The book begins with a guide to what matter is made up of and how it evolved, and goes on to describe the fascinating and cutting-edge techniques used to study it. The author discusses particles such as quarks, electrons, and the neutrino, and exotic matter and antimatter. He also investigates the forces of nature, accelerators and detectors, and the intriguing future of particle physics. This book is essential reading for general readers interested in popular science, students of physics, and scientists at all levels.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    Now in Abraham's Children bestselling author Jon Entine vividly brings to life the profound human implications of the Age of Genetics while illuminating one of today's most controversial topics: the connection between genetics and who we are, and specifically the question "Who is a Jew?"Entine weaves a fascinating narrative, using breakthroughs in genetic genealogy to reconstruct the Jewish biblical tradition of the chosen people and the hereditary Israelite priestly caste of Cohanim. Synagogues in the mountains of India and China and Catholic churches with a Jewish identity in New Mexico and Colorado provide different patterns of connection within the tangled history of the Jewish diaspora. Legendary accounts of the Hebrew lineage of Ethiopian tribesmen, the building of Africa's Great Zimbabwe fortress, and even the so-called Lost Tribes are reexamined in light of advanced DNA technology. Entine also reveals the shared ancestry of Israelites and Christians.As people from across the world discover their Israelite roots, their riveting stories unveil exciting new approaches to defining one's identity. Not least, Entine addresses possible connections between DNA and Jewish intelligence and the controversial notion that Jews are a "race apart." Abraham's Children is a compelling reinterpretation of biblical history and a challenging and exciting illustration of the promise and power of genetic research.

    . . draw the reader more tightly into the web of the world. They forge links in unexpected ways. They connect us to nature and to each other, and those connections nourish the intellect and uplift the spirit.”—Jerome Groopman, M.D., editorThis year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing offers another rich assortment of “fascinating science and impressive journalism” (New Scientist) culled from an array of periodicals, such as The New Yorker, Scientific American, and National Geographic. The twenty-four provocative and often visionary stories chosen by guest editor Jerome Groopman form an outstanding sampling of the very best in a field of writing that stays ahead of the curve, bringing important topics to the forefront of American discussion. In “The Universe’s Invisible Hand,” Christopher Conselice takes us into the recent spectacular discovery of the crucial role of dark energy, which is making our universe expand faster and faster. Florence Williams tells the story of a more down-to-earth form of energy in “A Mighty Wind,” which describes how a small Danish island community is making great leaps in energy conservation by using innovative wind farms. John Cohen explores the marvelous world of ligers, zorses, wholphins, and other hybridized creatures in “Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal.” And Robin Marantz Henig delves into the possibly hazardous ramifications of the rapidly expanding science of nanotechnology. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 packs a wallop of intriguing, informative, and wondrous stories, each one bringing with it, as Jerome Groopman writes, “a sense of excitement [to be] shared with others.”

    The accompanying CD-ROM features a special student version of the award-winning virtual planetarium software Starry Night plus software animations and videos, all illustrations from the text, interactive Q&A and exercises, and supplementary resources. Material can be updated periodically from the Freeman Web site. www.whfreeman.com/astronomy. There is an online study guide offering a CD-Web guide, chapter objectives, key terms, review questions, Starry Night observations exercises and online tutorials.

    Pure Substances, The First And Second Laws, Gases, Psychrometrics, The Vapor, Gas And Refrigeration Cycles, Heat Transfer, Compressible Flow, Chemical Reactions, Fuels, And More Are Presented In Detail And Enhanced With Practical Applications. This Version Presents The Material Using SI Units And Has Ample Material On SI Conversion, Steam Tables, And A Mollier Diagram. A CD-ROM, Included With The Print Version Of The Text, Includes A Fully Functional Version Of Quickfield (Widely Used In Industry), As Well As Numerous Demonstrations And Simulations With MATLAB, And Other Third Party Software.

