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Five Billion Years Of Solitude
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Book Synopsis Five Billion Years of Solitude by : Lee Billings
Download or read book Five Billion Years of Solitude written by Lee Billings and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A definitive guide to astronomy’s hottest field.” —The Economist Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. But over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of “exoplanets,” including some that could be similar to our own world, and the pace of discovery is accelerating. In a fascinating account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with the world’s top experts in the search for life beyond earth. He reveals how the search for exoplanets is not only a scientific challenge, but also a reflection of our culture’s timeless hopes, dreams, and fears.
Book Synopsis Five Billion Years of Solitude by : Lee Billings
Download or read book Five Billion Years of Solitude written by Lee Billings and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A definitive guide to astronomy’s hottest field.” —The Economist Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. But over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of “exoplanets,” including some that could be similar to our own world, and the pace of discovery is accelerating. In a fascinating account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with the world’s top experts in the search for life beyond earth. He reveals how the search for exoplanets is not only a scientific challenge, but also a reflection of our culture’s timeless hopes, dreams, and fears.
Book Synopsis The Smallest Lights in the Universe by : Sara Seager
Download or read book The Smallest Lights in the Universe written by Sara Seager and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER • An MIT astrophysicist reinvents herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth, in this “bewitching” (Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review) memoir. “Sara Seager’s exploration of outer and inner space makes for a stunningly original memoir.”—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone Sara Seager has always been in love with the stars: so many lights in the sky, so much possibility. Now a pioneering planetary scientist, she searches for exoplanets—especially that distant, elusive world that sustains life. But with the unexpected death of Seager’s husband, the purpose of her own life becomes hard for her to see. Suddenly, at forty, she is a widow and the single mother of two young boys. For the first time, she feels alone in the universe. As she struggles to navigate her life after loss, Seager takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanets and the technical challenges of exploration. At the same time, she discovers earthbound connections that feel every bit as wondrous, when strangers and loved ones alike reach out to her across the space of her grief. Among them are the Widows of Concord, a group of women offering advice on everything from home maintenance to dating, and her beloved sons, Max and Alex. Most unexpected of all, there is another kind of one-in-a-billion match, not in the stars but here at home. Probing and invigoratingly honest, The Smallest Lights in the Universe is its own kind of light in the dark.
Book Synopsis The Story of Earth by : Robert M. Hazen
Download or read book The Story of Earth written by Robert M. Hazen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed by The New York Times for writing “with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along,” nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planet’s living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earth’s many iterations in vivid detail—from the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet. Lucid, controversial, and on the cutting edge of its field, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order. "A sweeping rip-roaring yarn of immense scope, from the birth of the elements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world." -Science "A fascinating story." -Bill McKibben
Download or read book Life written by Richard Fortey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-23 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs
Book Synopsis A New Map of Wonders by : Caspar Henderson
Download or read book A New Map of Wonders written by Caspar Henderson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Henderson teaches us how to wonder anew with a new vision of science illuminated by a rich range of literature, philosophy, art, and music.” —Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Dutch Light We live in a world that is known, every corner thoroughly explored. But has this knowledge cost us the ability to wonder? Wonder, Caspar Henderson argues, is at its most supremely valuable in just such a world because it reaffirms our humanity and gives us hope for the future. That’s the power of wonder, and that’s what we should aim to cultivate in our lives. But what are the wonders of the modern world? Henderson’s brilliant exploration borrows from the form of one of the oldest and most widely known sources of wonder: maps. Large, detailed mappae mundi invited people in medieval Europe to vividly imagine places and possibilities they had never seen before: manticores with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the stinging tail of a scorpion; tribes of one-eyed men who fought griffins for diamonds; and fearsome Scythian warriors who drank the blood of their enemies from their skulls. A New Map of Wonders explores these and other realms of the wonderful, in different times and cultures and in the present day, taking readers from Aboriginal Australian landscapes to sacred sites in Great Britain, all the while keeping sight questions such as the cognitive basis of wonder and the relationship between wonder and science. Beautifully illustrated and written with wit and moral complexity, this sequel to The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a fascinating account of the power of wonder and an unforgettable meditation on its importance to our future.
