Matters of Gravity

Matters of Gravity PDF Author: Scott Bukatman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822384892
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
The headlong rush, the rapid montage, the soaring superhero, the plunging roller coaster—Matters of Gravity focuses on the experience of technological spectacle in American popular culture over the past century. In these essays, leading media and cultural theorist Scott Bukatman reveals how popular culture tames the threats posed by technology and urban modernity by immersing people in delirious kinetic environments like those traversed by Plastic Man, Superman, and the careening astronauts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff. He argues that as advanced technologies have proliferated, popular culture has turned the attendant fear of instability into the thrill of topsy-turvydom, often by presenting images and experiences of weightless escape from controlled space. Considering theme parks, cyberspace, cinematic special effects, superhero comics, and musical films, Matters of Gravity highlights phenomena that make technology spectacular, permit unfettered flights of fantasy, and free us momentarily from the weight of gravity and history, of past and present. Bukatman delves into the dynamic ways pop culture imagines that apotheosis of modernity: the urban metropolis. He points to two genres, musical films and superhero comics, that turn the city into a unique site of transformative power. Leaping in single bounds from lively descriptions to sharp theoretical insights, Matters of Gravity is a deft, exhilarating celebration of the liberatory effects of popular culture.

Matters of Gravity

Matters of Gravity PDF Author: Scott Bukatman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822384892
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
The headlong rush, the rapid montage, the soaring superhero, the plunging roller coaster—Matters of Gravity focuses on the experience of technological spectacle in American popular culture over the past century. In these essays, leading media and cultural theorist Scott Bukatman reveals how popular culture tames the threats posed by technology and urban modernity by immersing people in delirious kinetic environments like those traversed by Plastic Man, Superman, and the careening astronauts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff. He argues that as advanced technologies have proliferated, popular culture has turned the attendant fear of instability into the thrill of topsy-turvydom, often by presenting images and experiences of weightless escape from controlled space. Considering theme parks, cyberspace, cinematic special effects, superhero comics, and musical films, Matters of Gravity highlights phenomena that make technology spectacular, permit unfettered flights of fantasy, and free us momentarily from the weight of gravity and history, of past and present. Bukatman delves into the dynamic ways pop culture imagines that apotheosis of modernity: the urban metropolis. He points to two genres, musical films and superhero comics, that turn the city into a unique site of transformative power. Leaping in single bounds from lively descriptions to sharp theoretical insights, Matters of Gravity is a deft, exhilarating celebration of the liberatory effects of popular culture.

Approaches to Quantum Gravity

Approaches to Quantum Gravity PDF Author: Daniele Oriti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521860458
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
Containing contributions from leading researchers in this field, this book provides a complete overview of this field from the frontiers of theoretical physics research for graduate students and researchers. It introduces the most current approaches to this problem, and reviews their main achievements.

Reinventing Gravity

Reinventing Gravity PDF Author: John W. Moffat
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061170887
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Einstein's gravity theory—his general theory of relativity—has served as the basis for a series of astonishing cosmological discoveries. But what if, nonetheless, Einstein got it wrong? Since the 1930s, physicists have noticed an alarming discrepancy between the universe as we see it and the universe that Einstein's theory of relativity predicts. There just doesn't seem to be enough stuff out there for everything to hang together. Galaxies spin so fast that, based on the amount of visible matter in them, they ought to be flung to pieces, the same way a spinning yo-yo can break its string. Cosmologists tried to solve the problem by positing dark matter—a mysterious, invisible substance that surrounds galaxies, holding the visible matter in place—and particle physicists, attempting to identify the nature of the stuff, have undertaken a slew of experiments to detect it. So far, none have. Now, John W. Moffat, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, offers a different solution to the problem. The cap­stone to a storybook career—one that began with a correspondence with Einstein and a conversation with Niels Bohr—Moffat's modified gravity theory, or MOG, can model the movements of the universe without recourse to dark matter, and his work chal­lenging the constancy of the speed of light raises a stark challenge to the usual models of the first half-million years of the universe's existence. This bold new work, presenting the entirety of Moffat's hypothesis to a general readership for the first time, promises to overturn everything we thought we knew about the origins and evolution of the universe.

