The Case for Mars makes living in space seem more possible than ever in this updated 25th anniversary edition, featuring the latest information on the planet's exploration and the drive to send humans there. Since the beginning of human history, Mars has been an alluring dream—the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it had long been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. But that is changing fast. In February 2021, the American rover Perseverance will touch down on Mars. Equipped with a powerful suite of scientific instruments—including some that will attempt to make oxygen from the Martian atmosphere—the rover also carries a helicopter that will take spectacular panoramic movies from the air. Most exciting of all, a spectrometer onboard may find evidence of fossils left behind by microbes millions of years ago, when the planet was warm and wet, proving at last that life on Earth is not unique, but a general phenomenon in the universe. Meanwhile, in Boca Chica, Texas, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has created a shipyard that is building and testing the vessels that will take humans to Mars before this decade is out. Leading space exploration expert Robert Zubrin crafted the daring blueprint for humanity’s reach to the Red Planet twenty-five years ago, when he first published The Case for Mars . Now, in this updated edition, he looks to the future once more to describe how—in an era when the American space program and private companies like SpaceX are racing to send astronauts to Mars—our first colonies there are imminent. In the grand tradition of successful explorers, Zubrin calls for a travel-light and live-off-the-land approach to Martian settlement. He explains how scientists can use present-day technology to send humans to Mars, produce fuel and oxygen on the planet’s surface with its own natural resources, build bases and communities, and one day, terraform—or alter the atmosphere of the planet in order to pave the way for sustainable life. As a landmark new mission opens the decisive campaign to take humans to the Red Planet, Zubrin lays out a comprehensive plan to build life on a new world.

A captivating collection of celestial questions from one of America's most prolific authors. With genius and insight, Isaac Asimov answers questions about science--and about life--with facinating theories and facts that promise to amaze and delight. From the beauty and mystery of a quasar to the dangers of nuclear fusion, Asimov explores both the macrocosm and the microcosm with wit and charm.

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 ).