Download or read book Space Law written by Francis Lyall and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-19 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As space continues to attract substantial public and private investment and has become ever more active, the third edition of this book has been updated to cover recent developments. This includes the legal bases of UN Resolution 76/3, the Space3030 Agenda, which envisages ‘space as a driver of sustainable development’ and sets out an extensive programme for the future. The work also takes account of adaptations and augmentations to basic space treaties. It examines the increasing commercialisation of space in areas such as space tourism and space mining, for which four states have already adopted relevant legislation. The impact of new technologies such as satellite constellations and micro-satellites are also scrutinised. At a time when space tourism is available to those who can afford it and when the moon will shortly be revisited with a prospect of permanent bases, this third edition provides a firm base for the next generation of space lawyers. As with previous editions, the work draws from governmental, international organisational and other authoritative sources as well as the relevant literature in the field. The book will be an essential and comprehensive resource for students, academics and researchers as well as space agencies, governments and space-active companies. It will also be of value to technical operatives and managers who need to know the legal context within which they work.
Book Synopsis Neutrino Hunters by : Ray Jayawardhana
Download or read book Neutrino Hunters written by Ray Jayawardhana and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Canadian Science Writers Association Science in Society Book Award One of the Best Physics Books of 2013, Cocktail Party Physics Blog, Scientific American Detective thriller meets astrophysics in this adventure into neutrinos and the scientists who pursue them The incredibly small bits of matter we call neutrinos may hold the secret to why antimatter is so rare, how mighty stars explode as supernovae, what the universe was like just seconds after the big bang, and even the inner workings of our own planet. For more than eighty years, adventurous minds from around the world have been chasing these ghostly particles, trillions of which pass through our bodies every second. Extremely elusive and difficult to pin down, neutrinos are not unlike the brilliant and eccentric scientists who doggedly pursue them. In Neutrino Hunters, the renowned astrophysicist and award-winning writer Ray Jayawardhana takes us on a thrilling journey into the shadowy world of neutrinos and the colorful lives of those who seek them. Demystifying particle science along the way, Jayawardhana tells a detective story with cosmic implications—interweaving tales of the sharp-witted theorist Wolfgang Pauli; the troubled genius Ettore Majorana; the harbinger of the atomic age Enrico Fermi; the notorious Cold War defector Bruno Pontecorvo; and the dynamic dream team of Marie and Pierre Curie. Then there are the scientists of today who have caught the neutrino bug, and whose experimental investigations stretch from a working nickel mine in Ontario to a long tunnel through a mountain in central Italy, from a nuclear waste site in New Mexico to a bay on the South China Sea, and from Olympic-size pools deep underground to a gigantic cube of Antarctic ice—called, naturally, IceCube. As Jayawardhana recounts a captivating saga of scientific discovery and celebrates a glorious human quest, he reveals why the next decade of neutrino hunting will redefine how we think about physics, cosmology, and our lives on Earth.
Book Synopsis The Copernicus Complex by : Caleb Scharf
Download or read book The Copernicus Complex written by Caleb Scharf and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Short-listed for Physics World's Book of the Year The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014 A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014 An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014 A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff Pick In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Copernicus set in motion a revolution in scientific thought. This perspective has influenced our thinking for centuries. However, recent evidence challenges the Copernican Principle, hinting that we do in fact live in a special place, at a special time, as the product of a chain of unlikely events. But can we be significant if the Sun is still just one of a billion trillion stars in the observable universe? And what if our universe is just one of a multitude of others-a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities? In The Copernicus Complex, the renowned astrophysicist Caleb Scharf takes us on a scientific adventure, from tiny microbes within the Earth to distant exoplanets, probability theory, and beyond, arguing that there is a solution to this contradiction, a third way of viewing our place in the cosmos, if we weigh the evidence properly. As Scharf explains, we do occupy an unusual time in a 14-billion-year-old universe, in a somewhat unusual type of solar system surrounded by an ocean of unimaginable planetary diversity: hot Jupiters with orbits of less than a day, planet-size rocks spinning around dead stars, and a wealth of alien super-Earths. Yet life here is built from the most common chemistry in the universe, and we are a snapshot taken from billions of years of biological evolution. Bringing us to the cutting edge of scientific discovery, Scharf shows how the answers to fundamental questions of existence will come from embracing the peculiarity of our circumstance without denying the Copernican vision. With characteristic verve, Scharf uses the latest scientific findings to reconsider where we stand in the balance between cosmic significance and mediocrity, order and chaos. Presenting a compelling and bold view of our true status, The Copernicus Complex proposes a way forward in the ultimate quest: determining life's abundance, not just across this universe but across all realities.
