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Radio Universe

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What to expect

'Accessible, imaginative and compelling' New Scientist

How do you explore distant stars, buried water on Mars or the first moments after the Big Bang - without leaving your back garden?

In The Radio Universe, award-winning astrophysicist Emma Chapman takes us on an electrifying voyage through the cosmos using one of the most powerful, yet overlooked, tools in science: the radio wave. With dazzling clarity and humour, Chapman reveals how these invisible messengers glide through space, bounce off planets, tunnel through clouds and slip past galactic dust - carrying secrets of the universe that no other kind of light can uncover.

We follow a single radio wave as it escapes Earth and travels outward - ricocheting off the Moon, tunnelling through Venus's furnace-thick atmosphere, tracing ancient ice hidden in Mercury's shadows and diving deep into the swirling arms of the Milky Way. Along the way, we meet black holes that roar louder than stars, pulsars more precise than atomic clocks and galaxies lit by the very first starlight. We explore volcanic pancake planets, death-defying neutron stars, the eerie possibility of alien broadcasts - and the fragile question of our own future in the cosmos.

A celebration of human ingenuity and cosmic curiosity, The Radio Universe reveals that the true frontier of space isn't 'out there' - it's humming quietly all around us, waiting to be heard.

Critics Review

Astrophysicist Emma Chapman's Radio Universe reveals how we use radio waves to explore the distant universe. Chapman follows one on a journey from Earth into the wider Milky Way, passing black holes and pulsars
New Scientist
A brave new world of cosmis surveillance is here
The Spectator
A dazzling trip into outer space reveals how radio waves have helped us solve the mysteries of the universe's darkest corners and deepest past
Bookseller
PRAISE FOR FIRST LIGHT, BY EMMA CHAPMAN
:
A dispatch from the frontiers of science, from a brain fizzing with ideas and energy
Chris Lintott, BBC Sky at Night
An illuminating and entertaining look at the earliest stars of our cosmos. Chapman is a witty and straightforward guide, and her enthusiasm is infectious
Washington Post
Thoroughly engaging . . . allows us to see science in the making. Chapman serves as a wonderful guide, whose voice is reminiscent of Carl Sagan's, although with an extra and very welcome dollop of impish humor
Wall Street Journal
Author Emma Chapman
Narrator Emma Chapman
Duration 10 hours and 36 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529399011
Format Audiobook
Publisher John Murray Press
Genre Astronomy, space and time, Astrophysics, Earth sciences, Space science
Availability AU, GB, IE

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