Five Billion Years Of Solitude
''Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars'' is a nonfiction work by the science author Lee Billings. The text was initially published on October 3, 2013 by Current. The paperback version was published on October 28, 2014. Overview In this book, Billings explores the scientists and science behind the ever-expanding universe of exoplanets. Since the first detection of a planet orbiting another Sun-like star in 1995, scientists have discovered an increasing number of worlds beyond our solar system through detections by telescopes and spacecraft. Billings reveals the scientists behind these discoveries and their thoughts on not only exoplanets, but also their triumphs and frustrations in their quest to solve one of the greatest mysteries of humankind: Are we alone? Billings includes interviews with Frank Drake, Geoffrey Marcy, Greg Laughlin, James Kasting, Matt Mountain, Wesley Traub, Sara Seager, and many other prominent researchers. Topics covered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 Common Era, BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the Universe, physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of History of science in classical antiquity, Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, Maya, and many anc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nonfiction
Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with being presented more objectively, like historical, scientific, or otherwise straightforward and accurate information, but sometimes, can be presented more subjectively, like sincerely held beliefs and thoughts on a real-world topic. One prominent usage of nonfiction is as one of the two fundamental divisions of narrative ( storytelling)—often, specifically, prose writing—in contrast to narrative fiction, which is largely populated by imaginary characters and events, though sometimes ambiguous regarding its basis in reality. Some typical examples of nonfiction include diaries, biographies, news stories, documentary films, textbooks, travel books, recipes, and scientific journals. While specific claims in a nonfiction work may ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Penguin Group
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann. Penguin Books has its registered office in City of Westminster, London.Maps ." . Retrieved 28 August 2009. Its British division is Penguin Books Ltd. Other separate divisions are located in the [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Frank Drake
Frank Donald Drake (May 28, 1930 – September 2, 2022) was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist. He began his career as a radio astronomer, studying the planets of the Solar System and later pulsars. Drake expanded his interests to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), beginning with Project Ozma in 1960, an attempt at extraterrestrial communications. He developed the Drake equation, which attempts to quantify the number of intelligent lifeforms that could potentially be discovered. Working with Carl Sagan, Drake helped to design the Pioneer plaque, the first physical message flown beyond the Solar System, and was part of the team that developed the Voyager record. Drake designed and implemented the Arecibo message in 1974, an extraterrestrial radio transmission of astronomical and biological information about Earth. Drake worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cornell University, University of Calif ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Geoffrey Marcy
Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. Marcy and his research teams discovered many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-investigator on the NASA Kepler (spacecraft), ''Kepler'' mission. His collaborators have included R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S. Vogt, Jason Wright, Andrew Howard, Katie Peek, John Johnson (astronomer), John Johnson, Erik Petigura, Lauren Weiss, Lea Hirsch and the Kepler Science Team. Early life and education Marcy graduated from Granada Hills High School in Granada Hills, California, in 1972. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Kasting
James Fraser Kasting (born January 2, 1953) is an American geoscientist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University. Kasting is active in NASA's search for habitable extrasolar planets. He is considered a world leader in the field of planetary habitability, assessing habitable zones around stars. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. Kasting also serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Education Kasting grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and credits the nearby Marshall Space Flight Center and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo rockets for inspiring his interests in space and science. Kasting received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1975. He then went to the University of Michigan, where he worked with Tom Donahue, receiving his M.S. in physics and atmospheric science in 1978, and his Ph.D. in atmospheric science in 1979. Research Kasting worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Nationa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Matt Mountain
Charles Mattias ("Matt") Mountain is currently the President of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) which designs, builds, and operates telescopes and observatories for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). AURA's NASA center is the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), responsible for the science mission for the Hubble Space Telescope, the science and operations for the James Webb Space Telescope, and the MAST data archive. AURA's NSF centers are Gemini Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), and the National Solar Observatory (NSO). Dr. Mountain and AURA are also responsible for the NSF construction projects: the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Haleakalā, Hawaii and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) on Cerro Pachón in Chile. AURA is a nonprofit consortium of 46 US Universities and 4 International affiliates formed in 1957 to enable the US ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sara Seager
Sara Seager (born 21 July 1971) is a Canadian-American astronomer and planetary scientist. She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is known for her work on extrasolar planets and their atmospheres. She is the author of two textbooks on these topics, and has been recognized for her research by ''Popular Science'', ''Discover Magazine'', ''Nature'', and ''TIME Magazine''. Seager was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 citing her theoretical work on detecting chemical signatures on exoplanet atmospheres and developing low-cost space observatories to observe planetary transits. Background Seager was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and is Jewish. Her father, David Seager, who lost his hair when he was 19 years old, was a pioneer and one of the world's leaders in hair transplantation and the founder of the Seager Hair Transplant Center in Toronto. She earned her BSc degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Toronto in 1994, assiste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sport .... It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited, Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Physics Today
''Physics Today'' is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics. First published in May 1948, it is issued on a monthly schedule, and is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of .... It is also available to non-members as a paid annual subscription. The magazine informs readers about important developments in overview articles written by experts, shorter review articles written internally by staff, and also discusses issues and events of importance to the science community in politics, education, and other fields. The magazine provides a historical resource of events associated with physics. For example it discussed debunking the physics of the Star Wars program of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Science Of Interstellar
''The Science of Interstellar'' is a non-fiction book by American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, with a foreword by Christopher Nolan. The book was initially published on November 7, 2014 by W. W. Norton & Company. This is his second full-size book for non-scientists after '' Black Holes and Time Warps'', released in 1994. ''The Science of Interstellar'' is a follow-up text for Nolan's 2014 film '' Interstellar'', starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain. Overview Kip Thorne was the scientific consultant and an executive producer for the movie. In this book he explains the scientific concepts behind the film's cosmological ideas. See also Related articles * Bootstrap paradox * Event horizon * Interstellar spacecraft * Interstellar travel * Wormholes in fiction Similar books * '' Parallel Worlds'' by Michio Kaku * '' The Elegant Universe'' by Brian Greene * '' The Fabric of the Cosmos'' by Brian Greene * ''The Fabric of Reality'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |