In this engaging study of the physical world, Asimov explores the natural scientific phenomena that people question on a daily basis. Unabridged selections. 4 cassettes. *****COPY SAYS UNABRIDGED SELECTIONS*****

A radically new view of the nature of the universe that suggests that the cosmosas a whole is best understood not as mechanical and clockwork, but as complete and evolving, more akin to a living entity than a machine. Comparable in its acope and ambition to Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, and readable than either.

Two world-renowned scientists present an audacious new vision of the cosmos that “steals the thunder from the Big Bang theory.” — Wall Street JournalThe Big Bang theory—widely regarded as the leading explanation for the origin of the universe—posits that space and time sprang into being about 14 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball of nearly infinite density. Over the last three decades the theory has been repeatedly revised to address such issues as how galaxies and stars first formed and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up today. Furthermore, an explanation has yet to be found for what caused the Big Bang in the first place.In Endless Universe , Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, both distinguished theoretical physicists, present a bold new cosmology. Steinhardt and Turok “contend that what we think of as the moment of creation was simply part of an infinite cycle of titanic collisions between our universe and a parallel world” ( Discover ). They recount the remarkable developments in astronomy, particle physics, and superstring theory that form the basis for their groundbreaking “Cyclic Universe” theory. According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.Endless Universe provides answers to longstanding problems with the Big Bang model, while offering a provocative new view of both the past and the future of the cosmos. It is a “theory that could solve the cosmic mystery” ( USA Today ).

Astronomy is the oldest and most fundamental of the natural sciences. From the early beginnings of civilization astronomers have attempted to explain not only what the Universe is and how it works, but also how it started, how it evolved to the present day, and how it will develop in the future. The author, a well-known astronomer himself, describes the evolution of astronomical ideas, briefly discussing most of the instrumental developments. Using numerous figures to elucidate the mechanisms involved, the book starts with the astronomical ideas of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian philosophers, moves on to the Greek period, and then to the golden age of astronomy, i.e. to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, and ends with modern theories of cosmology. Written with undergraduate students in mind, this book gives a fascinating survey of astronomical thinking.

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"This book contains an edition--with an extensive introduction, translation and commentary--of The Light of the World, a text on theoretical astronomy by Joseph Ibn Naḥmias, composed in Judeo-Arabic around 1400 C.E. in the Iberian Peninsula. As the only text on theoretical astronomy written by a Jew in any variety of Arabic, this work is evidence for a continuing relationship between Jewish and Islamic thought in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The text's most lasting effect may have been exerted via its passage to Renaissance Italy, where it influenced scholars at the University of Padua in the early sixteenth century. With its crucial role in the development of European astronomy, as well as the physical sciences under Islam and in Jewish culture, The Light of the World is an important episode in Islamic intellectual history, Jewish civilization, and the history of astronomy."--