Book Synopsis Complete Science Communication by : Ryan C Fortenberry
Download or read book Complete Science Communication written by Ryan C Fortenberry and published by Royal Society of Chemistry. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science communication is a rapidly expanding area, and a key component of many final year undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Authored by a highly regarded chemist and science communicator, this textbook pulls together all aspects of science communication. Complete Science Communication focusses on four major aspects of science communication: writing for non-technical audiences and science journalism; writing for technical audiences and peer-reviewed journal writing; public speaking of science; and public relations. It first showcases how writing in a journalistic style is done and provides a guide for colloquially communicating science. Then, the art of writing scientific papers is conjoined to this idea to make technical manuscripts more digestible, readable, and, hence, citable. These ideas are next taken into the spoken word so that the scientist can engage in telling their science like that natural human art of campfire stories. Finally, all of these communication concepts are wrapped together in a discussion of public relations, providing the scientist with an appreciation for the marketing directors and news disseminators with whom they will work. Written in an accessible way, this textbook will provide science students with an appreciative understanding of communication, marketing, journalism, and public relations. They can incorporate these aspects into their own practices as scientists, allowing them to liaise with practitioners in the communication field.
Book Synopsis Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact by : Steven J. Dick
Download or read book Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact written by Steven J. Dick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The search for life in the universe, once the stuff of science fiction, is now a robust worldwide research program with a well-defined roadmap probing both scientific and societal issues. This volume examines the humanistic aspects of astrobiology, systematically discussing the approaches, critical issues, and implications of discovering life beyond Earth. What do the concepts of life and intelligence, culture and civilization, technology and communication mean in a cosmic context? What are the theological and philosophical implications if we find life - and if we do not? Steven J. Dick argues that given recent scientific findings, the discovery of life in some form beyond Earth is likely and so we need to study the possible impacts of such a discovery and formulate policies to deal with them. The remarkable and often surprising results are presented here in a form accessible to disciplines across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
Author :The New York Times Editorial Staff Publisher :The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc ISBN 13 :1642822671 Total Pages :226 pages Book Rating :4.6/5 (428 download)
Book Synopsis Extraterrestrials and U.F.O.s by : The New York Times Editorial Staff
Download or read book Extraterrestrials and U.F.O.s written by The New York Times Editorial Staff and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2018, a bright blue light appeared over New York City. In thousands of Instagram posts and tweets, New Yorkers wondered: Could the light be signs of aliens? Although the lights turned out to be connected to a Queens powerplant, the curiosity they sparked speaks to the fascination we have for signs of life outside of Earth. The articles in this collection relate to the search for extraterrestrial life, detailing both the science that guides us toward it as well as the communities who believe it is already among us. In book reviews, op-eds, and feature reporting, scientists and journalists attempt to make sense of the question: Are we alone? Features such as a glossary and media literacy questions and terms engage readers beyond the text.
