Author: Lynn Gamwell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191050
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
How science changed the way artists understand reality Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as well as Surrealists in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Lynn Gamwell describes how the microscope and telescope expanded the artist's vision into realms unseen by the naked eye. In the nineteenth century, a strange and exciting world came into focus, one of microorganisms in a drop of water and spiral nebulas in the night sky. The world is also filled with forces that are truly unobservable, known only indirectly by their effects—radio waves, X-rays, and sound-waves. Gamwell shows how artists developed the pivotal style of modernism—abstract, non-objective art—to symbolize these unseen worlds. Starting in Germany with Romanticism and ending with international contemporary art, she traces the development of the visual arts as an expression of the scientific worldview in which humankind is part of a natural web of dynamic forces without predetermined purpose or meaning. Gamwell reveals how artists give nature meaning by portraying it as mysterious, dangerous, or beautiful. With a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wealth of stunning images, this expanded edition of Exploring the Invisible draws on the latest scholarship to provide a global perspective on the scientists and artists who explore life on Earth, human consciousness, and the space-time universe.
Exploring the Invisible
Author: Lynn Gamwell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191050
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
How science changed the way artists understand reality Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as well as Surrealists in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Lynn Gamwell describes how the microscope and telescope expanded the artist's vision into realms unseen by the naked eye. In the nineteenth century, a strange and exciting world came into focus, one of microorganisms in a drop of water and spiral nebulas in the night sky. The world is also filled with forces that are truly unobservable, known only indirectly by their effects—radio waves, X-rays, and sound-waves. Gamwell shows how artists developed the pivotal style of modernism—abstract, non-objective art—to symbolize these unseen worlds. Starting in Germany with Romanticism and ending with international contemporary art, she traces the development of the visual arts as an expression of the scientific worldview in which humankind is part of a natural web of dynamic forces without predetermined purpose or meaning. Gamwell reveals how artists give nature meaning by portraying it as mysterious, dangerous, or beautiful. With a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wealth of stunning images, this expanded edition of Exploring the Invisible draws on the latest scholarship to provide a global perspective on the scientists and artists who explore life on Earth, human consciousness, and the space-time universe.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191050
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
How science changed the way artists understand reality Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as well as Surrealists in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Lynn Gamwell describes how the microscope and telescope expanded the artist's vision into realms unseen by the naked eye. In the nineteenth century, a strange and exciting world came into focus, one of microorganisms in a drop of water and spiral nebulas in the night sky. The world is also filled with forces that are truly unobservable, known only indirectly by their effects—radio waves, X-rays, and sound-waves. Gamwell shows how artists developed the pivotal style of modernism—abstract, non-objective art—to symbolize these unseen worlds. Starting in Germany with Romanticism and ending with international contemporary art, she traces the development of the visual arts as an expression of the scientific worldview in which humankind is part of a natural web of dynamic forces without predetermined purpose or meaning. Gamwell reveals how artists give nature meaning by portraying it as mysterious, dangerous, or beautiful. With a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wealth of stunning images, this expanded edition of Exploring the Invisible draws on the latest scholarship to provide a global perspective on the scientists and artists who explore life on Earth, human consciousness, and the space-time universe.
Exploring the Invisible Universe
Author: Belal Ehsan Baaquie
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9789813220638
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
"Why"? Why is the world, the Universe the way it is? Is space infinitely large? How small is small? What happens when one continues to divide matter into ever smaller pieces? Indeed, what is matter? Is there anything else besides what can be seen? Pursuing the questions employing the leading notions of physics, one soon finds that the tangible and visible world dissolves -- rather unexpectedly -- into invisible things and domains that are beyond direct perception. A remarkable feature of our Universe is that most of its constituents turn out to be invisible, and this fact is brought out with great force by this book. Exploring the Invisible Universe covers the gamut of topics in advanced modern physics and provides extensive and well substantiated answers to these questions and many more. Discussed in a non-technical, yet also non-trivial manner, are topics dominated by invisible things -- such as Black Holes and Superstrings as well as Fields, Gravitation, the Standard Model, Cosmology, Relativity, the Origin of Elements, Stars and Planetary Evolution, and more. Just giving the answer, as so many books do, is really not telling anything at all. To truly answer the "why" questions of nature, one needs to follow the chain of reasoning that scientists have used to come to the conclusions they have. This book does not shy away from difficult-to-explain topics by reducing them to one-line answers and power phrases suitable for a popular talk show. The explanations are rigorous and straight to the point. This book is rarely mathematical without being afraid, however, to use elementary mathematics when called for. In order to achieve this, a large number of detailed figures, specially developed for this book and found nowhere else, convey insights that otherwise might either be inaccessible or need lengthy and difficult-to-follow explanations. After Exploring the Invisible Universe, a reader will have a deeper insight into our current understanding of the foundations of Nature and be able to answer all the questions above and then some. To understand Nature and the cutting edge ideas of contemporary physics, this is the book to have.
