From their ability to adapt, to their understanding of the strength of networks and mutually beneficial relationships, they put us to shame with their natural ability to thrive, even when they find themselves in less than ideal environments. This beautifully illustrated book brings together sixty universal life lessons taken from the infinite wisdom of trees. We learn about the importance of asking for help when you need it from elms, who call in an army of parasitic wasps when they're being attacked by caterpillars. And acacias, who look out for each other by producing a gas when they're being nibbled on by herbivores to warn their nearby friends, while the Chinese pistache show us the power in pacing yourself, and why slow growth can lead to stronger foundations.From the importance of patience, to drawing strength from others, to weathering the storm, to dealing with life's most persistent irritants - this is a celebration of the heroes of the forest, and an essential companion for dipping into when we need a little inspiration.

    Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space documents the making of Nolan's latest masterpiece in fascinating detail and features interviews with the acclaimed director, along with screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, and other key members of the production team. Delving into the science and philosophy behind the film, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space dynamically showcases its incredible concept art, including costume designs, storyboards, and other fascinating preproduction elements. Also featuring interviews with the exceptional cast, including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space tells the full story of the making of the film, with candid pictures illustrating its elaborate set pieces and reliance on classic special effects techniques. Visually enthralling and engrossing in its in-depth exploration of the themes and ideas at the heart of Interstellar, this book is the perfect accompaniment to one of the most anticipated films of 2014. Based on the film from Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures. From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight" films, "Inception"), "Interstellar" stars Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey ("Dallas Buyers Club"), Oscar winner Anne Hathaway ("Les Misébles"), Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain ("Zero Dark Thirty"), Bill Irwin ("Rachel Getting Married"), Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn ("Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"), and Oscar winner Michael Caine ("The Cider House Rules"). The main cast also includes Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy and Topher Grace. Christopher Nolan directed the film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jonathan Nolan. Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan and Lynda Obst produced "Interstellar," with Jordan Goldberg, Jake Myers, Kip Thorne and Thomas Tull serving as executive producers. Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures present, in association with Legendary Pictures, a Syncopy/Lynda Obst Productions production, a film by Christopher Nolan, "Interstellar."

    Then, in 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged America -- and from Long Island to Cape Canaveral, Houston to Huntsville, an army of engineers, scientists, bureaucrats and astronauts were swept up into the effort. Somehow, America would put a man on the moon's surface and bring him back safely before the decade was over. But how?For eight frantic years the engineers would design and redesign, the scientists would argue, and brave men would trust their lives to virtually untested machinery. This dramatic chronicle of the race to the moon takes us behind the scenes of this awesome quest, into the minds of the people whose lives were devoted to it and changed by it, and through the missions themselves -- including the tragedy of Apollo 13. A riveting portrait of ingenuity, determination, and raw human courage, "Chariots for Apollo is the powerful story of how one society came together to reach its goal -- a quarter of a million miles away.

    People of all ages frequently ask, “How did you find that so quickly?” Well, this book will explain just that! The planets in our solar system, the International Space Station, sunspots, birds, nebula, airplanes, and comets are just some of the items that his book will help you find!If you have been having difficulties enjoying your small telescope, this book is for you. There is something interesting about pretty much everything in outer space and it is exciting how many pop-culture references are derived from things in the night sky! Viewing the stars referenced in Star Trek, or talking about a character in Harry Potter named after a constellation, is just another way to make stargazing that much more fun! I am very excited to share my knowledge of astronomy and I am sure you will enjoy this book for years to come. By working through the 50 items in this book you will achieve a well-rounded understanding of amateur astronomy.

    He looks at the difficult dialogue between science and religion; the conflict between our human desire for permanence and the impermanence of nature; the possibility that our universe is simply an accident; the manner in which modern technology has separated us from direct experience of the world; and our resistance to the view that our bodies and minds can be explained by scientific logic and laws. And behind all of these considerations is the suggestion—at once haunting and exhilarating—that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the extraordinary, perhaps unfathomable whole.

    This discovery dramatically reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos, and once and for all laid to rest the idea that the Milky Way galaxy was alone in the universe. Six years later, continuing research by Hubble and others forced Albert Einstein to renounce his own cosmic model and finally accept the astonishing fact that the universe was not immobile but instead expanding. The fascinating story of these interwoven discoveries includes battles of will, clever insights, and wrong turns made by the early investigators in this great twentieth-century pursuit. It is a story of science in the making that shows how these discoveries were not the work of a lone genius but the combined efforts of many talented scientists and researchers toiling away behind the scenes. The intriguing characters include Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered the means to measure the vast dimensions of the cosmos . . . Vesto Slipher, the first and unheralded discoverer of the universe’s expansion . . . Georges Lemaître, the Jesuit priest who correctly interpreted Einstein’s theories in relation to the universe . . . Milton Humason, who, with only an eighth-grade education, became a world-renowned expert on galaxy motions . . . and Harlow Shapley, Hubble’s nemesis, whose flawed vision of the universe delayed the discovery of its true nature and startling size for more than a decade.Here is a watershed moment in the history of astronomy, brought about by the exceptional combination of human curiosity, intelligence, and enterprise, and vividly told by acclaimed science writer Marcia Bartusiak.

    The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas. There is only one universe at a time. Time is real: everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later. Mathematics, which has trouble with time, is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science; it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations. The argument is readily accessible to non-scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges.

    A remarkable pictorial discussion of the curved space-time we call home, it achieves even greater impact through the use of 141 excellent illustrations. This is the first sustained visual account of many important topics in relativity theory that up till now have only been treated separately.Finding a perfect analogy in the situation of the geometrical characters in Flatland, Professor Rucker continues the adventures of the two-dimensional world visited by a three-dimensional being to explain our three-dimensional world in terms of the fourth dimension. Following this adventure into the fourth dimension, the author discusses non-Euclidean geometry, curved space, time as a higher dimension, special relativity, time travel, and the shape of space-time. The mathematics is sound throughout, but the casual reader may skip those few sections that seem too purely mathematical and still follow the line of argument. Readable and interesting in itself, the annotated bibliography is a valuable guide to further study.Professor Rucker teaches mathematics at the State University of New York in Geneseo. Students and laymen will find his discussion to be unusually stimulating. Experienced mathematicians and physicists will find a great deal of original material here and many unexpected novelties. Annotated bibliography. 44 problems.

    November 2015 is the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s discovery of the General Theory of Relativity.Levenson, head of MIT’s Science Writing Program, tells the captivating, unusual, and nearly-forgotten backstory behind Einstein’s invention of the Theory of Relativity, which completely changed the course of science forever. For over 50 years before Einstein developed his theory, the world’s top astronomers spent countless hours and energy searching for a planet, which came to be named Vulcan, that had to exist, it was thought, given Isaac Newton’s theories of gravity. Indeed, in the two centuries since Newton’s death, his theory had essentially become accepted as fact. It took Einstein’s genius to realize the mystery of the missing planet wasn’t a problem of measurements or math but of Newton’s theory of gravity itself. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proved that Vulcan did not and could not exist, and that the decades-long search for it had merely been a quirk of operating under the wrong set of assumptions about the universe. Thomas Levenson tells this unique story, one of the strangest episodes in the history of science, with elegant simplicity, fast-paced drama, and lively characters sure to capture the attention of a wide group of readers.

    At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges--Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.The "glass universe" of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades--through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography--enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard--and Harvard's first female department chair.

    

    Guth’s startling theory—widely regarded as one of the most important contributions to science during the twentieth century—states that the big bang was set into motion by a period of hyper-rapid “inflation,” lasting only a billion-trillion-billionth of a second. The Inflationary Universe is the passionate story of one leading scientist’s effort to look behind the cosmic veil and explain how the universe began.

    Amir Aczel, critically acclaimed author of Fermat's Last Theorem, takes us into the heart of science's greatest mystery. In January 1998, astronomers found evidence that the cosmos is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. The way we perceive the universe was changed forever. The most compelling theory cosmologists could find to explain this phenomenon was Einstein's cosmological constant, a theory he conceived--and rejected---over eighty years ago. Drawing on newly discovered letters of Einstein--many translated here for the first time--years of research, and interviews with prominent mathematicians, cosmologists, physicists, and astronomers, Aczel takes us on a fascinating journey into "the strange geometry of space-time," and into the mind of a genius. Here the unthinkable becomes real: an infinite, ever-expanding, ever-accelerating universe whose only absolute is the speed of light. Awesome in scope, thrilling in detail, God's Equation is storytelling at its finest.

    Say you?re already an experienced photographer? The helpful tips and tricks in this friendly book will get you quickly up to speed on the D3100's new 14-megapixel sensor, continous video/live focus, full HD video, expanded autofocus, and more. As a seasoned instructor at the Palm Beach Photographic Center, Julie anticipates all questions, whether you?re a beginner or digital camera pro, and offers pages of easy-to-follow advice.Helps you get every bit of functionality out of the new Nikon D3100 camera Walks you through its exciting new features, including the 14-megapixel sensor, continous video/live focus, full HD video, expanded autofocus, and the updated in-camera menu Explores shooting in Auto mode, managing playback options, and basic troubleshooting Explains how to adjust the camera's manual settings for your own preferred exposure, lighting, focus, and color style Covers digital photo housekeeping tips?how to organize, edit, and share your files Tap all the tools in this hot new DSLR camera and start taking some great pix with Nikon D3100 For Dummies.

    Includes a poster of Theodore Gray's iconic photographic periodic table of the elements! Based on seven years of research and photography by Theodore Gray and Nick Mann, The Elements presents the most complete and visually arresting representation available to the naked eye of every atom in the universe. Organized sequentially by atomic number, every element is represented by a big beautiful photograph that most closely represents it in its purest form. Several additional photographs show each element in slightly altered forms or as used in various practical ways. Also included are fascinating stories of the elements, as well as data on the properties of each, including atomic number, atomic symbol, atomic weight, density, atomic radius, as well as scales for electron filling order, state of matter, and an atomic emission spectrum. This of solid science and stunning artistic photographs is the perfect gift book for every sentient creature in the universe.