Author Description

Starships! Death Rays! Superheroes! Mutants! Monsters! Multiverse! An astrophysicist (and science fiction fan) explores the scientific possibility of superhero superpowers, stories of time travel, the supernatural, bigfoot, ghosts, vampires, and much more! Have you ever wondered whether we might someday teleport from place to place with transporters like those shown in Star Trek? Or pondered the existence of ghosts and the possibility of alien life visiting the Earth? Or debated whether being bitten by a radioactive spider might turn you into a superhero? From black holes to sentient robots to werewolves, astrophysicist Charles Liu investigates the real science of the supernatural, science fiction stories, mythology, folklore, fairy tales, and other wild, crazy, mysterious, spooky, fantastical, and sometimes real, sometimes not phenomena! Looking through a scientific lens, (Super) Natural Science: The Real Science of Superheroes, Mythic Creatures, and the (Sci-Fi) Universe probes the scientific foundations and frontiers of all things fantastic, from … Alien life and artificial intelligence; The Big Bang, Bigfoot and black holes; Cyborgs, dark matter, and death rays; The end of time, event horizons, and extra dimensions; Faster-than-light travel, genetic modification, and ghosts; Gravitational waves, hypernovas, insect invasions, and Jurassic Park; Kaiju, King Kong, leptons, magic, and mutants; Nucleosynthesis, Planck time, and quantum teleportation; Robots, super-senses, super-serums, and super-strength; Telepathy, teleportation, and time travel; Vampires, warp drive, and werewolves; X-ray vision, Yellowstone supervolcanoes, and Yetis; Zero-point energy and zombies; And so much more! Science and the supernatural aren’t mutually exclusive—and science is often stranger than fiction! (Super) Natural Science shows how science can be used to explain all sorts of strange, wondrous and unusual phenomena!