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9789813220638
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
"Why"? Why is the world, the Universe the way it is? Is space infinitely large? How small is small? What happens when one continues to divide matter into ever smaller pieces? Indeed, what is matter? Is there anything else besides what can be seen? Pursuing the questions employing the leading notions of physics, one soon finds that the tangible and visible world dissolves -- rather unexpectedly -- into invisible things and domains that are beyond direct perception. A remarkable feature of our Universe is that most of its constituents turn out to be invisible, and this fact is brought out with great force by this book. Exploring the Invisible Universe covers the gamut of topics in advanced modern physics and provides extensive and well substantiated answers to these questions and many more. Discussed in a non-technical, yet also non-trivial manner, are topics dominated by invisible things -- such as Black Holes and Superstrings as well as Fields, Gravitation, the Standard Model, Cosmology, Relativity, the Origin of Elements, Stars and Planetary Evolution, and more. Just giving the answer, as so many books do, is really not telling anything at all. To truly answer the "why" questions of nature, one needs to follow the chain of reasoning that scientists have used to come to the conclusions they have. This book does not shy away from difficult-to-explain topics by reducing them to one-line answers and power phrases suitable for a popular talk show. The explanations are rigorous and straight to the point. This book is rarely mathematical without being afraid, however, to use elementary mathematics when called for. In order to achieve this, a large number of detailed figures, specially developed for this book and found nowhere else, convey insights that otherwise might either be inaccessible or need lengthy and difficult-to-follow explanations. After Exploring the Invisible Universe, a reader will have a deeper insight into our current understanding of the foundations of Nature and be able to answer all the questions above and then some. To understand Nature and the cutting edge ideas of contemporary physics, this is the book to have.
The Invisible Universe
Author: Matthew Bothwell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 086154126X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
From the discovery of entirely new kinds of galaxies to a window into cosmic ‘prehistory’, Bothwell shows us the Universe as we’ve never seen it before – literally. Since the dawn of our species, people all over the world have gazed in awe at the night sky. But for all the beauty and wonder of the stars, when we look with just our eyes we are seeing and appreciating only a tiny fraction of the Universe. What does the cosmos have in store for us beyond the phenomena we can see, from black holes to supernovas? How different does the invisible Universe look from the home we thought we knew? Dr Matt Bothwell takes us on a journey through the full spectrum of light and beyond, revealing what we have learned about the mysteries of the Universe. This book is a guide to the ninety-nine per cent of cosmic reality we can’t see – the Universe that is hidden, right in front of our eyes. It is also the endpoint of a scientific detective story thousands of years in the telling. It is a tour through our Invisible Universe.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 086154126X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
From the discovery of entirely new kinds of galaxies to a window into cosmic ‘prehistory’, Bothwell shows us the Universe as we’ve never seen it before – literally. Since the dawn of our species, people all over the world have gazed in awe at the night sky. But for all the beauty and wonder of the stars, when we look with just our eyes we are seeing and appreciating only a tiny fraction of the Universe. What does the cosmos have in store for us beyond the phenomena we can see, from black holes to supernovas? How different does the invisible Universe look from the home we thought we knew? Dr Matt Bothwell takes us on a journey through the full spectrum of light and beyond, revealing what we have learned about the mysteries of the Universe. This book is a guide to the ninety-nine per cent of cosmic reality we can’t see – the Universe that is hidden, right in front of our eyes. It is also the endpoint of a scientific detective story thousands of years in the telling. It is a tour through our Invisible Universe.
Heart of Darkness
Author: Jeremiah P. Ostriker
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165777
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
"Heart of Darkness describes the incredible saga of humankind's quest to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. Over the past thirty years, scientists have learned that two little-understood components--dark matter and dark energy--comprise most of the known cosmos, explain the growth of all cosmic structure, and hold the key to the universe's fate."--Jacket.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165777
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
"Heart of Darkness describes the incredible saga of humankind's quest to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. Over the past thirty years, scientists have learned that two little-understood components--dark matter and dark energy--comprise most of the known cosmos, explain the growth of all cosmic structure, and hold the key to the universe's fate."--Jacket.
Night Vision
Author: Michael Rowan-Robinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107024765
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
Michael Rowan-Robinson provides a comprehensive history of infrared astronomy in this accessible and well-illustrated guide.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107024765
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
Michael Rowan-Robinson provides a comprehensive history of infrared astronomy in this accessible and well-illustrated guide.
