Astronomy Recent Discoveries & Developments

Who has not gazed with wonder at the night sky, especially from a dark site far away from city lights? The great canopy of stars stretching overhead suggests that our world is part of a vastly larger cosmos. But how large is it? Where do we fit in? And how did it all begin? These questions have puzzled stargazers for thousands of years, and the search for answers helped spark the great advances of the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. But only in our own time has the full picture of the true immensity, variety, and surpassing strangeness of the Universe come into focus.

• Updated throughout with recent developments and additional illustrations
• Reveals how solar outbursts caused the end of the last ice age, unleashed catastrophe upon ancient advanced civilizations, and led to six millennia of a Solar-Induced Dark Age
• Includes evidence from solar science, geology, oceanic circulation patterns, the Sphinx, the underground cities of Cappadocia, the Easter Island rongorongo glyphs, and the Göbekli Tepe complex in Turkey

An essential guide to milestone developments in astronomy, telling the story of our ideas about space, time, and the physics of the cosmos—from ancient times to the present day.