A leading astrobiologist argues that space travel is an evolutionary event at least as important as life’s first journey from sea to land"The Giant Leap is a detailed and provocative exploration of what it means for life as we know it to escape the bounds of the only planet where it has ever been." —Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the UniverseThe story of life has always been one of great transitions, of cross...

An accessible epic, full-color visual journey through all scales of the universe."A beautifully illustrated survey of the universe and its constituent parts, from quarks to galaxies and beyond. . . . A superb composite of scientific knowledge that will no doubt inspire readers of all ages to learn more about our enigmatic universe." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)In The Zoomable Universe...

**“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant UniverseYour information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants.**One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the ...

A new understanding of black holes and what they do: "Scharf makes vivid the mind-boggling nature of the universe . . . [an] excellent book." — The Wall Street JournalWe've long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they lurk in the inner sanctum of almost every galaxy of stars in the universe. They're mysterious chasms so destructive and unforgiving th...

"Intoxicating . . . questions and startling discoveries. . . . Books such as these remind us that we are lucky to be here at all, and even luckier to be here now." ― The Guardian (UK)A Physics World Best Book of the YearAn NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of the YearIn the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go aga...

**“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant UniverseYour information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants.**One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the ...

The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff PickIn the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Cope...

One of The Barnes and Noble Review Editors' Picks: Best Nonfiction of 2012**Selected by The Christian Science Monitor as one of "21 smart nonfiction titles we think you'll enjoy this summer"Selected by The New Scientist as one of 10 books to look out for in 2012**We've long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they lu...

Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only four percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown.Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called “dark energy.” This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding...

What is space? It isn’t a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it’s where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon—the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space—appears to be almost magical. Einstein grappled with this oddity and couldn’t quite resolve it, describing i...

In 2000, Martin Bojowald, then a twenty-seven-year-old post-doc at Pennsylvania State University, used a relatively new theory called loop quantum gravity—a cunning combination of Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics—to create a simple model of the universe. Loop quantum cosmology was born, and with it, a theory that managed to do something even Einstein’s general theory of relativity had failed to do—illuminate the very birth of the universe.Ever since, loop quantum...

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**From one of our finest and most popular science writers, and the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded inside each of us?In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human bodies—our hands, heads, and jaws—and the...