Gravity Matters

Gravity Matters PDF Author: Sonja Ruth Greckol
Publisher: Inanna Publications & Education
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
The work of creating a fully habitable life with a past and present preoccupies Sonja Greckol. In Gravity Matters, she traces an arc: from a nineteenth-century European family that immigrated and settled in central Alberta to a digitized wondering held together by Skype and Google rooted in central Toronto. In this, a first collection, Greckol turns obliquely from the matters of largely personal lyrics to historical and international preoccupations that, nevertheless, remain embodied--a pentimento of certainties, sensualities and queries, empiricism and theory in science, moving from daughter to mother and then mother/daughtering once again--in a feminist voice that is urgent, empathic and wry. Her long poem, Emilie Explains Newton to Voltaire, a fractured sonetto magistrale voices a eighteenth-century physicist and noble woman, Emilie du Châtelet, a key figure of the Enlightenment and locates her in mind and body ands well as in her time. This poem was short-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2008.

Extensions of f(R) Gravity

Extensions of f(R) Gravity PDF Author: Tiberiu Harko
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108428746
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
Presents a detailed analysis of modified theories of gravity, discussing their development, cosmological and astrophysical implications and outstanding challenges.

Einstein's Unfinished Dream

Einstein's Unfinished Dream PDF Author: Don Lincoln
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197638031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Humanity has long looked to the sky and marvelled at the world around us. We've wondered why the world is the way it is and whether it has to be that way. For millennia these questions were theological, transitioning to philosophical during the Enlightenment, but the discipline that now drives progress is science. We now look forward, hoping to make additional connections and create a better understanding of the ultimate laws of nature. We dream of a time when we have developed a theory of everything--a theory that answers all questions. There is so much that we don't know. This book is up front about our ignorance and spends some time dispelling some of the more popular theories. It then redirects the reader's attention to how we will actually move forward, by identifying things we don't yet understand and engaging with the experiments that will drive our comprehension. Einstein's Unfinished Dream explores the cutting-edge research of modern particle physicists that pushes us slowly towards a theory of everything. Marshalling decades of experience in distilling high-level scientific concepts, Lincoln invites readers into the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, matter/antimatter asymmetry, quark and lepton flavor, and other phenomena that have puzzled humanity for centuries.

Einstein's Mirror

Einstein's Mirror PDF Author: Anthony J. G. Hey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521435321
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Lavishly illustrated, fascinating and accessible introduction to Einstein's relativity for general readers, school students and undergraduates.

What Holds Us to Earth?

What Holds Us to Earth? PDF Author: Jennifer Boothroyd
Publisher: Lerner Publications ™
ISBN: 1541504208
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
A ball drops to the ground. Leaves fall from a tree. Gravity is at work all around you. But what exactly is gravity? And how does it affect different objects? Read this book to find out! Learn all about matter, energy, and forces in the Exploring Physical Science series—part of the Lightning Bolt BooksTM collection. With high-energy designs, exciting photos, and fun text, Lightning Bolt BooksTM bring nonfiction topics to life!

Gravity's Time

Gravity's Time PDF Author: C. S. Unnikrishnan
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000522768
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This book is unique and exceptional in dealing with the notion of physical time rigorously, both logically and empirically. The central theme is the intimate relation between physical time and cosmic gravity. It establishes and explains, in an accessible manner, the one crucial physical fact that has been missed in the development of modern physics—that the enormous gravity of the matter and energy in the Universe is the controller and cause of the relativistic time. The material in the book is accurate and free of the ambiguities in the discussion of time and its modifications (dilation), synchronization of clocks, and simultaneity. The contents go beyond the current theories of relativity that fail to incorporate the cosmic gravity in their structure. The discussion of clocks in satellite navigational systems (like the GPS) is the most complete and accurate. The book offers several new insights, and it is the only available treatise on the complete physical truth about time. The contents are addressed to a wide range of readers, from general readers and students to experienced researchers, and will also appeal well to philosophers and historians of physics. This book has the enabling quality to deal with difficult questions about physical time, with unprecedented clarity and without paradoxes.

Life in Space

Life in Space PDF Author: Lucas John Mix
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054288
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Life is a property of the universe. We may not know how it began or where else it exists, but we have come to know a great deal about how it relates to stars, planets, and the larger cosmos. In clear and compelling terms, this book shows how the emerging field of astrobiology investigates the nature of life in space. How did life begin? How common is it? Where do we fit in? These are the important questions that astrobiology seeks to answer. A truly interdisciplinary endeavor, astrobiology looks at the evidence of astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry, and a host of other fields. A grand narrative emerges, beginning from the smallest, most common particles yet producing amazing complexity and order. Lucas Mix is a congenial guide through the depths of astrobiology, exploring how the presence of planets around other stars affects our knowledge of our own; how water, carbon, and electrons interact to form life as we know it; and how the processes of evolution and entropy act upon every living thing. This book also reveals that our understanding and our context are deeply intertwined. It shows how much astrobiology can tell us about who we are—as a planet, as a species, and as individuals.