Description
Book SynopsisExperience the drama of the explosive cosmos and the astonishing discoveries being made about the universe's wildest phenomena. The violent birth of the universe was only the first bang of a very bumpy ride. This unfathomably cacophonous beginning has spawned blasts, implosions, cosmic cannibalism, collisions, and countless other fleeting energetic events punctuating the cosmos. Although often brief, these transient phenomena pack a powerful punch. Armed with decades of theoretical progress, unrivaled computing power, and cutting-edge technology, astronomers find themselves at the cusp of understanding not just the events themselves, but also how those events reveal the story of the entire cosmos. In Things That Go Bump in the Universe, astronomer and science writer C. Renée James introduces us to her colleagues around the world, who are using pioneering research techniques to explore everything from the very first explosions in the universe to the dark energy that could destroy it a
Trade ReviewLike a pulsar, the book is at times dense, but it also dazzles. It recasts modern astronomy as the search for transient, explosive events, and the messages they contain if only we can decode them.
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New York Times Book ReviewTable of ContentsPrologue. Flashes of Insight
Chapter 1. Catching Cosmic Fireflies
Chapter 2. Out of the Question
Chapter 3. Putting the "Super" in Supernova
Chapter 4. Star-Shattering Energy
Chapter 5. The Search for Smoking Guns
Chapter 6. Detecting Cosmic Heartbeats
Chapter 7. Stellar Arrhythmia
Chapter 8. (Almost) No Star Is an Island
Chapter 9. The Making of a Superstar
Chapter 10. Cloudy with a Chance of Neutrinos
Chapter 11. Not "The End"
Chapter 12. Collision Course
Chapter 13. Fallen Stars
Chapter 14. Don't Blink
Chapter 15. Point Blank
Chapter 16. Cats, Rats, and Fantastic Beasts, and How to Tell Them Apart
Chapter 17. Cosmic Tremors
Chapter 18. The Return of the Furbies
Chapter 19. LIGO, We Have a Problem
Chapter 20. Impeccable Timing
Chapter 21. All Together Now
Chapter 22. Multiple Eyewitness Accounts
Chapter 23. Furbies—A New Hope
Chapter 24. The First Bumps in the Universe
Chapter 25. The Last Hurrah
Epilogue. Ephemera
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