Exploring Black Holes
Author: Laura Hamilton Waxman
Publisher: Lerner Digital ™
ISBN: 1512476676
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41
Book Description
Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! What space objects can have millions of times more mass than our Sun, but they remain invisible? Black holes! Their gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. In this book, you'll learn about one of the amazing wonders of space. As part of the Searchlight BooksTM collection, this series explores outer space and sheds light on the question What's Amazing about Space? Fantastic photos, kid-friendly explanations of science concepts, and useful diagrams will help you discover the answers!
Publisher: Lerner Digital ™
ISBN: 1512476676
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41
Book Description
Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! What space objects can have millions of times more mass than our Sun, but they remain invisible? Black holes! Their gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. In this book, you'll learn about one of the amazing wonders of space. As part of the Searchlight BooksTM collection, this series explores outer space and sheds light on the question What's Amazing about Space? Fantastic photos, kid-friendly explanations of science concepts, and useful diagrams will help you discover the answers!
Spectrums
Author: David Blatner
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408838591
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
The universe is a mind-boggling place, full of things seemingly too big and too small to understand. How can we visualise the minuscule world of the atom and the vastness of our galaxy? How can we grasp a billionth of a second and a billion years? Or the freezing point of Helium and the heat generated by the blast of an atomic bomb?David Blatner's solution is to put these and many other 'inconceivable' items on six spectrums - numbers, size, light, sound, heat and time - that put them into a human perspective. Full of facts, illustrations and anecdotes, Spectrums proves that we really can make sense of our extraordinary universe.Visit spectrums.com for amazing interactive charts, videos and more
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408838591
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
The universe is a mind-boggling place, full of things seemingly too big and too small to understand. How can we visualise the minuscule world of the atom and the vastness of our galaxy? How can we grasp a billionth of a second and a billion years? Or the freezing point of Helium and the heat generated by the blast of an atomic bomb?David Blatner's solution is to put these and many other 'inconceivable' items on six spectrums - numbers, size, light, sound, heat and time - that put them into a human perspective. Full of facts, illustrations and anecdotes, Spectrums proves that we really can make sense of our extraordinary universe.Visit spectrums.com for amazing interactive charts, videos and more
Mapping the Heavens
Author: Priyamvada Natarajan
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300221126
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
A theoretical astrophysicist explores the ideas that transformed our knowledge of the universe over the past century. The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place, filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is someone at the forefront of the research—an astrophysicist who literally creates maps of invisible matter in the universe. She not only explains for a wide audience the science behind these essential ideas but also provides an understanding of how radical scientific theories gain acceptance. The formation and growth of black holes, dark matter halos, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the echo of the big bang, the discovery of exoplanets, and the possibility of other universes—these are some of the puzzling cosmological topics of the early twenty-first century. Natarajan discusses why the acceptance of new ideas about the universe and our place in it has never been linear and always contested even within the scientific community. And she affirms that, shifting and incomplete as science always must be, it offers the best path we have toward making sense of our wondrous, mysterious universe. “Part history, part science, all illuminating. If you want to understand the greatest ideas that shaped our current cosmic cartography, read this book.”—Adam G. Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011 “A highly readable, insider’s view of recent discoveries in astronomy with unusual attention to the instruments used and the human drama of the scientists.”—Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe and Einstein's Dream
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300221126
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
A theoretical astrophysicist explores the ideas that transformed our knowledge of the universe over the past century. The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place, filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is someone at the forefront of the research—an astrophysicist who literally creates maps of invisible matter in the universe. She not only explains for a wide audience the science behind these essential ideas but also provides an understanding of how radical scientific theories gain acceptance. The formation and growth of black holes, dark matter halos, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the echo of the big bang, the discovery of exoplanets, and the possibility of other universes—these are some of the puzzling cosmological topics of the early twenty-first century. Natarajan discusses why the acceptance of new ideas about the universe and our place in it has never been linear and always contested even within the scientific community. And she affirms that, shifting and incomplete as science always must be, it offers the best path we have toward making sense of our wondrous, mysterious universe. “Part history, part science, all illuminating. If you want to understand the greatest ideas that shaped our current cosmic cartography, read this book.”—Adam G. Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011 “A highly readable, insider’s view of recent discoveries in astronomy with unusual attention to the instruments used and the human drama of the scientists.”—Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe and Einstein's Dream
Our Mathematical Universe
Author: Max Tegmark
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744256
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last—this is a book that has already prompted the attention and admiration of some of the most prominent scientists and mathematicians.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744256
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last—this is a book that has already prompted the attention and admiration of some of the most prominent scientists and mathematicians.
Shadowlands
Author: Robert Foot
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 9781581126457
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
In a revolutionary new theory, Dr. Robert Foot of the University of Melbourne argues that meteorites composed of mirror matter could impact with the Earth without leaving any ordinary fragments. Indeed, the theory seems to provide a simple explanation for the puzzling Tunguska event--the blast which destroyed a huge area of Siberian forest in 1908. While scientists have attributed this explosion to an ordinary meteorite, no traces of such an object have ever been found. Moreover, there are frequent smaller such events, occurring on a yearly basis, which are even more puzzling. Foot's new book lays clear the scientific case for mirror matter. It describes the fascinating evidence for its existence including, astronomical observations suggesting that most of our galaxy is made from a new form of matter--dark matter. It explains puzzling Jupiter sized planets only a few million miles from their host star, and the mysterious slowing down of spacecraft in our solar system. Remarkably, it is also possible that Pluto might even be a mirror world, which would explain various anomalous features of its orbit. Perhaps the most important consequence of all this--if true--is the possibility of actually extracting the mirror matter from the Tunguska impact site and other such sites on earth. Invisible asteroids and other cosmic bodies made of a new form of matter may pose a threat to Earth, agrees a noted Australian physicist. But the mirror matter idea has not attracted a huge following among physicists. In a recent UPI article, Howard Georgi of Harvard University says, "Foot's ideas have not attracted a huge following in the community that cares about these things, perhaps because the problems they solve, while interesting, are not the most critical puzzles that we are wrestling with." Nevertheless, mirror matter, if it exists, would be a completely new type of material with a potentially huge commercial value. Its scientific value would be of no less importance. FROM THE BACK COVER Nearly 50 years ago it was discovered that the fundamental particles, such as the electron and proton, have `left-handed' interactions; they do not respect mirror symmetry. This experimental fact motivates the idea that a set of `mirror particles' exist. The left-handedness of the ordinary particles can then be balanced by the right-handedness of the mirror particles. In this way mirror reflection symmetry can exist but requires something profoundly new. It requires the existence of a completely new form of matter called `mirror matter'. Remarkably the mirror matter theory is capable of simply explaining a large number of contemporary puzzles in astrophysics and particle physics. The evidence ranges from observations suggesting that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible, to unexpected properties of ghostly particles called `neutrinos'. This book explains this fascinating theory and its evidence at a level accessible to the non-specialist.
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 9781581126457
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
In a revolutionary new theory, Dr. Robert Foot of the University of Melbourne argues that meteorites composed of mirror matter could impact with the Earth without leaving any ordinary fragments. Indeed, the theory seems to provide a simple explanation for the puzzling Tunguska event--the blast which destroyed a huge area of Siberian forest in 1908. While scientists have attributed this explosion to an ordinary meteorite, no traces of such an object have ever been found. Moreover, there are frequent smaller such events, occurring on a yearly basis, which are even more puzzling. Foot's new book lays clear the scientific case for mirror matter. It describes the fascinating evidence for its existence including, astronomical observations suggesting that most of our galaxy is made from a new form of matter--dark matter. It explains puzzling Jupiter sized planets only a few million miles from their host star, and the mysterious slowing down of spacecraft in our solar system. Remarkably, it is also possible that Pluto might even be a mirror world, which would explain various anomalous features of its orbit. Perhaps the most important consequence of all this--if true--is the possibility of actually extracting the mirror matter from the Tunguska impact site and other such sites on earth. Invisible asteroids and other cosmic bodies made of a new form of matter may pose a threat to Earth, agrees a noted Australian physicist. But the mirror matter idea has not attracted a huge following among physicists. In a recent UPI article, Howard Georgi of Harvard University says, "Foot's ideas have not attracted a huge following in the community that cares about these things, perhaps because the problems they solve, while interesting, are not the most critical puzzles that we are wrestling with." Nevertheless, mirror matter, if it exists, would be a completely new type of material with a potentially huge commercial value. Its scientific value would be of no less importance. FROM THE BACK COVER Nearly 50 years ago it was discovered that the fundamental particles, such as the electron and proton, have `left-handed' interactions; they do not respect mirror symmetry. This experimental fact motivates the idea that a set of `mirror particles' exist. The left-handedness of the ordinary particles can then be balanced by the right-handedness of the mirror particles. In this way mirror reflection symmetry can exist but requires something profoundly new. It requires the existence of a completely new form of matter called `mirror matter'. Remarkably the mirror matter theory is capable of simply explaining a large number of contemporary puzzles in astrophysics and particle physics. The evidence ranges from observations suggesting that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible, to unexpected properties of ghostly particles called `neutrinos'. This book explains this fascinating theory and its evidence at a level accessible to the non-specialist.