Summary (amended from Amazon's description):
Questions such as "What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us?" are discussed in this little but powerful book, which was on the New York Times booklist for over a year. Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and will reveal answers from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
Quotes from the book:
"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically."
"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/neil-degrasse-tyson/astrophysics-for-people-in-a-hurry/
Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3332/1
Citizen Science Project: Search for Gravitational Waves with your computer: Einstein@Home: https://einsteinathome.org/
Interviews:
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/books/review/in-conversation-with-neil-degrasse-tyson.html
Stephen Colbert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgA2y-Bgi3c
Neil deGrasse Tyson's website: https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/
Hayden Planetarium website: https://www.amnh.org/our-research/hayden-planetarium
(http://www.setterfield.org/Subatomic_Particles.html)
Star Talk Radio Show: https://www.startalkradio.net/category/startalk-radio/
Glossary of Astronomy Terms:http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-glossary.html
NASA site: https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics
10 Scientific Laws and Theories You Really Should Know:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/10-scientific-laws-theories1.htm
Discussion Questions: (John will be leading our discussion with the following questions)
1. What is your understanding and experience with astronomy?
2. What are some concepts and observations that surprised
you in this book?
3. Discuss Einstein contributions to our understanding of
the relationship between energy and matter and also his theory of general
relativity (GR).
4. Why and how are we made of stardust? How is this
connected to the formation of the universe?
5. What are dark matter and dark energy? Since neither have
been directly observed why are both considered necessary to explain the
physical universe?
6. Briefly, how was it thought that the universe began?
Discuss the most basic building block particles and energies that comprise and
hold together matter.
7. What is “Cosmic Microwave Background” (CMB) “? How does
it relate to the beginning of the universe and how was it discovered?
8. Tyson notes that
after enough time all current visibly galaxies will be too far to be observed.
Discuss the implications of this idea and the possibility that events may be
already unobservable.
(https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/10-scientific-laws-theories1.htm)
