Exploring the Universe

Exploring the Universe PDF Author: P. Day
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198500858
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Much of our present knowledge of the universe has come from observations made over the centuries with ever more powerful telescopes, operating from isolated mountain tops. But the Hubble Space Telescope, the first to be launched into space, is revolutionizing our ability to picture and understand the universe. In Exploring the Universe, astronomer Alexander Boksenberg shows how a star is born and how the magnificent pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope will enable us to explore the universe in ever more depth. This selection of essays from experts in their fields - exploring subjects from magic bullets derived from traditional folk medicines, to the role science can play in understanding the work of Mondrian and other artists - taken from the Royal Institution's Evening Discourses provides an authoritative and accessible summary of current thinking in many areas of science and technology.

Exploring the Universe

Exploring the Universe PDF Author: P. Day
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198500858
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
Much of our present knowledge of the universe has come from observations made over the centuries with ever more powerful telescopes, operating from isolated mountain tops. But the Hubble Space Telescope, the first to be launched into space, is revolutionizing our ability to picture and understand the universe. In Exploring the Universe, astronomer Alexander Boksenberg shows how a star is born and how the magnificent pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope will enable us to explore the universe in ever more depth. This selection of essays from experts in their fields - exploring subjects from magic bullets derived from traditional folk medicines, to the role science can play in understanding the work of Mondrian and other artists - taken from the Royal Institution's Evening Discourses provides an authoritative and accessible summary of current thinking in many areas of science and technology.

At the Edge of Time

At the Edge of Time PDF Author: Dan Hooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691197008
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.

Origins

Origins PDF Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674184831
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Origins reveals the human being within the scientist in a study of the philosophical, personal, and social factors that enter into the scientific process. Twenty-seven active cosmologists--including Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Vera Rubin, Allan Sandage, Margaret Geller, and Alan Guth--talk candidly about their childhoods and early influences, their motivations, prejudices, and worldviews. The book's lucid introduction traces the explosion of new ideas that has recently shaken cosmological thinking. Origins explores not just the origin of the universe but also the origins of scientific thought.

Science Sketches

Science Sketches PDF Author: Sidney Perkowitz
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000559289
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book is the second collection of over 50 articles and essays authored by Sidney Perkowitz. Appearing in diverse outlets such as Discover, Washington Post, Aeon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Nautilus, Museum of the Moving Image, and Physics World, they represent the best of his writing about science and technology, and their links to culture and society, the arts and the media, and the humanities. Written for general readers, the pieces explore the outer and inner universes from cosmic space to the human mind, from the artistic use of science to the impact of technology and AI in the justice system, in medicine, and in dealing with COVID-19.

Origins

Origins PDF Author: Alan P. Lightman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674644717
Category : Astronomers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Origins reveals the human being within the scientist, in a unique study of the philosophical, personal, and social factors that enter into the scientific process. With interviews from twenty-seven cosmologists (including Stephen Hawking), Origins explores not just the origin of the universe, but also the origins of scientific thought.

Living with the Genie

Living with the Genie PDF Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610910923
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
At a time when scientific and technological breakthroughs keep our eyes focused on the latest software upgrades or the newest cell-phone wizardry, a group of today's most innovative thinkers are looking beyond the horizon to explore both the promise and the peril of our technological future. Human ingenuity has granted us a world of unprecedented personal power -- enabling us to communicate instantaneously with anyone anywhere on the globe, to transport ourselves in both real and virtual worlds to distant places with ease, to fill our bellies with engineered commodities once available to only a privileged elite. Through our technologies, we have sought to free ourselves from the shackles of nature and become its master. Yet science and technology continually transform our experience and society in ways that often seem to be beyond our control. Today, different areas of research and innovation are advancing synergistically, multiplying the rate and magnitude of technological and societal change, with consequences that no one can predict. Living with the Genie explores the origins, nature, and meaning of such change, and our capacity to govern it. As the power of technology continues to accelerate, who, this book asks, will be the master of whom? In Living with the Genie, leading writers and thinkers come together to confront this question from many perspectives, including: Richard Powers's whimsical investigation of the limits of artificial intelligence; Philip Kitcher's confrontation of the moral implications of science; Richard Rhodes's exploration of the role of technology in reducing violence; Shiv Visvanathan's analysis of technology's genocidal potential; Lori Andrews's insights into the quest for human genetic enhancement; Alan Lightman's reflections on how technology changes the experience of our humanness. These and ten other provocative essays open the door to a new dialogue on how, in the quest for human mastery, technology may be changing what it means to be human, in ways we scarcely comprehend.

