The Quantum Series: Box Set Books 1 - 3
Douglas Phillips - 2019
The quantum world doesn't play by those rules. Daniel Rice is a government science investigator whose specialty is solving seemingly intractable problems through scientific inquiry.But Daniel's intellectual strength is sorely tested by the bizarre realities he finds in the quantum world. Extra dimensions of space trap the unwary, probability replaces cause and effect, and time isn't what anyone imagined. The other side of the mirror is a place full of dangers, but it's also somewhere a dedicated scientist can uncover secrets that connect humans with something greater. If you liked the authenticity of The Martian, the page-turning pace of Da Vinci Code, and the inspirational world views of Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan, you'll love The Quantum Series. A mind-bending journey from the ultra-small to the vast stage of the Milky Way. Acclaim for The Quantum Series Awarded the indieBRAG Medallion for 2018"Dazzling tale of weird science" - Publisher's Weekly"I can't recall when I last enjoyed a hard science series as much as this one. The concepts were astounding, the characters were easily believable, and the action emotionally driven. Very hard to put down. It kept me reading half the night. You'll be thinking about the far out science ideas promulgated in this series for a long time." - Chuck Juzek"A great story, no hatred, no evil people trying to destroy others, just a wonderful adventure with a fantastic outcome." - Ric Mannen"Fermi's Paradox is finally explained." - PE Gwinn"An exciting plot that kept me glued to my chair instead of mowing the lawn." - PE Gwinn"Probably one of the most entertaining and intellectually stimulating stories I've read in a long time... and I read a LOT!" - Jason Blackford"Great story that proves the universe is indeed full of magic!" - Rand"The protagonists have an almost poetic underpinning that had me rooting for their success." - J. Kareski"BTW, all three books show respect and admiration for women scientists as well as men." - Robin C."Mr. Phillips is the only person who explained quantum physics to me in a way that was not only understandable but entertaining." - Edward L. Heins
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Frederic P. Miller - 2010
It focuses on the tumultuous lives of two Afghan women and how their lives cross each other, spanning from the 1960s to 2003. The book was released on May 22, 2007, and received favorable prepublication reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, as well as reaching #2 on Amazon.com's bestseller list before its release. Time magazine's Lev Grossman placed it at number three in the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, and praised it as a "dense, rich, pressure-packed guide to enduring the unendurable." Jonathan Yardley said in the Washington Post "Book World": "Just in case you're wondering whether Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns is as good as The Kite Runner, here's the answer: No. It's better."
Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Diarmuid O'Murchu - 2004
It is now revised to reflect the most recent advances in physics. From black holes to holograms, from relativity theory to the discovery of quarks, this book is an original and rich exposition of quantum theory and the way it unravels profound theological questions.
Leadership and Crisis
Bobby Jindal - 2010
And from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to Hurricane Katrina, he’s shown an astounding ability to beat the odds (and beat the bureaucrats) to get things done.Then again, Jindal is not your typical politician. The son of Indian immigrants, a Christian convert from Hinduism, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jindal presided over Louisiana’s healthcare system at age 24, headed the University of Louisiana system at 27, became a U.S. congressman at 33, and was elected governor of Louisiana at 36.Throughout his meteoric career, Jindal has dealt with some of the worst crises of our times, from natural disasters in his home state to out-of-control spending in Washington, D.C. His secret: the common sense solutions that bureaucrats (and politicians) ignore in favor of government–as–usual.In Leadership and Crisis, Jindal reveals: How the Obama administration spent too much time worrying about public perception and not enough on actually fighting the oil How the federal government actually impeded Louisiana’s efforts to stem the flood of oil Why the bureaucratic incompetence during Hurricane Katrina was even worse than you know How Bobby Jindal took on Louisiana’s infamous culture of corruption His own journey from Hinduism to Christianity, from student at Oxford to Governor of Louisiana, from policy wonk to instant midwife when he had to deliver his third child himself Filled with behind–the–scenes stories from the oil–slicked beaches of Louisiana to the corridors of power in the U.S. Capitol, Leadership and Crisis offers an insider’s view into one of the worst environmental disasters our nation has suffered—and into one of the most unique success stories of American politics.
