The first popular book to explain the dramatic theory behind the Moon's genesis. This lively science history relates one of the great recent breakthroughs in planetary astronomy-a successful theory of the birth of the Moon. Science journalist Dana Mackenzie traces the evolution of this theory, one little known outside the scientific community: a Mars-sized object collided with Earth some four billion years ago, and the remains of this colossal explosion-the...

Shubin shows how the entirety of the universe's fourteen-billion-year history can be seen in our bodies as he moves from our very molecular composition (a result of stellar events at the origin of our solar system) through the workings of our eyes.

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever". The evening's host is his friend and former student, Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old tech magnate whose dazzling inventions and audacious predictions have made him a controversial figure around the world. This evening is to be no exception: he claims he...

This course explores the development of our knowledge of the solar system from the simple pondering of the motions in the sky to the latest discoveries of modern astrophysics.

The history of a pebble is followed from its time in a volcano to the primordial forests; from there it is stepped on by dinosaurs, dragged by glaciers and picked up by cavepeople.

"A breakout bestseller in Italy, now available for American readers for the first time, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began is a short, humanistic tour of the origins of the universe, earth, and life-drawing on the latest discoveries in physics to explain the seven most significant moments in the creation of the cosmos"--

"The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish now gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life, that enable us to further understand whether our presence on this planet is an accident or inevitable. The great transformations in the history of life brought about whole scale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized: the evolution of fish to land-living creature, the origin of birds,...

An astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world's most innovative planetary geologists. In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail. How could this be,...

This book uses art and science to tell the story of life on earth. The text provides thorough understanding of the latest research and is accompanied by paintings prepared especially for this book. Never before has our planet's evolution been so clearly explained. History is marked by disaster. The book of life explains how mammals, having survived at least one of these disasters -- the impact of a massive comet -- luckily inherited the earth. Next...