Summaries | Headlines

Dusty Winds Bursting Out Of Black Holes May Have Seeded Planets, Life (October 11, 2007) -- The hit song that proclaimed, "All we are is dust in the wind," may have some cosmic truth to it. New findings from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that space dust -- the same stuff that makes ... > full story

Multiwavelength Images Of Distant Universe Now Available On Google Sky (October 8, 2007) -- A massive project to map a distant region of the Universe in multiple wavelengths--from x-rays through ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and radio waves--is releasing its data this week to both fellow ... > full story

Shining A Light On Mysterious 'Dark Matter' (October 5, 2007) -- We've all been taught that our bodies, the Earth and in fact all matter in the universe is composed of tiny building blocks called atoms. Now imagine if this weren't the case. This mind-bending ... > full story

Dark Matter Of The Universe Has A Long Lifetime (October 4, 2007) -- The universe consists not just of visible celestial bodies, stars, planets and galaxies. It also has a mystical fellow player -- dark matter. The astronomers can measure that the dark matter exists ... > full story

Dilaton Could Affect Abundance Of Dark Matter Particles (October 2, 2007) -- The amount of dark matter left over from the early universe may be less than previously believed. The 'relic abundance' of stable dark matter particles such as the neutralino may be reduced as ... > full story

Understanding The Big Bang: Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Aids Search For Quark-gluon Plasma (September 28, 2007) -- A large scale STAR experiment is currently under way at Brookhaven National Laboratory, with the Sun Grid Compute Utility delivering large-scale computing power and related resources on a utility ... > full story

Oldest Planet Yet Discovered Hints Earth May Survive Our Sun Becoming A Red Giant (September 27, 2007) -- Astronomers have identified the oldest planet yet discovered. This planet holds clues to our solar system's distant future as it orbits a dying sun. The discovery suggests that earth, which is at a ... > full story

Baby Booms And Birth Control In Space (September 26, 2007) -- Stars in galaxies are a bit similar to people: during the first phase of their existence they grow rapidly, after which a stellar birth control occurs in most galaxies. Thanks to new observations it ... > full story

Early Star Formation In The Universe Illuminated (September 18, 2007) -- A groundbreaking study has provided new insight into the way the first stars were formed at the start of the universe, some 13 billion years ago. Cosmologists suggest that the formation of the first ... > full story

Large Hadron Collider Project To Study The Origins Of Matter (September 18, 2007) -- Researchers have started work on the first stage of the European project Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator in the world, which has the aim of reproducing conditions similar to ... > full story

'Missing Dwarf Galaxy' Problem May Be Solved (September 17, 2007) -- Scientists may have solved a discrepancy between the number of extremely small, faint galaxies predicted to exist near the Milky Way and the number actually observed. In an attempt to resolve the ... > full story

Galaxy 'Hunting' Made Easy (September 17, 2007) -- Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have discovered in a single pass about a dozen otherwise invisible galaxies halfway across the universe. The discovery, based on a technique that exploits ... > full story

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Programming the Universe : A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos
Is the universe actually a giant quantum computer? According to Seth Lloyd—Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering at MIT and originator of the first technologically feasible design for a ... > read more

Universe
Continuing in the bestselling tradition of Animal and Earth, DK brings you Universe - a truly definitive guide that takes you on a tour from the Solar System to the farthest limits of ... > read more

Horizons : Exploring the Universe (with TheSky CD-ROM, AceAstronomy, and Virtual Astronomy Labs)
This newly revised and updated Ninth Edition of HORIZONS shows students their place in the universe ? not just their location, but also their role as planet dwellers in an evolving universe. ... > read more

The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
If Albert Einstein were alive, he would have a copy of The Road to Reality on his bookshelf. So would Isaac Newton. This may be the most complete mathematical explanation of the universe yet ... > read more

Modern Cosmology
Modern Cosmology begins with an introduction to the smooth, homogeneous universe described by a Friedman-Robertson-Walker metric, including careful treatments of dark energy, big bang ... > read more

A Brief History of Time : The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition
Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists ... > read more

Astronomy: A Beginner's Guide to the Universe, Fourth Edition
Astronomy Today 4/e (ISBN 0-13-091542-4) is the more comprehensive text by this: proven team of authors. This twenty-eight chapter text begins with the foundations of the history of science and ... > read more

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
There is an ill-concealed skeleton in the closet of physics: "As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right." Each is exceedingly accurate in its ... > read more

Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes
As Charles Seife reveals in this energetic new book, information theory, once the province of philosophers and linguists, has emerged as the crucial science of our time, shedding new light on the ... > read more

What the Bleep Do We Know!?™ : Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality
Gravity sometimes doesn't work. Some things are both waves and particles. . .at the same time. Electrons simply disappear . . . all the time.If the universe is this wild and unpredictable, so ... > read more