The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter
Katherine Freese - 2014
The rest is known as dark matter and dark energy, because their precise identities are unknown. "The Cosmic Cocktail" is the inside story of the epic quest to solve one of the most compelling enigmas of modern science--what is the universe made of?--told by one of today's foremost pioneers in the study of dark matter.Blending cutting-edge science with her own behind-the-scenes insights as a leading researcher in the field, acclaimed theoretical physicist Katherine Freese recounts the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Fritz Zwicky--the Swiss astronomer who coined the term "dark matter" in 1933--to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists contend that dark matter consists of fundamental particles known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. Billions of them pass through our bodies every second without us even realizing it, yet their gravitational pull is capable of whirling stars and gas at breakneck speeds around the centers of galaxies, and bending light from distant bright objects. Freese describes the larger-than-life characters and clashing personalities behind the race to identify these elusive particles.Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving the mystery. "The Cosmic Cocktail" provides the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind's quest to understand the universe.
There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings
Kenn Amdahl - 1991
Despite its title, it's not wild ranting pseudo-science to be dismissed by those with brains. Rather, Amdahl maintains that one need not understand quantum physics to grasp how electricity works in practical applications. To understand your toaster or your fax machine, it doesn't really matter whether there are electrons or not, and it's a lot easier and more fun to start with the toaster than with quarks and calculus. The book is mildly weird, often funny, always clear and easy to understand. It assumes the reader doesn't know a volt from a hole in the ground and gently leads him or her through integrated circuits, radio, oscillators and the basics of the digital revolution using examples that include green buffalo, microscopic beer parties, break-dancing chickens and naked Norwegian girls in rowboats. OK, it's more than mildly weird.The book has been reprinted numerous times since 1991 and has achieved minor cult status. Reviewed and praised in dozens of electronics and educational magazines, it is used as a text by major corporations, colleges, high schools, military schools and trade schools. It has been studied by education programs at colleges across the United States. This book was making wise cracks in the corner before anyone thought of designing books for dummies and idiots; some say it helped to inspire that industry.It may be the only "introduction to electronics books" with back cover comments by Dave Barry, Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, and George Garrett, as well as recomendations from Robert Hazen, Bob Mostafapour, Dr. Roger Young, Dr. Wayne Green, Scott Rundle, Brian Battles, Michelle Guido, Herb Reichert and Emil Venere. As Monitoring Times said, "Perhaps the best electronics book ever. If you'd like to learn about basic electronics but haven't been able to pull it off, get There Are No Electrons. Just trust us. Get the book."
Einstein's Miraculous Year
John J. Stachel - 1998
In those twelve months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five extraordinary papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. This book brings those papers together in an accessible format. The best-known papers are the two that founded special relativity: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? In the former, Einstein showed that absolute time had to be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light. In the second, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which would lead to the famous formula E = mc2.The book also includes On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, in which Einstein challenged the wave theory of light, suggesting that light could also be regarded as a collection of particles. This helped to open the door to a whole new world--that of quantum physics. For ideas in this paper, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.The fourth paper also led to a Nobel Prize, although for another scientist, Jean Perrin. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat concerns the Brownian motion of such particles. With profound insight, Einstein blended ideas from kinetic theory and classical hydrodynamics to derive an equation for the mean free path of such particles as a function of the time, which Perrin confirmed experimentally. The fifth paper, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, was Einstein's doctoral dissertation, and remains among his most cited articles. It shows how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of molecules.These papers, presented in a modern English translation, are essential reading for any physicist, mathematician, or astrophysicist. Far more than just a collection of scientific articles, this book presents work that is among the high points of human achievement and marks a watershed in the history of science. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the miraculous year, this new paperback edition includes an introduction by John Stachel, which focuses on the personal aspects of Einstein's youth that facilitated and led up to the miraculous year.
