From the simplest acts of everyday life—walking, hearing, seeing—we are introduced into the exhilarating world of physics—gravity, ultra-sonics, light-eating black holes—a world that at first may seem impossible to understand, but through the magic of Asimov, becomes as enjoyable and intriguing as a night sky full of stars.With photographs and biographical sketchesContents:Introduction (1974)Thin Air (1959)Now Hear This! (1960)Catching Up with Newton (1958)Of Capture and Escape (1959)First and Rearmost (1964)The Rigid Vacuum (1963)The Light That Failed (1963)The Light Fantastic (1962)C for Celeritas (1959)The Ultimate Split of the Second (1959)The Height of Up (1959)Order! Order! (1961)The Modern Demonology (1962)A Piece of the Action (1964)The Certainty of Uncertainty (1965)Behind the Teacher's Back (1965)The Land of Mu (1965)

    It was the first force to be recognized and described yet it is the least understood. It is a "force" that keeps your feet on the ground yet no such force actually exists.Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?Award-winning writer Marcus Chown takes us on an unforgettable journey from the recognition of the "force" of gravity in 1666 to the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015. And, as we stand on the brink of a seismic revolution in our worldview, he brings us up to speed on the greatest challenge ever to confront physics.

    But in the same way that the science of space travel transforms our everyday lives, so research into telepathy, fortune-telling and out-of-body experiences produces remarkable insights into our brains, behaviour and beliefs. Paranormality embarks on a wild ghost chase into this new science of the supernatural and is packed with activities that allow you to experience the impossible. So throw away your crystals, ditch your lucky charms and cancel your subscription to Reincarnation Weekly. It is time to discover the real secrets of the paranormal. Learn how to control your dreams -- and leave your body behind Convince complete strangers that you know all about them Unleash the power of your unconscious mind.

    In this groundbreaking work, renowned physicist Gordon Kane first gives us the basics of the Standard Model, which describes the fundamental constituents and forces of nature. He then explains the next great leap in understanding: the theory of supersymmetry, which implies that each of the fundamental particles has a "superpartner" that can be detected at energies and intensities only now being achieved in the giant accelerators. If Kane and his colleagues are correct, these superpartners will also help solve many of the puzzles of modern physics-such as the existence of the Higgs boson-as well as one of the biggest mysteries is cosmology: the notorious "dark matter" of the universe.

    What drives species to evolve? How can intricate structures such as the human eye, the spider's web or the wings of birds develop, seemingly by chance? Regarding evolution's most complex achievements as peaks on a metaphorical mountain, Climbing Mount Improbable reveals the ways in which the theory of natural selection can precisely explain the beautiful, bizarre and seemingly 'designed' complexity of living things.And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Accompanied by evocative illustrations, Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of the living world's astonishing adaptations throw back the curtain on the mysteries of 'Mount Improbable'.An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

    Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

    Dennett's exposition is nothing short of brilliant." --George Johnson, New York Times Book ReviewConsciousness Explained is a a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life-of people, animal, even robots--are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book.

    This book offers the opportunity to truly comprehend the workings of one of humanity's greatest minds. Acclaimed by Einstein himself, it is among the clearest, most readable expositions of relativity theory. It explains the problems Einstein faced, the experiments that led to his theories, and what his findings reveal about the forces that govern the universe. The concepts of relativity and the fourth dimension unfold with all the vivid excitement of research into the unknown, in language anyone can readily understand.

    Dr. George Smoot, a distinguished cosmologist and adventurer whose quest for cosmic knowledge had taken him from the Brazilian rain forest to the South Pole, unveiled his momentous discovery, bringing to light the very nature of the universe. For anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, for anyone who has ever longed to pull aside the fabric of the universe for a glimpse of what lies behind it. Wrinkles in Time is the story of Smoot's search to uncover the cosmic seeds of the universe.Wrinkles in Time is the Double Helix of cosmology, an intimate look at the inner world of men and women who ask. "Why are we here?" It tells the story of George Smoot's dogged pursuit of the cosmic wrinkles in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, on mountaintops, in experiments borne aloft aboard high-altitude balloons, U-2 spy planes, and finally a space satellite. Wrinkles in Time presents the hard science behind the structured violence of the big bang theory through breathtakingly clear, lucid images and meaningful comparisons. Scientists and nonscientists alike can follow with rapt attention the story of how, in a fiery creation, wrinkles formed in space ultimately to become stars, galaxies, and even greater delicate structures. Anyone can appreciate the implications of a universe whose end is written in its beginnings - whose course developed according to a kind of cosmic DNA, which guided the universe from simplicity and symmetry to ever-greater complexity and structure. As controversial as it may seem today, Wrinkles in Time reveals truths that, in an earlier century, would have doomed its proclaimers to the fiery stake. For four thousand years some people have accepted the Genesis account of cosmic origin; for most of this century, scientists debated two rival scientific explanations known as the steady state and big bang theories. And now, Wrinkles in Time tells what really happened. The personal story behind astrophysicist George Smoot's incredible discovery of the origin of the cosmos, hailed by Stephen Hawking as "The scientific discovery of the century, if not of all time."

    Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world around us. In fact, most of what we call thought is actually the unconscious discarding of information. What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most valuable part of ourselves, the "Me" that the "I" draws on for most of our actions--fluent speech, riding a bicycle, anything involving expertise. No wonder that, in this age of information, so many of us feel empty and dissatisfied. As engaging as it is insightful, this important book encourages us to rely more on what our instincts and our senses tell us so that we can better appreciate the richness of human life.

    Pagels [Jan 01, 1984]

    But what is time, exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we’re bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly?In this witty and meditative exploration, award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick takes readers on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do. In the company of scientists, he visits the most accurate clock in the world (which exists only on paper); discovers that “now” actually happened a split-second ago; finds a twenty-fifth hour in the day; lives in the Arctic to lose all sense of time; and, for one fleeting moment in a neuroscientist’s lab, even makes time go backward. Why Time Flies is an instant classic, a vivid and intimate examination of the clocks that tick inside us all.

    In The Five Ages of the Universe, Adams and Laughlin demonstrate that we can now understand the complete life story of the cosmos from beginning to end. Adams and Laughlin have been hailed as the creators of the definitive long-term projection of the evolution of the universe. Their achievement is awesome in its scale and profound in its scientific breadth. But The Five Ages of the Universe is more than a handbook of the physical processes that guided our past and will shape our future; it is a truly epic story. Without leaving earth, here is a fantastic voyage to the physics of eternity. It is the only biography of the universe you will ever need.

    Feynman (1918–1988)—physicist, teacher, author, and cultural icon. His autobiographies and biographies have been read and enjoyed by millions of readers around the world, while his wit and eccentricities have made him the subject of TV specials and even a theatrical film. The spectacular reception of the book and audio versions of Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces (published in 1995) resulted in a worldwide clamor for “More Feynman! More Feynman!” The outcome is these six additional lectures, drawn from the celebrated three-volume Lectures on Physics. Though slightly more challenging than the first six, these lectures are more focused, delving into the most revolutionary discovery in twentieth-century physics: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. No single breakthrough in twentieth-century physics (with the possible exception of quantum mechanics) changed our view of the world more than that of Einstein’s discovery of relativity. The notions that the flow of time is not a constant, that the mass of an object depends on its velocity, and that the speed of light is a constant no matter what the motion of the observer, at first seemed shocking to scientists and laymen alike. But, as Feynman shows so clearly and so entertainingly in the lectures chosen for this volume, these crazy notions are no mere dry principles of physics, but are things of beauty and elegance. No one—not even Einstein himself—explained these difficult, anti-intuitive concepts more clearly, or with more verve and gusto, than Richard Feynman.

    The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves.Able to be referenced individually, or read together as the narrative of Western scientific development, the book's twenty-eight succinct chapters lead readers from the first science texts by Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle through twentieth-century classics in biology, physics, and cosmology. The Story of Western Science illuminates everything from mankind's earliest inquiries to the butterfly effect, from the birth of the scientific method to the rise of earth science and the flowering of modern biology.Each chapter recommends one or more classic books and provides entertaining accounts of crucial contributions to science, vivid sketches of the scientist-writers, and clear explanations of the mechanics underlying each concept. The Story of Western Science reveals science to be a dramatic undertaking practiced by some of history's most memorable characters. It reminds us that scientific inquiry is a human pursuit—an essential, often deeply personal, sometimes flawed, frequently brilliant way of understanding the world.In the tradition of her perennial bestseller The-Well Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer delivers an accessible, entertaining, and illuminating springboard into the scientific education you never had.