A heart-pumping exploration of the biggest explosions in history, from the Big Bang to mysterious activity on Earth and everything in between The overwhelming majority of celestial space is inactive, and will remain forever unruffled. Similarly, more than 90% of the universe's 70 billion trillion suns had non-attention-getting births and are living out their existences in a steady predictable fashion. But when cosmic violence does unfold, it changes the very fabric of the universe with mega-explosions and ripple effects that reach the near limits of human comprehension. From exploding galaxies to supernovas and hypernovas to gamma ray bursts and space-and-time warping upheavals, these moments are rare yet powerful, often unseen but consequentially felt. In Cataclysms , Astronomy writer Bob Berman guides us through an epic, all-inclusive investigation into these instances of cosmic violence of the largest-magnitude. He will explore the sudden creation of dazzling "new stars," the furiously explosive birth of our own Moon, how every moment ultra-high energy cosmic rays continue to bombard us, despite the Earth's protective mechanisms, and even the ways in which humanity itself has harnessed cataclysmic energy for its own gain. It will lead us humans, seemingly hard wired to enjoy fireworks, to savor the all-time greatest pyrotechnic displays -- and the strange objects that arose from them, including the very materials Nature has used to fashion our brains.