Book Synopsis The Planet-Girded Suns: Our Forebears' Firm Belief in Inhabited Exoplanets by : Sylvia Engdahl
Download or read book The Planet-Girded Suns: Our Forebears' Firm Belief in Inhabited Exoplanets written by Sylvia Engdahl and published by Sylvia Engdahl. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in exoplanets--the worlds of other stars--is not new. From the late 17th century until the end of the 19th, almost all educated people believed that the stars are suns surrounded by inhabited planets--a belief that was expressed not in science fiction, but in serious speculation, both scientific and religious, as well as in poetry. Only during the first half of the 20th century was it thought that life-bearing exoplanets are rare. This is not a science book--rather, it belongs to the category known as History of Ideas. First published by Atheneum in 1974, it tells the story of the rise, fall, and eventual renewal of widespread conviction that we are not alone in the universe. In this 2012 updated edition the chapters dealing with modern speculation have been revised to reflect the progress science has made during the past 40 years, including the actual detection of planets orbiting other stars. However, it is not intended to be more than a brief introduction to today's views; its focus is on little-known facts about those of the past. Why should we care what our forebears believed? Now, the question of ET life is a matter for investigation by science. Yet it's significant that most educated people of past centuries were convinced that other inhabited worlds exist, without any scientific evidence whatsoever. This historical fact reveals that human beings have an instinctive sense of kinship with the wider universe and a desire to see the realms that lie beyond this one small planet--and perhaps, eventually, to go there. Our ancestors conceived of such voyages only in a spiritual sense, as occurring after death. But we who have taken our first small steps into space are aware that our descendants may set foot on the worlds of other suns. Just as in the 17th century people were initially upset by the new knowledge that the stars are suns scattered in space rather than lights fixed to a nearby sphere, the growing awareness that Earth is not safely isolated from whatever lies beyond makes many of our contemporaries uneasy. Thus today's predominant feelings about spaceships are ambivalent. Nevertheless, if an impulse toward belief that we are not alone in the universe is indeed an innate characteristic of human beings, as the past spread of belief in inhabited exoplanets suggests, we can be sure that those who follow us will not turn back from becoming spacefarers.
Download or read book House and Home written by Thomas Barrie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: House and home are words routinely used to describe where and how one lives. This book challenges predominant definitions and argues that domesticity fundamentally satisfies the human need to create and inhabit a defined place in the world. Consequently, house and home have performed numerous cultural and ontological roles, and have been assiduously represented in scripture, literature, art, and philosophy. This book presents how the search for home in an unpredictable world led people to create myths about the origins of architecture, houses for their gods, and house tombs for eternal life. Turning to more recent topics, it discusses how writers often used simple huts as a means to address the essentials of existence; modernist architects envisioned the capacity of house and home to improve society; and the suburban house was positioned as a superior setting for culture and family. Throughout the book, house and home are critically examined to illustrate the perennial role and capacity of architecture to articulate the human condition, position it more meaningfully in the world, and assist in our collective homecoming.
Download or read book The End Of Science written by John Horgan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.
Book Synopsis Yearbook on Space Policy 2012/2013 by : Cenan Al-Ekabi
Download or read book Yearbook on Space Policy 2012/2013 written by Cenan Al-Ekabi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-02-06 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yearbook on Space Policy is the reference publication analyzing space policy developments. Each year it presents issues and trends in space policy and the space sector as a whole. Its scope is global and its perspective is European. The Yearbook also links space policy with other policy areas. It highlights specific events and issues, and provides useful insights, data and information on space activities. The Yearbook on Space Policy is edited by the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) based in Vienna, Austria. It combines in-house research and contributions of members of the European Space Policy Research and Academic Network (ESPRAN), coordinated by ESPI. The Yearbook is designed for government decision-makers and agencies, industry professionals, as well as the service sectors, researchers and scientists and the interested public.
Book Synopsis How We Find Other Earths by : Jennifer Culp
Download or read book How We Find Other Earths written by Jennifer Culp and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume describes the techniques with which astronomers and astrophysicists seek out worlds similar to our native planet throughout the vastness of the universe. Breaking down sometimes complicated concepts for beginning students of the cosmos, it includes the history of this planetary quest from ancient to modern times, contemporary methods used to find exoplanets, and their sheer diversity. Altogether, this otherworldly exploration, visually rich with the imagery of the heavens, gives readers a great entry point into a branch of astronomy that has thrilled inquisitive minds for millennia.
