Showing results for "The" in History

Whether you are a scientist or a poet, pro-nuclear energy or staunch opponent, conspiracy theorist or pragmatist, James Mahaffey's books have served to open up the world of nuclear science like never before. With clear explanations of some of the most complex scientific endeavors in history, Mahaffey's new book looks back at the atom's wild, secretive past and then toward its potentially bright future.

The American public's introduction to nuclear technology was manifested in destruction and death. With Hiroshima and the Cold War still ringing in our ears, our perception of all things nuclear is seen through the lens of weapons development. Nuclear power is full of mind-bending theories, deep secrets, and the misdirection of public consciousness - some deliberate, some accidental. The result of this fixation on bombs and fallout is that the development of a non-polluting, renewable energy source stands frozen in time.

When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us? As a species we are shaped by our environment. Geological forces drove our evolution in East Africa; mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece; and today voting behaviour in the United States follows the bed of an ancient sea. The human story is the story of these forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.

The Essential Einstein: Public Writings presents a rich selection of Einstein's humanistic writings drawn from a diverse array of materials he sanctioned for publication during his lifetime. Distinct from previous collections, this incisive book presents previously excerpted works in their entirety, including key articles, lectures, and speeches.

Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.

From the 18th century vicar who was the first to look up at the night's sky and suggest there was something very dark and extraordinarily heavy that was moving the stars, to the first actual photograph of a black hole, 250 years later, Jonas Enander has travelled the world, visited telescopes and observatories, interviewed world-leading space researchers, and delved deep into the archives to investigate how our relationship with black holes has changed over time.

Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing 21st-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Ripples in Spacetime is an engaging account of the international effort to complete Einstein's project, capture his elusive ripples, and launch an era of gravitational-wave astronomy that promises to explain, more vividly than ever before, our universe's structure and origin. The quest for gravitational waves involved years of risky research and many personal and professional struggles that threatened to derail one of the world's largest scientific endeavors.

A true scientific pause-resister that traces a remarkable scientific breakthrough (the isolation of endorphins in the brain) as dedicated scientists race - not only with their fellow scientists - but against time and the profit hungry giant pharmaceutical companies. This audiobook chronicles the fascinating discovery of endorphins, the body's natural painkiller.

Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is "safe" for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before - from an environmental point of view - by detailing the effects that this fundamental societal building block has had on our health and our planet.

In 20 captivating lectures, Professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch shares her expertise and passion for discovery as she peels back the years to expose the emergence and lives of early humans. You will learn about their environmental challenges, the methods they used to meet their basic needs, cultural development, and the fascinating advances in our own technologies that have allowed us to take their few physical remains and develop a much fuller picture.

For two thousand years, cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.

In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food and redefined what “fresh” means. More important, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a US-style cold chain, Twilley asks: Can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we?

People often think of imagination as something used only in creative endeavours. In fact, we use imagination constantly as we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream, read, create imagined worlds. The truth is we live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works. From hallucination to sleepwalking, from REM sleep to delusions, neurologist Adam Zeman brilliantly guides us through the latest scientific studies in the world of the imagination.

An energetic and impassioned work of popular science about scientists who have had to fight for their revolutionary ideas to be accepted—from Darwin to Pasteur to modern day Nobel Prize winners. For two decades, Matt Kaplan has covered science for the Economist. He’s seen breakthroughs often...

To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation.

For over two thousand years, from the Medieval Arabic world to the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, scientific progress has relied on different methods of establishing fact from fiction. Achieve logical perfection, the reasoning went, and you would be rewarded with ultimate, universal truth. But there is far more to proof than axioms, theories and laws: when demonstrating that a new medical treatment works, persuading a jury of someone's guilt, or deciding whether you trust a self-driving car or a financial transaction, the weighing up of evidence is far from simple.

The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.

From the author's monthly Scientific American columns. An eclectic, inspiring collection exploring a broad range of scientific thought from best-selling author and celebrated skeptic Michael Shermer.

Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity.