One of The Barnes and Noble Review Editors' Picks: Best Nonfiction of 2012 Selected by The Christian Science Monitor as one of "21 smart nonfiction titles we think you'll enjoy this summer" Selected by The New Scientist as one of 10 books to look out for in 2012 We've long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they lurk in the inner sanctum of almost every galaxy of stars in the universe. They're mysterious chasms so destructive and unforgiving that not even light can escape their deadly wrath.
Recent research, however, has led to a cascade of new discoveries that have revealed an entirely different side to black holes. As the astrophysicist Caleb Scharf reveals in Gravity's Engines, these chasms in space-time don't just vacuum up everything that comes near them; they also spit out huge beams and clouds of matter. Black holes blow bubbles.
With clarity and keen intellect, Scharf masterfully explains how these bubbles profoundly rearrange the cosmos around them. Engaging with our deepest questions about the universe, he takes us on an intimate journey through the endlessly colorful place we call our galaxy and reminds us that the Milky Way sits in a special place in the cosmic zoo―a "sweet spot" of properties. Is it coincidental that we find ourselves here at this place and time? Could there be a deeper connection between the nature of black holes and their role in the universe and the phenomenon of life? We are, after all, made of the stuff of stars.

Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos

Science & Math

Scharf, Caleb

Astronomy & Space Science

Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Longlisted for the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Short-listed for Physics World's Book of the Year The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014 A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014 An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014 A Politics &amp; Prose 2014 Staff Pick
In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Copernicus set in motion a revolution in scientific thought. This perspective has influenced our thinking for centuries. However, recent evidence challenges the Copernican Principle, hinting that we do in fact live in a special place, at a special time, as the product of a chain of unlikely events. But can we be significant if the Sun is still just one of a billion trillion stars in the observable universe? And what if our universe is just one of a multitude of others-a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities?
In The Copernicus Complex, the renowned astrophysicist Caleb Scharf takes us on a scientific adventure, from tiny microbes within the Earth to distant exoplanets, probability theory, and beyond, arguing that there is a solution to this contradiction, a third way of viewing our place in the cosmos, if we weigh the evidence properly. As Scharf explains, we do occupy an unusual time in a 14-billion-year-old universe, in a somewhat unusual type of solar system surrounded by an ocean of unimaginable planetary diversity: hot Jupiters with orbits of less than a day, planet-size rocks spinning around dead stars, and a wealth of alien super-Earths. Yet life here is built from the most common chemistry in the universe, and we are a snapshot taken from billions of years of biological evolution. Bringing us to the cutting edge of scientific discovery, Scharf shows how the answers to fundamental questions of existence will come from embracing the peculiarity of our circumstance without denying the Copernican vision.
With characteristic verve, Scharf uses the latest scientific findings to reconsider where we stand in the balance between cosmic significance and mediocrity, order and chaos. Presenting a compelling and bold view of our true status, The Copernicus Complex proposes a way forward in the ultimate quest: determining life's abundance, not just across this universe but across all realities.

The Copernicus Complex: Caleb A. Scharf

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities

An epic, full-color visual journey through all scales of the universe
In The Zoomable Universe, the award-winning astrobiologist Caleb Scharf and the acclaimed artist Ron Miller take us on an epic tour through all known scales of reality, from the largest possible magnitude to the smallest. Drawing on cutting-edge science, they begin at the limits of the observable universe, a scale spanning 10^27 meters―about 93 billion light-years. And they end in the subatomic realm, at 10^-35 meters, where the fabric of space-time itself confounds all known rules of physics. In between are galaxies, stars and planets, oceans and continents, plants and animals, microorganisms, atoms, and much, much more. Stops along the way―all enlivened by Scharf’s sparkling prose and his original insights into the nature of our universe―include the brilliant core of the Milky Way, the surface of a rogue planet, the back of an elephant, and a sea of jostling quarks.
The Zoomable Universe is packed with more than 100 original illustrations and infographics that will captivate readers of every age. It is a whimsical celebration of discovery, a testament to our astounding ability to see beyond our own vantage point and chart a course from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to its subatomic depths―in short, a must-have for the shelves of all explorers.

The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Nearly Nothing

Caleb Scharf argues that all the data we create - all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos - amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behaviour and influence our well-being. And it's an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn't just something we produce; it's the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life.

The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm

Computers & Technology

Computer Science

Riverhead Books

"Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreignin a dramatic new light."-Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it's using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we've failed to ask exactly why we're expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create-all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos-amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it's an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn't just something we produce; it's the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.

The Ascent of Information: How Data Rules the World

Reference

From the gargantuan distance of 1026 metres, the radius of the observable universe, down to the unimaginably small Planck scale of 10-35 metres, used for measurements inside a proton, this illustrated guide to the cosmos zooms in on matter one order of magnitude (power of ten) at a time, depicting and explaining a curated selection of entities, including galaxies, planets, the solar system, Earth, flora and fauna, cells, viruses, atoms and subatomic particles.

The Zoomable Universe: A Step-by-Step Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from the Infinite to the Infinitesimal

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

Though the concept of "the universe" suggests the containment of everything, the latest ideas in cosmology hint that our universe may be just one of a multitude of others - a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities. In The Copernicus Complex, the renowned astrophysicist and author Caleb Scharf takes us on a cosmic adventure like no other, from tiny microbes within the Earth to distant exoplanets and beyond, asserting that the age-old Copernican principle is in need of updating. As Scharf argues, when Copernicus proposed that the Earth was not the fixed point at the center of the known universe (and therefore we are not unique), he set in motion a colossal scientific juggernaut, forever changing our vision of nature. But the principle has never been entirely true-we do live at a particular time, in a particular location, under particular circumstances. To solve this conundrum we must put aside our Copernican worldview and embrace the possibility that we are in a delicate balance between mediocrity and significance, order and chaos. Weaving together cutting-edge science and classic storytelling, historical accounts and speculations on what the future holds, The Copernicus Complex presents a compelling argument for what our true cosmic status is, and proposes a way forward for the ultimate quest: to determine life's abundance not just across this universe but across all realities.

The Copernicus Complex: The Quest for Our Cosmic (In)Significance

Allen Lane.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Scharf, Caleb. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Scharf, Caleb

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Scharf, Caleb. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos

The Copernicus Complex: Caleb A. Scharf

Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities

The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Nearly Nothing

The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm

The Ascent of Information: How Data Rules the World

The Zoomable Universe: A Step-by-Step Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from the Infinite to the Infinitesimal

The Copernicus Complex: The Quest for Our Cosmic (In)Significance