Brian Greene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Greene), one of the world’s leading string theorists, peels away layers of mystery to reveal a universe that consists of eleven dimensions, where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter — from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas — is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny […]
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Simon Winchester (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Winchester) examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa), which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar.
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This book (published 2013) about nothing sounds like a plain oxymoron. However, there are fascinating possibilities in the concepts of emptiness and non-existence. Scientists have suspected for centuries that ‘nothing’ may be the key to understanding absolutely everything, from why particles have mass to the expansion of the universe – so without nothing we’d be precisely nowhere. Absolute zero (the coldest
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Dirt, soil, — it’s everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of soil, and it’s no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern
Cosmologists tell us that the Universe is 13.75 billion years old (roughly!). It’s not that I’m disinclined to believe this. What is staggering is the ingenuity that it must have taken to work this out. John Gribbin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gribbin) and (http://www.johngribbinbooks.com/) tells the story in this most useful book. In the 19th century astronomers, geologists and evolutionists first
Before the microscope thinkers had speculated about what the world is made of at the minutest level. The miroscope introduced evidence for the first time and it has revolutionised our knowledge of the world and the organisms that inhabit it. In the seventeenth century the pioneering work of two scientists, the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and
What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? In this remarkably clear and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell (http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mm/) provides an intimate tour of the sciences of complexity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity), a broad set
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Lonesome George (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_George) was the most famous reptile in the world. He is believed to have been the last surviving giant tortoise from the northernmost island of Pinta in the Galápagos archipelago. It had been thought that the last tortoise there was carried away by scientists in 1906. In the previous two centuries, passing sailors had
In this thrilling journey into the mysteries of the cosmos, science author Michio Kaku (http://mkaku.org/home/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku) takes us on a dizzying ride to explore black holes and time machines, multidimensional space and parallel universes which might lie alongside our own. Kaku skillfully guides us through the latest innovations in string theory and its latest iteration, M-theory, which posits