A Many-Colored Glass

A Many-Colored Glass PDF Author: Freeman J. Dyson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813931436
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Freeman Dyson’s latest book does not attempt to bring together all of the celebrated physicist’s thoughts on science and technology into a unified theory. The emphasis is, instead, on the myriad ways in which the universe presents itself to us--and how, as observers and participants in its processes, we respond to it. "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley, "stains the white radiance of eternity." The author seeks here to explore the variety that gives life its beauty. Taken from Dyson’s recent public lectures--delivered to audiences with no specialized knowledge in hard sciences--the book begins with a consideration of the practical and political questions surrounding biotechnology. As he seeks how best to explain the place of life in the universe, Dyson then moves from the ethical to the purely scientific. The book concludes with an attempt to understand the implications of biology for philosophy and religion. The pieces in this collection touch on numerous disciplines, from astronomy and ecology to neurology and theology, speaking to the lay reader as well as to the scientist. As always, Dyson’s view of human nature and behavior is balanced, and his predictions of a world to come serve primarily as a means for thinking about the world as it is today.

Future Science

Future Science PDF Author: Max Brockman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191628182
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The next wave of science writing is here. Editor Max Brockman has talent-spotted 19 young scientists, working on leading-edge research across a wide range of fields. Nearly half of them are women, and all of them are great communicators: their passion and excitement makes this collection a wonderfully invigorating read. We hear from an astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena about the possibilities for life elsewhere in the solar system (and the universe); from the director of Yale's Comparative Cognition Laboratory about why we keep making the same mistakes; from a Cambridge lab about DNA synthesis; from the Tanzanian savannah about what lies behind attractiveness; we hear about how to breed plants to withstand disease, about ways to extract significance from the Interne's enormous datasets, about oceanography, neuroscience, microbiology, and evolutionary psychology.

A Conception of the Universe Or Exploring the Universe from Within

A Conception of the Universe Or Exploring the Universe from Within PDF Author: Jeffrey Vogt
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781522781394
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Visualize and explore the wonders of our Universe. Black Holes, Dark Matter, Space-Time, Gravity, Light-Speed, Orbits, Photons, Dark Energy, Solar Systems, The Big Bang, Expansion, the shape of the Universe, and even the Multi-Verse! "The following is an intellectual exercise used in an attempt to formulate a larger perspective of the cosmos, applying evidence, logic, and imagination; to lay the ground on which one is able to construct hypothetical tentative chains of thought. Doing so, an individual has the opportunity to formulate diverse models of various subjects, including the very universe in which they "or we" are a part of; thus providing potential explanations and viewpoints to subjects that may otherwise be unattainable or at times even undefinable. Together we shall endeavor to visualize a handful of the universe's known laws. Then continue further by speculating likely or at least possible solutions to other issues that as of yet, we are currently only able to speculate. Provisional or temporary concepts we are willing to amend as updated data is acquired or learned." "Mysteries of the cosmos examined masterfully in this series of thought experiments and cosmological models. From black holes to gravity Vogt pushes the very boundaries of our current understanding of the universe with thought provoking visualizations and original ideas."

Lake Views

Lake Views PDF Author: Steven Weinberg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071999
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Just as Henry David Thoreau “traveled a great deal in Concord,” Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg sees much of the world from the window of his study overlooking Lake Austin. In Lake Views Weinberg, considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive today, continues the wide-ranging reflections that have also earned him a reputation as, in the words of New York Times reporter James Glanz, “a powerful writer of prose that can illuminate—and sting.” This collection presents Weinberg’s views on topics ranging from problems of cosmology to assorted world issues—military, political, and religious. Even as he moves beyond the bounds of science, each essay reflects his experience as a theoretical physicist. And as in the celebrated Facing Up, the essays express a viewpoint that is rationalist, reductionist, realist, and secular. A new introduction precedes each essay, explaining how it came to be written and bringing it up to date where necessary. As an essayist, Weinberg insists on seeing things as they are, without despair and with good humor. Sure to provoke his readers—postmodern cultural critics, enthusiasts for manned space flight or missile defense, economic conservatives, sociologists of science, anti-Zionists, and religious zealots—this book nonetheless offers the pleasure of a sustained encounter with one of the most interesting scientific minds of our time.