Welcome to the Universe

An Astrophysical Tour

By: Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott, Neil deGrasse Tyson

Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray

Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.

Describing the latest discoveries in astrophysics, the informative and entertaining narrative propels you from our home solar system to the outermost frontiers of space. How do stars live and die? Why did Pluto lose its planetary status? What are the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How did the universe begin? Why is it expanding, and why is its expansion accelerating? Is our universe alone or part of an infinite multiverse? Answering these and many other questions, the authors open your eyes to the wonders of the cosmos, sharing their knowledge of how the universe works.

Breathtaking in scope, Welcome to the Universe is for those who hunger for insights into our evolving universe that only world-class astrophysicists can provide.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Annoying voice and audio math don't work

I love Tyson and Strauss, and don't know a lot about Gott, but was looking forward to this, as I had already read chapter one. The narrator apparently prides himself on different accents, but all I can hear in this is nasal Chicago, which I don't find at all appealing. I'm having a hard time paying attention to what he says. All the equations don't translate well to audio, either. I'm about 1/4 of the way in, and I might have to just buy the book and read it, instead of listening.

physics

Always liked physics and this made it a little easier to understand. I appreciated the explanation of Pluto's status change.

Fantastic Tour of the Cosmos

This is a very thorough book covering Astrophysics. Not quite a textbook, as it is much more interesting, but it does also contain several equations. This book challenged my preconceptions as well as making me wonder more about the geometry of higher dimensional space-time. If astronomy, physics, general relativity and other similar topics interest you, this will be a treat!

AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY

Wonderful journey

This was not the story I was expecting, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Authors take you from subatomic particles to the largest known objects in the universe. I chose not to follow the math all that closely since I won’t be using it myself in this lifetime, but hearing about how many of the theories we are aware of, Black holes for instance, we’re first theorized mathematically and then discovered empirically.

An enlightening experience

The world will be a better place to live when this kind off knowledge becomes popular and accessible to all.

a challenging but worthwhile book

This is a challenging book, but I am glad I listened to it. I learned many things about the Universe that I did not know before. This book is heavy on mathematics, and sometimes it is hard to visualize equations spoken aloud. I eventually got the print book from the library so I could see the equations and the charts and images the authors were referring to. The book does seem to increase in difficulty as you proceed, the last chapters being much more challenging than the first ones. My favorite chapter was the one on gravity. It is caused by the curvature of space. How bizzare!

deep for the layman.

a lot of great stuff I understood and even more I didn't. Fascinating stuff, yet, heady.

Kaboom!

Prepare to have you mind blown over and over with awesome, well delivered knowledge 🤯

Better suited as a hard copy book

This book is very eye-opening and educational. It is, however, better suited as a hard copy book. There are many equations contained which are much better understood in print as opposed to someone reading it to you. Either way, I highly recommend this book!

Very informative but too many numbers for audio book

I enjoyed listening but when it goes to representing equations i could not follow the process because it is hard to memorize all the variables as its been explained.
At the end the prediction of humanity extinction or the wall of Berlin being pulled down has a very odd logic! The author discussed about the 95% confidence interval concept to guess a life span of a concept in time series. This I believe impose the normal distribution assumption which I believe is wrong. It is like the probability of tossing a fair coin n times and each time getting head. I believe this probability distribution is not normal and does not fit the 95% confidence interval!