The Echoing Universe How Radio Astronomy Helps Us See the Invisible Cosmos

How learning to “listen” to the universe using radio waves has revolutionized our understanding of everything from gravity to little green men 

In space, no one can hear you scream.  
 
But the universe is far from silent. It’s been speaking all along, broadcasting its stories and secrets, for those who know how to listen.  
 
In The Echoing Universe, Emma Chapman tunes us in to the universe and what it is trying to say, through the science of radio astronomy. Everything, from the surface of the Moon to distant stars, is sending out signals—maybe even extraterrestrials. With radio waves, we can uncover what visible light cannot show us and peer into realms that are otherwise unreachable. Even the hostile surface of Venus, where high temperatures, lethal acid rain, and crushing pressure rapidly annihilate even the hardiest robotic probes, yields its secrets through radio observations.  
 
This exhilarating expedition is just the beginning as new and bigger radio telescopes come into play and propel our curiosity well beyond the edge of our galaxy.  
 
Despite the seeming silence of space, The Echoing Universe reveals that the future of astronomy is loud and vibrant. When we turn our radio telescopes to the sky and simply listen, we’ll discover far more than what our eyes could ever see.

Emma Woodfield is an award-winning astrophysicist and Royal Society Research Fellow based at the University of Nottingham. She is among the world’s leading researchers in the search for the first stars of our universe and is the author of First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time. She lives in Nottinghamshire, UK.