    In Dark Winter, author John L. Casey, a former White House national space policy advisor, NASA headquarters consultant, and space shuttle engineer tells the truth about ominous changes taking place in the climate and the Sun.Casey’s research into the Sun’s activity, which began almost a decade ago, resulted in discovery of a solar cycle that is now reversing from its global warming phase to that of dangerous global cooling for the next thirty years or more. This new cold climate will dramatically impact the world’s citizens. In Dark Winter, he provides evidence of the following:• The end of global warming• The beginning of a “solar hibernation,” a historic reduction in the energy output of the Sun• A long-term drop in Earth’s temperatures• The start of the next climate change to decades of dangerously cold weather• The high probability of record earthquakes and volcanic eruptionsA sobering look at Earth’s future, Dark Winter predicts worldwide, crop- destroying cold; food shortages and riots in the United States and abroad; significant global loss of life; and social, political, and economic upheaval.

    These fundamental concepts provide the structure for 101 Quantum Questions, an authoritative yet engaging book for the general reader in which every question and answer brings out one or more basic features of the mysterious world of the quantum--the physics of the very small. Nuclear researcher and master teacher, Ford covers everything from quarks, quantum jumps, and what causes stars to shine, to practical applications ranging from lasers and superconductors to light-emitting diodes. Ford's lively answers are enriched by Paul Hewitt's drawings, numerous photos of physicists, and anecdotes, many from Ford's own experience. Organized for cover-to-cover reading, 101 Quantum Questions also is great for browsing. Some books focus on a single subject such as the standard model of particles, or string theory, or fusion energy. This book touches all those topics and more, showing us that disparate natural phenomena, as well as a host of manmade inventions, can be understood in terms of a few key ideas.

    Ajit Varki and Danny Brower's "Mind over Reality" theory is poised to be one such idea-a concept that runs counter to commonly-held notions about human evolution but that may hold the key to understanding why humans evolved as we did, leaving all other related species far behind. At a chance meeting in 2005, Brower, a geneticist, posed an unusual idea to Varki that he believed could explain the origins of human uniqueness among the world's species: Why is there no humanlike elephant or humanlike dolphin, despite millions of years of evolutionary opportunity? Why is it that humans alone can understand the minds of others? Haunted by their encounter, Varki tried years later to contact Brower only to discover that he had died unexpectedly. Inspired by an incomplete manuscript Brower left behind, DENIAL presents a radical new theory on the origins of our species. It was not, the authors argue, a biological leap that set humanity apart from other species, but a psychological one: namely, the uniquely human ability to deny reality in the face of inarguable evidence-including the willful ignorance of our own inevitable deaths. The awareness of our own mortality could have caused anxieties that resulted in our avoiding the risks of competing to procreate-an evolutionary dead-end. Humans therefore needed to evolve a mechanism for overcoming this hurdle: the denial of reality. As a consequence of this evolutionary quirk we now deny any aspects of reality that are not to our liking-we smoke cigarettes, eat unhealthy foods, and avoid exercise, knowing these habits are a prescription for an early death. And so what has worked to establish our species could be our undoing if we continue to deny the consequences of unrealistic approaches to everything from personal health to financial risk-taking to climate change. On the other hand reality-denial affords us many valuable attributes, such as optimism, confidence, and courage in the face of long odds. Presented in homage to Brower's original thinking, DENIAL offers a powerful warning about the dangers inherent in our remarkable ability to ignore reality-a gift that will either lead to our downfall, or continue to be our greatest asset.

    These great beasts, or “megafauna,” lived on every habitable continent and on many islands. With a handful of exceptions, all are now gone.What caused the disappearance of these prehistoric behemoths? No one event can be pinpointed as a specific cause, but several factors may have played a role. Paleomammalogist Ross D. E. MacPhee explores them all, examining the leading extinction theories, weighing the evidence, and presenting his own conclusions. He shows how theories of human overhunting and catastrophic climate change fail to account for critical features of these extinctions, and how new thinking is needed to elucidate these mysterious losses.Along the way, we learn how time is determined in earth history; how DNA is used to explain the genomics and phylogenetic history of megafauna—and how synthetic biology and genetic engineering may be able to reintroduce these giants of the past. Until then, gorgeous four-color illustrations by Peter Schouten re-create these megabeasts here in vivid detail.

