
Space Oddities
The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe
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Narrated by:
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Harry Cliff
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By:
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Harry Cliff
About this listen
Experimental physicist at CERN and acclaimed science presenter Harry Cliff offers an eye-opening account of the inexplicable phenomena that science has only recently glimpsed, and that could transform our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality.
Something strange is going on in the cosmos. Scientists are uncovering a catalogue of weird phenomena that simply can’t be explained by our long-established theories of the universe. Particles with unbelievable energies are bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice. Unknown forces seem to be tugging on the basic building blocks of matter. Stars are flying away from us far faster than anyone can explain.
After decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of our physical world? Or are we being fooled by cruel tricks of the data?
In Space Oddities, Harry Cliff, a physicist who does cutting-edge work on the Large Hadron Collider, provides a riveting look at the universe’s most confounding puzzles. In a journey that spans continents, from telescopes perched high above the Atacama Desert to the subterranean caverns of state-of-the-art particle colliders to balloons hovering over the frozen icesheets of the South Pole, he meets the men and women hunting for answers—who have staked their careers and reputations on the uncertain promise of new physics.
The result is a mind-expanding, of-the-moment look at the fields of physics and cosmology as they transform before us. With wonder, clarity, and a dose of humor, Cliff investigates the question: Are these anomalies accidents of nature, or could they be pointing us toward vast, hidden worlds?
*Includes a downloadable PDF of diagrams from the text
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Harry Cliff (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"[Cliff] is also an engaging writer, with a keen ear for the fun metaphor and an observant eye when describing the scientific milieu in which he operates. . . . Mr. Cliff splendidly captures the behind-the-scenes experiences that are rarely reported on." —The Wall Street Journal
"Space Oddities is as fascinating as its title suggests. Anomalies are always interesting, sometimes fascinating, and occasionally revelatory, and Harry Cliff recounts with vivid clarity the stories of some of the most striking oddnesses that have lit up the landscape of modern physics. I enjoyed it enormously." —Philip Pullman, New York Times bestselling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy
"Many of us laugh at the implausible cosmologies believed by our medieval and ancient forebears. Dr. Cliff lays out the gaps and anomalies at the edge of modern science, which may make the best theories of today look as quaint as those of long ago." —Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling authors of A City on Mars
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Authoritative story about origin of life
- By churab on 10-07-24
By: Mario Livio PhD, and others
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Under Alien Skies
- A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe
- By: Phil Plait
- Narrated by: Phil Plait
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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How would Saturn’s rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what’s the last thing you’d see before your spaghettification? What would it be like to visit the faraway places we currently experience only through high-powered telescopes and robotic emissaries? Faster-than-light travel may never be invented, but we can still take the scenic route through the universe with renowned astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait.
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great book, Candidly narrated
- By Alfred Maldonado on 09-03-23
By: Phil Plait
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The 4 Percent Universe
- Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
- By: Richard Panek
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only four percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called “dark energy”. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize.
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Not What I Expected
- By John on 06-13-14
By: Richard Panek
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The Elephant in the Universe
- Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter
- By: Govert Schilling
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Elephant in the Universe, Govert Schilling explores the fascinating history of the search for dark matter. Evidence for its existence comes from a wealth of astronomical observations. Theories and computer simulations of the evolution of the universe are also suggestive: they can be reconciled with astronomical measurements only if dark matter is a dominant component of nature.
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the astronomers
- By Rich Smith on 11-24-23
By: Govert Schilling
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How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch
- In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang
- By: Harry Cliff
- Narrated by: Harry Cliff
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry Cliff - a University of Cambridge particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider - sets out in pursuit of answers. He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the "Antimatter Factory," where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up).
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Excellent
- By Adrian on 01-06-23
By: Harry Cliff
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Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- By: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrated by: Sara Imari Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.
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Fascinating thought patterns
- By John linden on 09-10-24
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At the Edge of Time
- Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe's First Seconds
- By: Dan Hooper
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: We still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history.
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Excellent topic selection, explanation, and reading
- By Subway on 05-23-25
By: Dan Hooper
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The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
- Space, Time, and Motion
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.
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Accompanying PDF is Included
- By Barton on 11-21-22
By: Sean Carroll
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Space at the Speed of Light
- The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time
- By: Dr. Becky Smethurst
- Narrated by: Dr. Becky Smethurst
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Oxford University astrophysicist and popular YouTube personality Dr. Becky Smethurst presents everything you need to know about the universe in 10 accessible and engaging lessons. In Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time, she guides you through fundamental questions, both answered and unanswered, posed by space scientists. Why does gravity matter? How do we know the big bang happened?
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informative and well presented
- By Lenny Newball on 03-22-21
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A New History of Life
- The Radical New Discoveries About the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth
- By: Peter Ward, Joe Kirschvink
- Narrated by: William Elsman
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Darwin’s theories, first published more than 150 years ago, still set the paradigm of how we understand the evolution of life—but scientific advances of recent decades have radically altered that understanding. In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation’s worth of insights from new research.
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Paleoatmospheres reveal species success or failure
- By Katibird on 11-25-23
By: Peter Ward, and others
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The Universe
- The Book of the BBC TV Series Presented by Professor Brian Cox
- By: Andrew Cohen, Professor Brian Cox - foreword
- Narrated by: Brian Cox, Professor Jot Davies
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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With a foreword from Professor Brian Cox and access to all the latest NASA mission information, Andrew Cohen takes listeners on a voyage of discovery via the probes and telescopes exploring the outer reaches of our galaxy, revealing how it was formed and how it will inevitably be destroyed by the enigmatic black hole at its heart. And beyond our galaxy, the expanding universe, which holds clues to the biggest mystery of all - how did it all begin?
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Listen to this alone and with your loved ones. You’ll be transported and inspired
- By MH on 02-26-22
By: Andrew Cohen, and others
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The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved
- How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
- By: Mario Livio
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until they encountered the quintic equation, which resisted solution for three centuries. Working independently, two prodigies ultimately proved that the quintic cannot be solved by a simple formula. The first popular account of the mathematics of symmetry and order, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved is told not through abstract formulas but in a beautifully written and dramatic account of the lives and work of some of the greatest and most intriguing mathematicians in history.
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Historical Perspective Appreciated
- By Michael Hanrahan on 01-22-20
By: Mario Livio
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Paradox
- The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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Almost Useless
- By Michael on 06-19-19
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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Black Holes
- The Key to Understanding the Universe
- By: Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
- Narrated by: Jeff Forshaw
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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By the star physicist and author of multiple #1 Sunday Times bestsellers, a major and definitive narrative work on black holes and how they can help us understand the universe.
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not really a good audio book for active listeners
- By D Co on 05-27-24
By: Brian Cox, and others
God summary
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Interesting
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Good overview of recent scientific results and debates
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Great insights into contemporary particle physics and cosmologywha
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Above my head.
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as compelling as a mystery novel and very informative
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Brilliant
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Five stars for the interesting ideas and entertainment value. Cliff has a witty, conversational writing style and a great voice for narration. Recommended for both.
Real World Experimental Physics
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Presentation & Presentation
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Extremely well written
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