Showing titles in Physics

You've got questions: about space, time, gravity and the odds of meeting your older self inside a wormhole. All the answers you need are right here. An eminent physicist at CERN and the cartoonist behind the hugely successful PhD Comics answer the most important, most outrageous and funniest questions about everything.

As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with an asteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only in the last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by just such an impact. Now the science community is making up for lost time, with worldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and plans for high-tech hardware that could deflect an incoming object from a collision course - a procedure depicted in several Hollywood movies.

Ever heard of string theory, general relativity, or the Riemann Hypothesis and thought, “What in the world are they even talking about?” You’re not alone—and this book is your shortcut through the fog. "The Hardest Stuff Simplified" breaks down some of the most complicated ideas in the universe—from quantum field theory to philosophy of consciousness—and makes them not just understandable but actually fun. With metaphors, humor, and a sharp instinct for clarity, JJ walks you through the kind of topics that usually live in dusty college textbooks and brings them to life. You don’t need a PhD.

Let There Be Light presents a simple, beautiful, and elegant view of the oneness of all life, subjective and objective. It demonstrates the unity of the physical world with conscious experience of the physical world. Consciousness is not inside space and time, space and time are within consciousness; they are a special structure of the perceptual portion of consciousness.

You Are Here is a dazzling exploration of the universe and our relationship to it.It is the story of how something evolved from nothing, and how something became everything. It is the story of science: the greatest story ever told.Here, for the first time in a single span, is the life of the universe, from quarks to galaxy super-clusters, and from slime to Homo sapiens.

The young field of quantum mechanics holds out the promise that some of humanity's wildest dreams may be realized. Serious scientists, working off of theories first developed by Einstein and his colleagues 70 years ago, have been investigating the phenomenon known as "entanglement," one of the strangest aspects of the strange universe of quantum mechanics. New experiments suggest it does happen, and that it may lead to unbreakable codes, and even teleportation...

In this fascinating collection of articles and speeches, Albert Einstein reflects not only on the scientific method at work in his own theoretical discoveries, but eloquently expresses a great appreciation for his scientific contemporaries and forefathers, including Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr. While Einstein is renowned as one of the foremost innovators of modern science, his discoveries uniquely his own, through his own words it becomes clear that Einstein viewed himself as only the most recent in a long line of scientists driven to create new ways of understanding the world and to prove their scientific theories.

For going on two decades, Scientific American’s “Ask the Experts” column has been answering reader questions on all fields of science. We’ve taken your questions from the basic to the esoteric and reached out to top scientists, professors, and researchers to find out why the sky is blue or whether we really only use 10 percent of our brains. Now, we’ve combed through our archives and have compiled some of the most interesting questions (and answers) into a series of books.

On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025. The plan was hailed by environmental groups and politicians around the country. Then, suddenly, the state’s Democratic establishment reversed the decision, and in 2024 the Biden-Harris administration awarded the plant $1.1 billion in credits to extend its life. What happened in between? In Atomic Dreams, journalist and lifelong environmentalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow unearths the surprising answers—and the deep-seated conflicts behind them.

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of the field. The one definitive text on the development of the periodic table by van Spronsen (1969), has been out of print for a considerable time. The present book provides a successor to van Spronsen, but goes further in giving an evaluation of the extent to which modern physics has, or has not, explained the periodic system. The book is written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested lay-persons alike.

Have you ever wondered if a severed head retains consciousness long enough to see what happened to it? Or whether your dog would run to fetch help, if you fell down a disused mineshaft? And what would happen if you were to give an elephant the largest ever single dose of LSD? The chances are that someone, somewhere has conducted a scientific experiment to find out....

This audiobook is about the American moon landings - and about the doubts expressed ever since concerning the reality of these landings. Were the images of men on the moon really just a huge and cleverly executed hoax? Eversberg explains the best-known claims and conspiracy theories

Les Johnson takes you on a thrilling tour of the physics and technologies that may enable us to reach the stars. He discusses the latest exoplanet discoveries, promising interstellar missions on the not-so-distant horizon, and exciting new developments in space propulsion, power, robotics, communications, and more. But interstellar travel will not be easy, and it is not for the faint of heart. Johnson describes the harsh and forbidding expanse of space that awaits us, and he addresses the daunting challenges that we need to overcome in order to realize tomorrow's possibilities.

A routine Coast Guard inspection of a cargo ship in the Caribbean turns into a vicious firefight with unidentified Asian commandos. The second attempt to board the vessel ends with a nuclear detonation. North Korea has been smuggling short- and intermediate-range missiles into Cuba. An unknown number of nuclear warheads are hidden less than 100 miles from the tip of Florida. Every American city east of San Antonio is in the target zone.

Devastating natural disasters have profoundly shaped human history, leaving us with a respect for the mighty power of the Earth - and a humbling view of our future. Paleontologist and geologist Donald R. Prothero tells the harrowing human stories behind these catastrophic events.

Instead of “what if the South won the Civil War?” cosmologists ask, “what if the constants that make up the fundamental building blocks of physics were different?” Physicists argue that any slight change to the laws of physics would mean a disruption in the evolution of the universe - and our existence. With the many factors that had to align for us to exist, it can seem like the laws of physics might seem finely tuned to make our existence possible. Instead of a supernatural or divine explanation, this book explores the possibility is that our universe isn’t the only one.

Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about how the universe could work - from hidden extra dimensions in Interstellar to life as a mental projection in The Matrix. But these imaginings seem downright tame compared to the mind-bending science now coming out of physics and astronomy, and in this audiobook, we look at the strange and fascinating discoveries shaping (and reshaping) the field today.

In 1916, Arthur Eddington, a war-weary British astronomer, opened a letter written by an obscure German professor named Einstein. The neatly printed equations on the scrap of paper outlined his world-changing theory of general relativity. Until then Einstein's masterpiece of time and space had been trapped behind the physical and ideological lines of battle, unknown. Eddington realised the importance of the letter - perhaps Einstein's esoteric theory could not only change the future of science but also restore the world of cooperative international science in a time of brutal war.

In the late 1940s, a handful of visionaries were working to steer Europe towards a more peaceful future through science, and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, was duly born. James Gillies tells the gripping story of particle physics, from the original atomists of ancient Greece, through the people who made the crucial breakthroughs, to CERN itself, one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of our time, and its eventual confirmation of the Higgs boson.

How would Saturn’s rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what’s the last thing you’d see before your spaghettification? What would it be like to visit the faraway places we currently experience only through high-powered telescopes and robotic emissaries? Faster-than-light travel may never be invented, but we can still take the scenic route through the universe with renowned astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait.