The solar system has always been a messy place in which gravity wreaks havoc. Moons form, asteroids and comets crash into planets, ice ages commence, and dinosaurs disappear. By …
In a lively investigation into the boundaries between popular culture and early-modern science, Sara Schechner presents a case study that challenges the view that rationalism was …
For over three millennia, most people could understand the universe only in terms of myth, religion, and philosophy. Between 1920 and 1970, cosmology transformed into a branch of …
Astronomers believe that a supernova is a massive explosion signaling the death of a star, causing a cosmic recycling of the chemical elements and leaving behind a pulsar, black …
This book brings together a number of lectures given between 1993 and 1999 as part of a special series hosted by the Federal University of Pernambuco, in which internationally …
The breakup of the Space Shuttle Columbia as it reentered Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003, reminded the public--and NASA--of the grave risks posed to spacecraft by …
