Cosmological Enigmas: Pulsars, Quasars, and Other Deep-Space Questions

The universe is big. Really big. And it gets bigger every day. In Cosmological Enigmas, Mark Kidger weaves together history, science, and science fiction to consider questions about the bigness of space and the strange objects that lie trembling at the edge of infinity.

What are quasars, blazars, and gamma-ray bursters? Could we ever travel to the stars? Can we really expect aliens to contact us? From the profound (what evidence do we have to support the big bang theory?) to the bizarre (can there be more than one universe and, if so, how many dimensions does it possess?) to the everyday-yet-profound (why is the sky dark at night?), Kidger explains not only what we know but how we came to know it. Reflecting on how stars shine and what may lie beyond the edge of the universe, Kidger takes us on the ultimate cosmic journey.

Mark Kidger is an astronomer at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid. He is the author of Astronomical Enigmas: Life on Mars, the Star of Bethlehem, and Other Milky Way Mysteries, also published by Johns Hopkins.