Explains how stars are born, how they evolve and their ultimate fates, for a broad general audience.

Living with the Stars tells the fascinating story of what truly makes the human body. The body that is with us all our lives is always changing. We are quite literally not who we were years, weeks, or even days ago: our cells die and are replaced by new ones at an astonishing pace. The entire body continually rebuilds itself, time and again, using the food and water that flow through us as fuel and as construction material. What persists over time is not fixed but merely a pattern in flux. We rebuild using elements captured from our surroundings, and are thereby connected to animals and plants around us, and to the bacteria within us that help digest them, and to geological processes such as continental drift and volcanism here on Earth. We are also intimately linked to the Sun's nuclear furnace and to the solar wind, to collisions with asteroids and to the cycles of the birth of stars and their deaths in cataclysmic supernovae, and ultimately to the beginning of the universe. Our bodies are made of the burned out embers of stars that were released into the galaxy in massive explosions billions of years ago, mixed with atoms that formed only recently as ultrafast rays slammed into Earth's atmosphere. All of that is not just remote history but part of us now: our human body is inseparable from nature all around us and intertwined with the history of the universe.

This stunning illustrated children's book takes an innovative look at the circle of life, including animals, dinosaurs, stars, volcanoes, and even YOU. Everything has a beginning and an end, but what happens in between? Follow the migration of zebra across the vast plains, meet penguins guarding their eggs on the ice, and watch butterflies emerge from their cocoons. Shoot back in time 4.5 billion years to see how planet Earth was formed and then leap into the future to see what happens when stars die. Discover a new life cycle every time you turn the page. You'll take a closer look at the life cycles of environments, too. Discover how a river forms and changes over time. Find out how a tree grows and all of the other life cycles it supports within it. See the amazing sculptures the ocean waves carve out of cliffs. Dive beneath the surface to see how coral reefs form, and what causes them to die. Follow the life cycles of weather--from the water cycle to ice ages, to give you a better grasp of the climate situation we find ourselves in now. From the single-celled amoeba to how the Earth formed, the life cycles in this ebook have been carefully chosen to give you an amazing overview of the universe, and how everything is intricately linked. Filled with facts to amaze your friends, stunning photography, and beautifully detailed illustrations by Sam Falconer, Life Cycles gets to grips with the essence of life itself.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading When people look up into the night sky, the stars seem fixed and immutable, as unchanging as the darkness of space itself, but the truth is that stars are born, live and die in a never-ending cycle of creation and annihilation. These cycles stretch over such vast spans of time that, to short-lived humans, they seem to last forever. No one knows just how many stars there are, but their number is almost beyond comprehension. When people look up into the night sky, they can see further than they might guess: up to 19 quadrillion miles, the distance to Deneb in Cygnus, a star that is visible from most inhabited parts of Earth. In total, around five thousand stars are visible to the naked eye, though only around two thousand are visible at any one time from a particular place on Earth. All the visible stars are bigger and brighter than the Sun. Of course, there are many more known stars than those that can be seen with the naked eye. Astronomers estimate that in the Milky Way, there may be more than three hundred billion stars, and every other galaxy may have a similar number of stars. How many galaxies are there in the Universe? Again, no one is certain, but most astronomers agree that there must be many billions. Stars begin as vast clouds of dust and gas within galaxies and are known as nebulae. Due to Newton's Law of Global Attraction, the densest areas in these nebulae pull-in matter from the surrounding space. The more mass they gain, the more mass they attract. Over time, this accumulation can lead to the creation of a star. From that moment on, an eternal battle begins: gravity tends to contract the star while its growing inner pressure tends to expand it. Nebulae are stellar nurseries, the places where stars are created and an essential part of the life cycle of the Universe. Stars do not last forever. Over time they gradually lose energy and finally die. This process of the creation of new stars and the gradual death of existing stars is part of a vast, cosmic process of recycling that continues all the time. However, that raises the question of how the very first stars were formed and that in turn leads to questions about the origin of the Universe itself. However, the life cycle of stars also has a direct relationship to life here on Earth. Singer Joni Mitchell famously included the line "we are stardust" in her hit song "Woodstock." Surprisingly, it seems that she was absolutely right. In the beginning, the Universe comprised hydrogen, small quantities of helium, minuscule amounts of lithium and almost nothing else. Stars are the engines that provide the raw material from which life itself as well as stellar bodies are created. Each star is like a factory that uses nuclear fusion to convert hydrogen into helium and that in turn is used to create carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and many other elements. When a star dies, it ejects its outer layers, throwing these elements off as cosmic dust. The gravity of planets attracts and captures this dust which settles on the surface, introducing new elements. It is estimated that more than forty thousand tons of cosmic dust arrives on Earth every year and this process has continued as long as there has been a planet Earth. Some of the tiny pieces of dust (most are smaller than one-hundredth the width of a human hair) are very old indeed. Scientists have found what they call "original stardust" on meteorites and asteroids. Many of these have been drifting in space since before the Sun was created. The elements in this dust are the fundamental building-blocks of life and every living organism on Earth is created from elements that were originally produced in long-dead stars. It seems that humans and everything else on the planet really did begin as stardust.

How does an acorn grow into a tree? What does a baby sea horse eat? Discover the amazing stages of different life cycles and learn all about your favourite species with this stunning series. From plants and pets to exotic animals, readers will soon learn how different species are born, grow up and reproduce. Each book has amazing photographs, easy-to-understand text and discussion points for further learning.

LIFE CYLCES describes and illustrates three different types of life-to-death-to-life again cycles that occur in nature. First is the cycle of the sunflower that grows from a seed to maturity, thus producing more seeds to begin the cycle again. Next is the mushroom cycle, involving the production of spores as a means of reproducing. The third life cycle is that of the grasshopper, which produces eggs that, once fertilized, hatch into new grasshoppers. Each of these examples is a variation of the eternal circle of life and death that is characteristic of most types of plants and insects.

"An explanation of life cycles of different types of plants and animals, as well as people"--Provided by publisher.

This high-interest informational text will help students gain science content knowledge while building their literacy skills and nonfiction reading comprehension. This appropriately leveled nonfiction science reader features hands-on, simple science experiments. Third grade students will learn all about the life cycles of plants, insects, snakes, and animals through this engaging text that is aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards and supports STEM education.

Describes the life cycle of various plants and animals, from butterflies to frogs, mammals, and humans, and provides science activities to demonstrate the different stages of the life cycle.