Hello, I am new to this forum. And I have begun listening to the Astronomy Cast podcast. I am no scientist and think I should refresh myself on the basics. Years ago, I had read Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Is this book still relevant? Or does someone have a recommendation on a more current book that would be as accessible to the non-scientist? Thank you.

I would recomend going to your local well stocked used book store and in the appropriate section find a couple books about things that interest you and build from there. One thing will lead to another.

Welcome to the forum!

Yes, Cosmos is still relevent.
Try A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and Six little Numbers by Martin Rees.

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Everything that Carl Sagan wrote will always be relevant!! He was the first to make all this stuff understandable to the "street" astronomer/cosmologist, people who have been fascinated with space and the universe since grade school, but had a hard time wrapping their heads around all the numbers and facts. Sagan helped make it more fun!. Everything Hawkings and Rees writes will also.

You've likely got the "basics." I'd suggest you steer more toward What Scientists Have Found Out Lately. Besides, almost all Found Out Lately books start with a couple chapters on the basics and history of scientific thought that then brings us to what we understand today.

I just remember the series on PBS. And being blown away when he said that all the heavier elements that make up our world were not present at the beginning, but came later from types I and II supernova.

More recent discoveries point to the likelihood that all of those atoms that make all the galaxies and ourselves account for a very small fraction of the mass of the universe.

By great fortune, there are many excellent and accessible books that fit that description. If you haven't been keeping up with what scientists have been doing, you might want to start back in 1977 when Timothy Ferris wrote The Red Limit, the search for the edge of the universe. The Introduction is by Sagan. I haven't read it lately, but Ferris is such a good writer. He'll get you right into the swing of things.

Then you'd want something more current. Well, there's The Runaway Universe, the Race to Find the Future of the Cosmos [2000] -- Donald Goldsmith. A quick survey of the Cosmos as we know it in 2000, then a detailed look at the results from two independent supernova search teams that seem to indicate that the well-known expansion of the universe is accelerating. As Goldsmith put it....

There are too many others to mention. Many Nobel Prize winners have written excellent books that are accessible to a general audience. Murray Gell-man wrote a great one in The Quark and the Cougar- er, I mean Jaguar. Leon Lederman's The God Particle was a tremendously witty and accessible trek through physics' Standard Model. As he says....
But can you imagine working with him? At one point he says, "By 8 P.M. we were disassembling the apparatus of one very confused and upset graduate student. Marcel saw his Ph.D. thesis experiment being taken apart!" (IIRC, this resulted in a significant discovery.)

Anyway, best of luck and keep reading.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

You will find many opinions of "A Brief History of Time" in a negative light for beginner's because it has a dry, academic style, even though he tried, consiously, not to have that effect. Or because more recent theories proposed my Mr. Hawking have left some non-plussed. Please don't let that dissuade you from reading the book. I first discovered it more than a decade ago, and to this day cannot put it down

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher