Books in the Astronomers' Universe series

The book focuses on how the exploration of the cosmic background radiation has shaped our picture of the Universe. Using a simple language and captivating metaphors, this book will help the reader to understand the mechanisms behind our Universe.

The bubbles were swirling all around me, massaging my body. As I luxuriated in this fantastic bath, I gasped realizing that those bubbles carried with them miniature galaxies bringing the entire Cosmos into my bathtub...Alfie is back. And so are George and other characters from the author¿s previous book Einstein¿s Enigma or Black Holes in My Bubble Bath. While the present book, Universe Unveiled - The Cosmos in My Bubble Bath, is completely independent, its storyline can be considered a sequel to the previous one. The scientific content spanning ancient world models to the most recent mysteries of cosmology is presented in an entirely nontechnical and descriptive style through the discussions between Alfie, the enlightened learner, and George, professor of astrophysics. Fantasies, based on these discussions that cover the scientific facts, are created by the magical bubble baths taken by Alfie.Universe Unveiled blends accurate science withphilosophy, drama, humour, and fantasy to create an exciting cosmic journey that reads like a novel and educates as it entertains.¿Spurred by a series of mind-bending discoveries, Man¿s millennial love affair with the stars has now reached fever pitch. No one writing today is better positioned to evoke the romance and beauty of these cosmic discoveries than Vishveshwara. A leading expert in Einstein¿s relativity theory, he brings a lyrical voice and a poetic sensibility to this joyful task. Universe Unveiled, a unique literary creation, transports readers into believing they can actually hear the music of the spheres.¿Professor Robert Fuller, Former President, Oberlin College (USA)Author of Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank

This is a book on planets: Solar system planets and dwarf planets. And planets outside our solar system - exoplanets. What are the conditions for life and on which planets may they be met? But in particular also on the link between planets and stars - brown dwarfs.

This book is about the history and future of life and the universe, written at a level that any educated lay-person can understand and enjoy.

This book examines and explains cataclysmic and unusual events at the very frontier of our knowledge of stellar astrophysics, and presents them in a way that non-professionals can understand and enjoy.

'Incoming Asteroid!' is based on a project within ASTRA (the Association in Scotland to Research into Astronautics) to provide scientific answers to the question - what would we do if we knew there was going to be an asteroid impact in ten years' time or less?

In accessible, informative language, this book describes stunning discoveries in astronomy and solar system science showing that complex organic compounds, formed in and ejected from old stars, could have played a central role in the origin of life on Earth.

This volume presents the findings of several satellites from across the globe sent to observe the sun. Beautifully illustrated, the book combines newly acquired scientific understanding with detailed descriptions of features visible on the Sun's surface and in its atmosphere.

The author of this book draws attention to ongoing and future observations that might reveal relics of an era before the big bang. In doing so, he provides an accessible introduction to the extraordinary new ideas of string cosmology.

Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Worlds probes the basis for possible answers to the fundamentals questions asked about these planets orbiting stars other than our Sun.

Grappling with Gravity explores the physiological changes that will occur in humans and the plants and animals that accompany humans as we move to new worlds, be it to colony in the emptiness of space or settlements on the Moon, Mars, or other moons or planets. As a person adapts in space he or she will become less fit to live on Earth.

This fascinating book proposes a sound and realistic exploration on the topic of terraforming. The book presents what is physically possible today and hints what might conceivably be put into practice in the next several hundred years.

This accessible book explores key discoveries in recent years of space exploration and addresses major questions such as: How prolific is life in the universe? How far back to the Big Bang can we probe? And what hidden treasures still lurk in our Solar System?

The book describes from a historical point of view how cosmic rays were discovered. The main focus is on how the knowledge was gained, describing the main experiments and the conclusions drawn. Cosmic rays have an official date of discovery which is linked to the famous balloon flights of the Austrian physicist Hess in 1912.

Other sources would have you believe that helium was jointly discovered by Janssen and Norman Lockyer, a British scientist, and that their discovery letters reached Paris the same day, one sent from India, and the other from England.

This book is an abbreviated, partly re-written version of "Under the Radar - The First Woman in Radio Astronomy: Ruby Payne-Scott." As the first female radio astronomer (and one of the first people in the world to consider radio astronomy), she made classic contributions to solar radio physics.

The world as it is viewed from modern physics and cosmology has many strange and unexpected features. - Where are we going?The author, an experienced scientist and teacher, presents the knowledge that we have about our world for non-experts. He takes us on a journey through cosmology and the quantum world of elementary particles.

For a long time I have been giving scientific lectures in different countries and on diverse topics, generally related to astronomy and to my work at the Arecibo Observatory. Many of us want to believe that extraterrestrial creatures can talk to us, that perhaps they are even living among us, as UFO fans believe.

What about the future of the universe? And how long might the universe as we recognize it survive? This title takes the reader on a journey through space and time, beginning with a long look at the Earth and solar system, voyaging to the outermost galaxies, and finishing with speculations about the life and fate of the entire universe.

Starting out from humankind's earliest ideas about the cosmos, this book gives the reader a clear overview of our current understanding of the universe, including big bang theories and the formation of stars and galaxies, as well as addressing open questions.

Since ancient times, humans have been engaged in a continual quest to find meaning in and make sense of sights and events in the night sky. Cultures spread around the world recorded their earliest efforts in artwork made directly on the natural landscapes around them, and from there they developed more and more sophisticated techniques for observing and documenting astronomy.This book brings readers on an astronomical journey through the ages, offering a history of how our species has recorded and interpreted the night sky over time. From cave art to parchment scribe to modern X-ray mapping of the sky, it chronicles the ever-quickening development of tools that informed and at times entirely toppled our understanding of the natural world.Our documentation and recording techniques formed the bedrock for increasingly complex forays into astronomy and celestial mechanics, which are addressed within these chapters. Additionally, the book explores how nature itself has recorded the skies in its own way, which can be unraveled through ongoing geological and archaeological studies. This tale of human discovery and ingenuity over the ages will appeal to anybody interested in the field of astronomy and its rich cultural history.

In the last 25 years, planetary science experienced a revolution, as vast oceans of liquid water have been discovered within the heart of the icy moons of our Solar System. These subsurface oceans lie hidden under thick layers of ice. We call them ocean worlds.Some of these icy moons, such as Ganymede, may hold two to three times more liquid water than all the water present on Earth, while others, such as Enceladus and Europa, are thought by astrobiologists to be our best hope of finding extraterrestrial life.In this book, we will explore and compare a variety of Solar System ocean worlds, meeting in the process 22 of the most intriguing objects, from the giant asteroid Ceres to the enigmatic, distant Sedna. In doing so, we will also encounter the multiple spacecraft that brought back most of what we know of these worlds (Pioneers, Voyagers, Cassini-Huygens, etc.), as well as the latest scientific research on this new topic.We will also entertain the possibility of life on each of these ocean worlds by assessing their habitability, as ultimately, these ocean worlds might hold the key to answering the fundamental questions in life: How did life appear? Where do we come from? Is there life out there? 

Most amateur astronomers - and many of those with similar interests but who are not currently practising observers - have only a sketchy understanding of space flight.

This is the story of Bernie Mills, Chris Christiansen, Paul Wild and Ron Bracewell, members of a team of radio astronomers that would lead Australia, and the world, into this new field of research.

Within our own Solar System, odd facts such as the apparent reversal of the Sun in the skies of Mercury, CO2-driven fountains of dust on Mars, possible liquid water (and perhaps primitive life!) deep within the dwarf planet Ceres, and a variety of odd facts about the planetary moons are all discussed.