    However, their impact has not been limited to debates about geology and evolution: attempts to explain their existence has shaken religion at its very roots, and they have remained a subject of ceaseless fascination for people of all ages and backgrounds. In this readable and wide-ranging book, Keith Thomson provides a remarkably all-encompassing explanation of fossils as a phenomenon. How did Darwin use fossils to support his theory of evolution? What are living fossils? What fossils will we leave behind for future generations to examine? Beyond the scientific aspects, Thomson highlights the impact of fossils on philosophy and mythology, our concept of time, and today's popular culture. From the black market to the Piltdown Man, and from mythological dragons to living dinosaurs, fossils hold a permanent place in the popular imagination.

    He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. He failed, but others have taken up the challenge in a remarkable quest that is shedding light on unsuspected secrets of the cosmos.Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory takes you on this exciting journey in The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality. Suitable for the intellectually curious at all levels and assuming no background beyond basic high-school math, these 24 half-hour lectures cover recent developments at the forefront of particle physics and cosmology, while delving into the history of the centuries-long search for this holy grail of science.You trace the dream of a theory of everything through Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Weinberg, and other great physicists, charting their progress toward an all-embracing, unifying theory. Their resulting equations are the masterpieces of physics, which Dr. Lincoln explains in fascinating and accessible detail. Studying them is like touring a museum of great works of art - works that are progressing toward an ultimate, as-yet-unfinished masterpiece.Listening Length: 12 hours and 21 minutes

    Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future.

    Now he gathers the best of his best, updated and expanded upon, to guide readers on a mind-bending tour of the far frontier, and how these advances are radically transforming our lives. From the ways science and technology are fundamentally altering our bodies and our world (the world’s first bionic soldier, the future of evolution) to those explosive collisions between science and culture (life extension and bioweapons), we’re crossing moral and ethical lines we’ve never faced before.As Kotler writes, “Life is tricky sport—and that's the emotional core of this story, the real reason we can’t put Pandora back in the box. When you strip everything else away, technology is nothing more than the promise of an easier tomorrow. It’s the promise of hope. And how do you stop hope?”Join Kotler in this fascinating exploration of our incredible next: a deep dive into those future technologies happening now—and what it means to be a part of this brave new world.

    Join one of the greatest contemporary philosophers on a breathtaking tour of time and the Kosmos--from the Big Bang right up to the eve of the twenty-first century. This accessible and entertaining summary of Ken Wilber's great ideas has been expanding minds now for two decades, providing a kind of unified field theory of the universe and, along the way, treating a host of issues related to that universe, from gender roles, to multiculturalism, to environmentalism, and even the meaning of the Internet. This special anniversary edition contains as an afterword a dialogue between the author and Lana Wachowski, the award-winning writer-director of the Matrix film trilogy, in which we're offered an intimate glimpse into the evolution of Ken's thinking and where he stands today. A Brief History of Everything may well be the best introduction to the thought of this man who has been called the -Einstein of Consciousness- (John White).

    . . .  As engaging an explanation of how scientists study fossil bones as any I have ever read." --John R. Alden, Philadelphia InquirerIn 1984 a team of paleoanthropologists on a dig in northern Kenya found something extraordinary: a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, a creature that lived 1.5 million years ago and is widely thought to be the missing link between apes and humans. The remains belonged to a tall, rangy adolescent male. The researchers called him "Nariokotome boy." In this immensely lively book, Alan Walker, one of the lead researchers, and his wife and fellow scientist Pat Shipman tell the story of that epochal find and reveal what it tells us about our earliest ancestors. We learn that Nariokotome boy was a highly social predator who walked upright but lacked the capacity for speech. In leading us to these conclusions, The Wisdom of the Bones also offers an engaging chronicle of the hundred-year-long search for a "missing link," a saga of folly, heroic dedication, and inspired science. "Brilliantly captures [an] intellectual odyssey. . . .  One of the finest examples of a practicing scientist writing for a popular audience."             --Portland Oregonian     "A vivid insider's perspective on the global efforts to document our own ancestry."--Richard E. Leakey