When we look up at the night sky you can see millions of stars, but what do you think we could see in space if we left Earth? If we could hop into a special ship and blast off, traveling billions of miles away from Earth, we’d see the Milky Way galaxy. In this book, readers take an incredible journey through that galaxy, exploring the universe and learning how it was formed and what will one day happen to these enormous groups of stars. From mysterious dark matter to the black holes at the center of galaxies, readers will also dive into the mysteries of the universe scientists have spent years trying to decipher.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NAMED A BEST AUDIOBOOK OF 2022 BY BOOKPAGE Astrophysicist and folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier channels The Milky Way in this approachable and utterly fascinating autobiography of the titular galaxy, detailing what humans have discovered about everything from its formation to its eventual death, and what more there is to learn about this galaxy we call home. After a few billion years of bearing witness to life on Earth, of watching one hundred billion humans go about their day-to-day lives, of feeling unbelievably lonely, and of hearing its own story told by others, The Milky Way would like a chance to speak for itself. All one hundred billion stars and fifty undecillion tons of gas of it. It all began some thirteen billion years ago, when clouds of gas scattered through the universe's primordial plasma just could not keep their metaphorical hands off each other. They succumbed to their gravitational attraction, and the galaxy we know as the Milky Way was born. Since then, the galaxy has watched as dark energy pushed away its first friends, as humans mythologized its name and purpose, and as galactic archaeologists have worked to determine its true age (rude). The Milky Way has absorbed supermassive (an actual technical term) black holes, made enemies of a few galactic neighbors, and mourned the deaths of countless stars. Our home galaxy has even fallen in love. After all this time, the Milky Way finally feels that it's amassed enough experience for the juicy tell-all we've all been waiting for. Its fascinating autobiography recounts the history and future of the universe in accessible but scientific detail, presenting a summary of human astronomical knowledge thus far that is unquestionably out of this world.
When we look up at the night sky you can see millions of stars, but what do you think we could see in space if we left Earth? If we could hop into a special ship and blast off, traveling billions of miles away from Earth, we’d see the Milky Way galaxy. In this book, readers take an incredible journey through that galaxy, exploring the universe and learning how it was formed and what will one day happen to these enormous groups of stars. From mysterious dark matter to the black holes at the center of galaxies, readers will also dive into the mysteries of the universe scientists have spent years trying to decipher.
"This visual wellspring of the cosmos is the perfect companion for every stargazer. Filled with page after page of magnificent photographs, this book offers a deep dive into the past, present, and future of our home galaxy: the Milky Way. Embark on this dramatic journey by witnessing the stunning birth, life, and death of stars--including story of our own sun and the solar system it sustains. Continue on to discover our galaxy within the known universe with a scintillating peek at exoplanets, the new frontier in the search for life. Detailed maps and absorbing imagery from recent space missions illuminate the latest scientific information, complemented by a foreword by celebrated astronaut Chris Hadfield."-- Back cover.
The acclaimed author of "Tracing Stars" delivers a moving story about how a mother's mental illness affects her childrenNand the way her children's band together to get through it.
This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE. The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance. It reconstructs and compares parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed in their ceremonial centers to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife. The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology. Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation and gathering the labor required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers: a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities. The archaeological reconstructions of Hopewellian ritual dramas and concepts of personhood and the self, and of Hopewell people’s strategic uses of these, are informed by three large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives, ideas, and rites about journeys to afterlives, the creatures who inhabit the cosmos, and the nature and functions of soul-like essences, coupled with rich contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological-taphonomic analyses. The bioarchaeological-taphonomic method of l’anthropologie de terrain, new to North American archaeology, is introduced and applied. In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logic and motivation and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples.
