Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

“One of today’s best popularizers of science.”—Kirkus Reviews

Imagine, if you can, the world in the year 2100.

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku—the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible—gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of the revolutionary developments taking place in medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production, and astronautics.

In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like magicians, move objects around with the power of our minds. Artificial intelligence will be dispersed throughout the environment, and Internet-enabled contact lenses will allow us to access the world's information base or conjure up any image we desire in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves using GPS, and if room-temperature superconductors are discovered, vehicles will effortlessly fly on a cushion of air, coasting on powerful magnetic fields and ushering in the age of magnetism.

Using molecular medicine, scientists will be able to grow almost every organ of the body and cure genetic diseases. Millions of tiny DNA sensors and nanoparticles patrolling our blood cells will silently scan our bodies for the first sign of illness, while rapid advances in genetic research will enable us to slow down or maybe even reverse the aging process, allowing human life spans to increase dramatically.

In space, radically new ships—needle-sized vessels using laser propulsion—could replace the expensive chemical rockets of today and perhaps visit nearby stars. Advances in nanotechnology may lead to the fabled space elevator, which would propel humans hundreds of miles above the earth’s atmosphere at the push of a button.

But these astonishing revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. Kaku also discusses emotional robots, antimatter rockets, X-ray vision, and the ability to create new life-forms, and he considers the development of the world economy. He addresses the key questions: Who are the winner and losers of the future? Who will have jobs, and which nations will prosper?

All the while, Kaku illuminates the rigorous scientific principles, examining the rate at which certain technologies are likely to mature, how far they can advance, and what their ultimate limitations and hazards are. Synthesizing a vast amount of information to construct an exciting look at the years leading up to 2100, Physics of the Future is a thrilling, wondrous ride through the next 100 years of breathtaking scientific revolution.

Now with color illustrations throughout.

Lawrence Krauss’s provocative answers to these and other timeless questions in a wildly popular lecture now on YouTube have attracted almost a million viewers. The last of these questions in particular has been at the center of religious and philosophical debates about the existence of God, and it’s the supposed counterargument to anyone who questions the need for God. As Krauss argues, scientists have, however, historically focused on other, more pressing issues—such as figuring out how the universe actually functions, which can ultimately help us to improve the quality of our lives.

Now, in a cosmological story that rivets as it enlightens, pioneering theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains the groundbreaking new scientific advances that turn the most basic philosophical questions on their heads. One of the few prominent scientists today to have actively crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss reveals that modern science is addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing, with surprising and fascinating results. The staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories are all described accessibly in A Universe from Nothing, and they suggest that not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing.

With his characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations, Krauss takes us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end. It will provoke, challenge, and delight readers as it looks at the most basic underpinnings of existence in a whole new way. And this knowledge that our universe will be quite different in the future from today has profound implications and directly affects how we live in the present. As Richard Dawkins has described it: This could potentially be the most important scientific book with implications for supernaturalism since Darwin.

“Impey combines the vision of a practicing scientist with the voice of a gifted storyteller.”—Dava Sobel

The New York Times bestseller: “You gotta read this. It is the most exciting book about Pluto you will ever read in your life.”—Jon Stewart

From one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science.

There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall. The bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert in both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). In Knocking on Heaven’s Door, she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them. She examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking through provocative conversations with leading figures in other fields (such as the chef David Chang, the forecaster Nate Silver, and the screenwriter Scott Derrickson), and she explains with wit and clarity the latest ideas in physics and cosmology. Randall describes the nature and goals of the largest machine ever built: the Large Hadron Collider, the enormous particle accelerator below the border of France and Switzerland—as well as recent ideas underlying cosmology and current dark matter experiments.

The most sweeping and exciting science book in years, Knocking on Heaven’s Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.

May I introduce: the universe. Born 13.75 billion years ago. Constantly growing. Nearly empty. Electrically neutral. Poor in antimatter. Populated by 100 billion galaxies, including 130 sextillion stars with approximately just as many planets. 
Consisting of only 4 percent known forms of matter. The other 96 percent is made up of 23 percent dark matter and 73 percent dark energy. The home of black holes, giant stars, pulsars, quasars, galaxy clusters, and nebulas - as well as lifeforms such as humans.

Where did the universe come from? What were the conditions at its birth? What amazing processes have been taking place since then? When and how will it die? What science knows about these things has changed dramatically in recent years. Let yourself be taken away into a world that goes beyond everything imaginable – the universe in which you live.

With 31 images. Buyers of the ePub version may also receive for free the PDF version with additional, fascinating images that can be read on a computer (see imprint of the eBook). 

Table of contents:

Chapter 1. Presenting the Universe

Chapter 2. The Time Before Time
A world made from strings
Loop over loop
Reborn from nothing
Nothing but theories?

Chapter 3. The Big Bang
The 0 hour
The laws of physics begin
The world – a soccer ball
The first particles
All of the forces are already there
The next round of extinction

Chapter 4. The Clear Universe
The first beacons
They die young
A fascinating death
Group dynamics
Fragile spirals
Planets from the waste

Chapter 5. The Life and Death of Stars
Too small: brown dwarfs
The Joe Six-Pack of the universe: red dwarfs
The Sun’s relatives: main-sequence stars
The future of the Sun: white dwarf
Extremely dense: neutron stars
The odd balls: quark stars
Where space and time are meaningless: black holes
Even stranger: exotic stars
How large can stars be? The hyper-giants

Chapter 6. The Planets
Our home: The Solar System
Life-giving: the Sun
The closest to the Sun: Mercury
The most like Earth: Venus
The blue planet: Earth
The red planet: Mars
An unfinished work: the Asteroid Belt
Holding everything together: Jupiter
The lord of the Rings: Saturn
The icy one: Uranus
Another blue planet: Neptune
Way out there: the Kuiper Belt
The garbage dump: the Oort Cloud
The extraterrestrials: exoplanets
The mavericks: planemos

Chapter 7. The End of the Universe
Death by freezing
Death by tearing apart
Death by being crunched
Death by annihilation
Death by disintegration
Death by solidification
One cross each!
The future biography of the universe
Imprint

About the author: Matthias Matting, born 1966, is a physicist and journalist. For his eBook "Travel to Fukushima" he received the first german eBook price. In 2011, he was the official bestselling author at Amazon Germany. He's working in the science & technology department of the german news magazine FOCUS. Since five years he authors the weekly gadget review video series "Mattings Warentest" at FOCUS.de.

“America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) returns to explore the irresistibly strange universe of life without gravity in this New York Times bestseller.