are questions that stretch across numerous disciplines. Philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and mathematics are just some of the fields looking to explain the emergence of human life.

Too often, textbooks obscure the beauty and wonder of outer space with tedious discourse that even Galileo would oppose. Astronomy 101 cuts out the boring details and lengthy explanations, and instead, gives you a lesson in astronomy that keeps you engaged as you discover what's hidden beyond our starry sky. From the Big Bang and nebulae to the Milky Way and Sir Isaac Newton, this celestial primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining astronomy facts you won't be able to get anywhere else.