Lighting The Stars

Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science "A valuable perspective on the most important problem of our time." —Adam Becker, NPR Light of the Stars tells the story of humanity’s coming of age as we realize we might not be alone in this universe. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life from the ancient Greeks to modern thinkers, and he demonstrates that recognizing the possibility of its existence might be the key to save us from climate change. With clarity and conviction, Light of the Stars asks the consequential question: What can the likely presence of life on other planets tell us about our own fate?

Tucked into the rugged Canadian wilderness of Muskoka's majestic lake country, Merilee Sutcliffe's peaceful town seems worlds away from the escalating conflict in Europe. But life is about to change dramatically in the Summer of 1940. As her patriotic friends and relatives leave for battle, her small town is thrust into the war machine. Merilee's formerly tranquil skies soon roar with aircraft from the Royal Norwegian Air Force, stationed nearby to train young men determined to liberate their country from Nazi occupation. When German Prisoners of War march into her shocked community, they become Merilee's closest neighbours - and biggest threat. What unfolds in her remote town and on foreign shores sets Merilee and her growing circle on a collision course with an unimagined destiny. Caught up in the chaos is Luftwaffe pilot Erich Leitner. Shot down during the Battle of Britain and transplanted to a lakeside prison in Muskoka, he discovers he has more to fear from his comrades than his captors. While her cousin-in-spirit, Elyse Thornton, navigates the treacherous skies of Britain as a Spitfire Girl, audaciously ferrying warplanes from factories to airfields, Merilee becomes quietly entangled in her own dangerous liaisons on the home front. Caught between worlds, with conflicted loyalties and a sense of duty, she joins the Royal Canadian Air Force, Women's Division, and soon finds herself in ground-zero London, focusing her photographer's lens on a city under bombardment. Far from carefree summers on the lake, struggling to survive the relentless demands and sacrifices of war, Merilee, Elyse, and their friends wonder if they dare to risk their hearts as well. As unlikely lives intersect, ideologies and social hierarchies are challenged, loves and friendships are forged or broken, and countless heroes are made and lost. But even those who return to the serenity of Muskoka are changed forever.

Experience an evocative combination of fantasy, history, and Jewish folklore in this lush and lyrical fairytale-inspired novel from the author of The Sisters of the Winter Wood. Deep in the Hungarian woods, the sacred magic of King Solomon lives on in his descendants. Gathering under the midnight stars, they perform small miracles and none are more gifted than the great Rabbi Isaac and his three daughters. Hannah, bookish and calm, can coax plants to grow even when the weather is bitterly cold. Sarah, defiant and strong, can control the impulsive nature of fire. And Levana, the fey one, can read the path of the stars to decipher their secrets. But darkness is creeping across Europe, threatening the lives of every Jewish person in every village. Each sister will have to make an impossible choice in an effort to survive—and change the fate of their family forever. Praise for The Light of the Midnight Stars: "Storytelling as spellcasting. Rossner has conjured something vivid and wild and true."—Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies "Rossner creates a lush, immersive world through which the sprawling plot meanders, punctuated by moments of intense grief. The result is as lovely as it is heartbreaking." —Publishers Weekly "Rossner's tale is as lyrical as the slow growth of roots, the quick dance of fire, and the stately procession of the stars. Blending folktale with history, hope with tragedy, its touch will linger on your heart long after you put it down."—Marie Brennan For more from Rena Rossner, check out The Sisters of the Winter Wood.

Perhaps the most common question that a child asks when he or she sees the night sky from a dark site for the first time is: 'How many stars are there?' This happens to be a question which has exercised the intellectual skills of many astronomers over the course of most of the last century, including, for the last two decades, one of the authors of this text. Until recently, the most accurate answer was 'We are not certain, but there is a good chance that almost all of them are M dwarfs. ' Within the last three years, results from new sky-surveys - particularly the first deep surveys at near infrared wavelengths - have provided a breakthrough in this subject, solidifying our census of the lowest-mass stars and identifying large numbers of the hitherto almost mythical substellar-mass brown dwarfs. These extremely low-luminosity objects are the central subjects of this book, and the subtitle should be interpreted accordingly. The expression 'low-mass stars' carries a wide range of meanings in the astronomical literature, but is most frequently taken to refer to objects with masses comparable with that of the Sun - F and G dwarfs, and their red giant descendants. While this definition is eminently reasonable for the average extragalactic astronomer, our discussion centres on M dwarfs, with masses of no more than 60% that of the Sun, and extends to 'failed stars' - objects with insufficient mass to ignite central hydrogen fusion.

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.

A Long Island Reads 2020 Selection * A Real Simple Best Book of 2019 From the bestselling author of The Book of Speculation, a “tender and ambitious” (Vulture) novel about time, loss, and the wonders of the universe. Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach--if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time. Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream and is traveling aboard the space ship Chawla, part of a small group hoping to colonize a distant planet. But as she floats in zero gravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her. For fans of The Age of Miracles and The Immortalists, Erika Swyler's Light from Other Stars is a masterful and ambitious novel about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the true meaning of progress.

Beyond the Sorrow, Belief Awaited.... Catherine had vowed long ago to be the kind of mother she'd never known herself, but somewhere along the way things became muddled. One by one her three children rebelled, leaving her outwardly perfect family in disarray. As if their household isn't disrupted enough, Catherine's strange sister-in-law moves in--uninvited. Into the chaos steps a new neighbor, as different from Catherine as any woman could be. Catherine is both appalled and fascinated by the unique way Barb's family interprets life's trials, and she is inexplicably drawn to them. When tragedy strikes, she finds herself longing to discover the secret to their joyful, contented lives. A Christy Award Finalist

Moonlight, starlight, the ethereal glow of snow in winter. When you flick off a switch, other forms of light begin to reveal themselves. Artificial light is everywhere. Not only is it damaging to humans and to wildlife, disrupting our natural rhythms, but it obliterates the subtler lights that have guided us for millennia. In this beautifully written exploration of the power of light, Matt Gaw ventures forth into darkness to find out exactly what we're missing: walking by the light of the moon in Suffolk and under the scattered buckshot of starlight in Scotland; braving the darkest depths of Dartmoor; investigating the glare of 24/7 London and the suburban sprawl of Bury St Edmunds; and, finally, rediscovering a sense of the sublime on the Isle of Coll. Under the Stars is an inspirational and immersive call to reconnect with the natural world, showing how we only need to step outside to find that, in darkness, the world lights up.