Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries »

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, director of the world-famous Hayden Planetarium, a monthly columnist for Natural History, and an award-winning author. He lives in New York City.

A vibrant collection of essays on the cosmos from the nation's best-known astrophysicist. “One of today’s best popularizers of science.”—Kirkus Reviews.

Publishers Weekly

What would it feel like if your spaceship were to venture too close to the black hole lurking at the center of the Milky Way? According to astrophysicist Tyson, director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium, size does matter when it comes to black holes, although the chances of your surviving the encounter aren't good in any case. Tyson takes readers on an exciting journey from Earth's hot springs, where extremophiles flourish in hellish conditions, to the frozen, desolate stretches of the Oort Cloud and the universe's farthest reaches, in both space and time. Tyson doesn't restrict his musings to astrophysics, but wanders into related fields like relativity and particle physics, which he explains just as clearly as he does Lagrangian points, where we someday may park interplanetary filling stations. He tackles popular myths (is the sun yellow?) and takes movie directors most notably James Cameron to task for spectacular goofs. In the last section the author gives his take on the hot subject of intelligent design. Readers of Natural History magazine will be familiar with many of the 42 essays collected here, while newcomers will profit from Tyson's witty and entertaining description of being pulled apart atom by atom into a black hole, and other, closer-to-earth, and cheerier, topics. 9 illus. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Preface     11
Acknowledgments     13
Prologue: The Beginning of Science     15
The Nature of Knowledge: The challenges of knowing what is knowable in the universe
Coming to Our Senses     25
On Earth as in the Heavens     31
Seeing Isn't Believing     38
The Information Trap     48
Stick-in-the-Mud Science     60
The Knowledge of Nature: The challenges of discovering the contents of the cosmos
Journey from the Center of the Sun     69
Planet Parade     75
Vagabonds of the Solar System     85
The Five Points of Lagrange     95
Antimatter Matters     102
Ways and Means of Nature: How Nature presents herself to the inquiring mind
The Importance of Being Constant     111
Speed Limits     119
Going Ballistic     127
On Being Dense     135
Over the Rainbow     144
Cosmic Windows     152
Colors of the Cosmos     161
Cosmic Plasma     168
Fire and Ice     175
The Meaning of Life: The challenges and triumphs of knowing how we got here
Dust to Dust     185
Forged in the Stars     192
Send in the Clouds     199
Goldilocks and the Three Planets     207
Water, Water     213
Living Space     221
Life in the Universe     229
Our Radio Bubble     238
When the Universe Turns Bad: All the ways the cosmos wants to kill us
Chaos in the Solar System     249
Coming Attractions     254
Ends of the World     263
Galactic Engines     268
Knock 'Em Dead     275
Death by Black Hole     283
Science and Culture: The ruffled interface between cosmic discovery and the public's reaction to it
Things People Say     291
Fear of Numbers     298
On Being Baffled     303
Footprints in the Sands of Science     309
Let There Be Dark     320
Hollywood Nights     327
Science and God: When ways of knowing collide
In the Beginning     337
Holy Wars     346
The Perimeter of Ignorance     353
References     363
Name Index     369
Subject Index     373