Bang!: The Complete History of the Universe
Brian May - 2006
He's certainly been thinking about it lately. May, a freshly minted astrophysics Ph.D., joins forces with legendary astronomer Patrick Moore and astrophysicist Chris Lintott in Bang! to consider the history of the universe from the Big Bang to Heat Death.Space, time, and matter were birthed 13.7 billion years ago and will continue on longer than we are able to comprehend. Infinitesimally small at first, the Universe is immense and ever expanding. Bang! explains how it all started, takes you on a tour of what is known about the evolution of the Universe, and posits how the end of time will come about.This fascinating book includes photographs, short biographies of key figures, an at-a-glance timeline, a glossary of terms, and suggested resources for further exploration.Based on the work of history’s most brilliant scientific minds, this amazing story features clear, straightforward discussions of the most perplexing and compelling aspects of existence—from the formation of stars, planets, and other galactic bodies to black holes, quasars, anti-matter, and dark matter to the emergence of life and the possibility that it could exist elsewhere.Pick up a copy of Bang! It will, it will rock you.
The Physics of Christmas: From the Aerodynamics of Reindeer to the Thermodynamics of Turkey
Roger Highfield - 1998
Can reindeer fly? Could scientists clone the perfect Christmas tree? How does Santa manage to deliver presents to an estimated 824 million households in a single night? These are among the questions explored in an irresistibly witty book that illuminates the cherished rituals, legends, and icons of Christmas from a unique and fascinating perspective: science. "Excellent entertainment for the Christmas connoisseurs in your circle." --USA Today
The Best American Science Writing 2012
Michio Kaku - 2012
The Best American Science Writing 2012 is yet another endlessly fascinating and mind-expanding installment of the popular science series that Kirkus Reviews calls, “Superb brain candy.” Edited by renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku, co-founder of string field theory, this collection contains the most engaging and provocative science writing of the year—gathering in one volume enthralling and eye-opening essays about the latest developments in biochemistry, physics, astronomy, genetics, evolutionary theory, cognition, and more.
First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time
Emma Chapman - 2020
There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe.This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself.Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
Eugene Paul Wigner - 1959
In the paper, Wigner observed that the mathematical structure of a physical theory often points the way to further advances in that theory and even to empirical predictions.
How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe
Harry Cliff - 2021
He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the Antimatter Factory, where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up). And he reveals what the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider may be telling us about the fundamental nature of matter.Along the way, Cliff illuminates the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy that brought us to our present understanding--and misunderstandings--of the world, while offering readers a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic intellectual journeys human beings have ever embarked on.A transfixing deep dive into origins of our world, How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch examines not just the makeup of our universe, but the awe-inspiring, improbable fact that it exists at all.
Where Does The Weirdness Go?: Why Quantum Mechanics Is Strange, But Not As Strange As You Think
David Lindley - 1996
Everyday experience cannot prepare us for the sub-atomic world, where quantum effects become all-important. Here, particles can look like waves, and vice versa; electrons seem to lose their identity and instead take on a shifting, unpredictable appearance that depends on how they are being observed; and a single photon may sometimes behave as if it could be in two places at once. In the world of quantum mechanics, uncertainty and ambiguity become not just unavoidable, but essential ingredients of science -- a development so disturbing that to Einstein "it was as if God were playing dice with the universe." And there is no one better able to explain the quantum revolution as it approaches the century mark than David Lindley. He brings the quantum revolution full circle, showing how the familiar and trustworthy reality of the world around us is actually a consequence of the ineffable uncertainty of the subatomic quantum world -- the world we can't see.
Einstein's Shadow: A Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable
Seth Fletcher - 2018
But Shep Doeleman and a global coalition of scientists are on the cusp of doing just that.With exclusive access to the team, journalist Seth Fletcher spent five years following Shep and an extraordinary cast of characters as they assembled the Event Horizon Telescope, a virtual radio observatory the size of the Earth. He witnessed their struggles, setbacks, and breakthroughs, and along the way, he explored the latest thinking on the most profound questions about black holes. Do they represent a limit to our ability to understand reality? Or will they reveal the clues that lead to the long-sought Theory of Everything?Fletcher transforms astrophysics into something exciting, accessible, and immediate, taking us on an incredible adventure to better understand the complexity of our galaxy, the boundaries of human perception and knowledge, and how the messy human endeavor of science really works.Weaving a compelling narrative account of human ingenuity with excursions into cutting-edge science, Einstein’s Shadow is a tale of great minds on a mission to change the way we understand our universe—and our place in it.