Decoding the Heavens
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Decoding the Heavens
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Narrated by:
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Julie Eickhoff
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By:
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Jo Marchant
About this listen
In Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant tells for the first time the full story of the 100-year quest to decipher the ancient Greek computer known as the Antikythera Mechanism. Along the way she unearths a diverse cast of remarkable characters and explores the deep roots of modern technology in ancient Greece and the medieval European and Islamic worlds. At its heart, this is an epic adventure and mystery, a book that challenges our assumptions about technology through the ages.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 536
A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city all around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Bryson-esque tour of people, myth, & archaeology
- By A reader on 05-14-15
By: Mark Adams
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Technology of the Gods
- The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients
- By: David Hatcher Childress
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 431
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 365
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 365
Popular Lost Cities author David Hatcher Childress takes us into the amazing world of ancient technology, from computers in antiquity to the flying machines of the gods. Childress looks at the technology that was allegedly used in Atlantis and the theory that the Great Pyramid of Egypt was originally a gigantic power station. He examines tales of ancient flight and the technology that it involved; how the ancients used electricity; megalithic building techniques; the use of crystal lenses and the fire from the gods; and more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful
- By Hagood on 03-20-18
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Periodic Tales
- A Cultural History of the Elements, From Arsenic to Zinc
- By: Hugh Aldersey-Williams
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 535
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 474
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Story4 out of 5 stars 475
Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting but Rambling
- By Carolyn on 08-24-15
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The Clockwork Universe
- Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,892
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,313
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,325
The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Calculus Ergo Modernity
- By Nelson Alexander on 07-09-11
By: Edward Dolnick
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The Day We Found the Universe
- By: Marcia Bartusiak
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
From one of our most acclaimed science writers: a dramatic narrative of the discovery of the true nature and startling size of the universe, delving back past the moment of revelation to trace the decades of work--by a select group of scientists--that made it possible.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth the Effort
- By Roy on 08-13-09
By: Marcia Bartusiak
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The Second Kind of Impossible
- The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter
- By: Paul J. Steinhardt
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 231
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 204
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 204
When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s 35-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter - one that raises the possibility of new materials with never-before-seen properties but that violates laws set in stone for centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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In anticipation of low review marks...
- By James S. on 05-14-19
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The Discoverers
- A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin
- Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 197
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4 out of 5 stars 91
Why didn't the Chinese discover America? Why were people so slow to learn the earth goes around the sun? How and why did we begin to think of "species" of plants and animals? How, when, and why did people begin digging in the earth to learn about the past? How did the study of economics begin? These are but a few of the fascinating questions answered by Dr. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress Emeritus.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of my Top 10 Fav. Books!
- By shannonnn on 05-09-05
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Twilight of the Gods
- The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials
- By: Erich von Däniken
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 359
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 301
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Story4 out of 5 stars 300
"Something here really stinks to high heaven," writes Erich von Däniken. "In Twilight of the Gods," says von Däniken, "I document precisely what it was that left the first visitors breathless as they stood before the mighty stone blocks some 400 years ago. I will show you what archeologists discovered hundreds of years ago and demonstrate how much has been destroyed over the centuries. Intentionally.
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4 out of 5 stars
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So very logical it makes me shiver!
- By Chuck on 06-10-11
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Isaac Newton
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 465
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 317
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 316
James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science: how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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BRUTAL
- By Andrew on 05-25-05
By: James Gleick
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Underworld
- The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
- By: Graham Hancock
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 31 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 654
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 561
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 561
From Graham Hancock, best-selling author of Fingerprints of the Gods, comes a mesmerizing book that takes us on a captivating underwater voyage to find the ruins of a lost civilization that's been hidden for thousands of years beneath the world's oceans. While Graham Hancock is no stranger to stirring up heated controversy among scientific experts, his books and television documentaries have intrigued millions of people around the world and influenced many to rethink their views about the origins of human civilization.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Michael Beeson on 05-13-19
By: Graham Hancock
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Magicians of the Gods
- The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization
- By: Graham Hancock
- Narrated by: Graham Hancock
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6,643
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 5,907
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,895
Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with the sequel to his seminal work filled with completely new scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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"Brilliant" is an understatement.
- By Brian on 11-13-15
By: Graham Hancock
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Three Stones Make a Wall
- The Story of Archaeology
- By: Eric H. Cline
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
In 1922, Howard Carter peered into Tutankhamun's tomb for the first time, the only light coming from the candle in his outstretched hand. Urged to tell what he was seeing through the small opening he had cut in the door to the tomb, the Egyptologist famously replied, "I see wonderful things". Carter's fabulous discovery is just one of the many spellbinding stories told in Three Stones Make a Wall.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Solid, but still disappointed
- By Sturgie on 04-10-18
By: Eric H. Cline
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Odyssey of the Gods
- The History of Extraterrestrial Contact in Ancient Greece
- By: Erich von Däniken
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 176
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Story4 out of 5 stars 173
Legendary UFO expert Erich von Daniken stirs up another controversy with an imaginative supposition: What if the myths of ancient Greece were attempts to describe events that really happened? What if ancient peoples were visited, not by imaginary gods and goddesses, but by extraterrestrial beings who arrived on earth thousands of years ago? The author's research into both ancient mythology and current archaeological discoveries leads him to some explosive hypotheses.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good Research, but Draw Your Own Conclusions
- By Troy on 07-18-13
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4 out of 5 stars 133
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
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Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 731
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 729
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27,945
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21,222
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21,118
Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson
What listeners say about Decoding the Heavens
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sean
- 03-14-14
Very satisfying account of an ancient mystery
The book describes the finding and investigation of one of the most enigmatic ancient artifacts. Many theories have swirled around it (Aliens!) but in 2006 a group of math, astronomy and imaging specialists finally determined the purpose of the existing fragments.
She does a great job of describing the initial find and the first enthusiastic but erroneous interpretations of what the device was. All of the standard academic personalities are here--the Dreamer, the Enthusiastic Amatuer, the Double-crosser, the Possessive Curators, the serendipitous encounters.
I was particularly impressed by how she explained the subtleties of translating irregularities of lunar and solar motion into clockwork. Her descriptions of the actual bronze fragments were less clear, but since they are apparently barely recognizable as gears this is easy to forgive. She also describes future possibilities for investigation since there may have been more to the device than was recovered.
I was less happy with the performance. The reader has a whimsical delivery that the text really doesn't support, but her reading is accurate and easy to understand.
I would recommend this to someone interested in classical Greece and science history in general.
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