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Find out moreGet up to speed with the most popular developments in science, with everything from the tiniest atom to the farthest flung findings of the universe, and every scientific discovery in between. Our selection of books in this category will keep you up to date.
There is currently huge interest in the question of human nature and identity, and what the human future might look like. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our future? Are we alone? And what can religion bring, alongside biology and anthropology, to these important and exciting questions? The Great Mystery focuses on this fascinating field of study. A follow-up to his critically acclaimed Inventing the Universe, in The Great Mystery Alister McGrath once again brings together science with religion to yield an enriched vision of reality, along with rigorous and thoroughly up-to-date scholarship and intellectual accessibility.
Why should you serve red wine with classical music and white wine with pop music? What is it about a heavier bowl that makes your pudding taste better? And how can you make your food taste saltier without adding more salt? If any of these questions has sparked your appetite you need to read Flavour. New Scientist correspondent Bob Holmes has tasted a lot of things in the name of flavour. He's travelled all over the world, delved into cutting-edge scientific research, enlisted chefs, psychologists, molecular gastronomists, flavourists and farmers, attended the weirdest conventions, and even received very rare access to one of the world's few highly secretive flavour houses.
From blackbirds, beavers and beetles to tawny owls, natterjack toads and lemon slugs. Every day of the year, winter or summer, in every corner of the British Isles, there's plenty to see if you know where - and how - to look. From encounters with the curious black redstart, which winters on our rocky coasts, to the tiny green snowdrop shoots that are the first sign that spring might be round the corner. And from the blossom-time and dawn choruses of April and May into the abundant noisiness of summer, where days start with hawker dragonflies and drowsy bumblebees and end with glow-worms and ghost moths; to autumn when in the early morning mist of London's Richmond Park male red deer lock horns in competition for a mate. Nature is always full of surprises - whether it's the strange behaviour of clothes moths or the gruesome larder of the strike.
Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognised and described yet it is the least understood. It is a 'force' that keeps your feet on the ground yet no such force actually exists. Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'. And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?
What's the best way to sort your laundry? Why is Facebook so good at predicting what you like? How do you find new music? Readers around the world have embraced Ali Almossawi's whimsical illustrations and his funny, clarifying explanations of complex subjects. In Bad Choices Almossawi demystifies a new topic of increasing relevance to our lives: algorithms. This is a book for anyone who's looked at a given task and wondered if there was a better, faster way to get it done. What's the best way to organize a grocery list? What's the secret to being more productive at work? How can we better express ourselves in 140-characters? Presenting us with alternative methods for tackling each scenario, Almossawi guides us to better choices that borrow from same systems that underline a computer word processor, a Google search engine, or a Facebook ad. Once you recognise what makes a method faster and more efficient, you'll become a more nimble, creative problem-solver, ready to face new challenges.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel returns with a captivating, little-known true story of women in science In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or human computers, to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the women turned to studying images of the stars captured on glass photographic plates, making extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what the stars were made of, divided them into meaningful categories for further research, and even found a way to measure distances across space by starlight .
Written with the clarity and simplicity for which all Kitty Ferguson's books have been praised, it is a captivating account of an extraordinary life and mind.
A stimulating, detailed, yet remarkably clear book about physics and how to connect to and understand a little more about our world. If you find yourself wondering about the why, the how, the what and when… then this is the book for you. Helen Czerski is a physicist and her passion and enthusiasm is clear to see. I will admit, that even though I have a fascination and love for the world around us, my brain freezes at the very mention of physics, so a big round of applause to Helen Czerski, because my brain didn't shut me out! Instead I found myself reading out loud, passing facts on and wanting to find out more. Her discussion points include gravity, atoms, and equilibrium, and she hooked my interest, by relating them to an everyday something, and then used experiments, fun ‘tricks’ to try, findings from history, the animal kingdom and her thoughts, as a link, an explanation and connection to physics. You may well catch the physics bug after reading ‘Storm In A Teacup’, at the very least you will be able to look around you and essentially see the world with new eyes. ~ Liz Robinson
Following each stage of the development of the material Universe, from the first cataclysmic moments to the emergence of human and machine intelligence, the Infographic Guide to Science presents the unfolding science that lies behind and between then and now. Starting from the point of physical origin, the book moves through quarks, atoms, molecules and stars; to planet building, organic chemistry, the emergence of life, sentience; and finally on to the human mind and its quest to understand the Universe through exploration and science. Spectacular visuals reveal unexpected insights into how the world really works, covering all the major branches of scientific understanding.
The history of science is a fascinating and long one, covering thousands of years of history. The development of scientific experiments involves some of the most enlightened cultures in history, as well as some great scientists, philosophers and theologians. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, 'If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong', the simplest summary of what science is all about. And science is nothing without experiments. Everything in the scientific world view is based on experiment, including observations of phenomena predicted by theories and hypotheses, such as the bending of light as it goes past the Sun.
Did you know, that if you were to get too close to a black hole it would suck you up like a noodle (it's called spaghettification), why your keyboard is laid out in QWERTY (it's not to make it easier to type) or whether the invention of the wheel was less important to civilization than the bag (think about it). New Scientist does. And now they and the New York Times' brilliant graphics editor Jennifer Daniel want to take you on a whistlestop journey from the start of our universe (through the history of stars, galaxies, meteorites, the Moon and dark energy) to our planet (through oceans and weather to oil) and life (through dinosaurs to emotions and sex) to civilization (from cities to alcohol and cooking), knowledge (from alphabets to alchemy) ending up with technology (computers to rocket science).
An awe-inspiring, unforgettable journey of scientific exploration from Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, the top ten bestselling authors of The Quantum Universe. We dare to imagine a time before the Big Bang, when the entire Universe was compressed into a space smaller than an atom. And now, as Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw show, we can do more than imagine: we can understand. Over the centuries, the human urge to discover has unlocked an incredible amount of knowledge. What it reveals to us is breathtaking. Universal takes us on an epic journey of scientific exploration and, in doing so, reveals how we can all understand some of the most fundamental questions about our Earth, Sun, Solar System and the star-filled galaxies beyond. Some of these questions - How big is our solar system? How fast is space expanding? - can be answered from your back garden; the answers to others - How big is the Universe? What is it made of? - draw on the astonishing information now being gathered by teams of astronomers operating at the frontiers of the known universe. At the heart of all these questions - from the earliest attempts to quantify gravity, to our efforts to understand what dark matter is and what really happened at the birth of our universe - is the scientific process.
Science has never been more popular. You don’t have to understand it to love it. We live in a golden age where we know more about the world and its origins than ever before. Here, some of the biggest questions ever asked find answers, as well as some of the smallest. This is a section bursting from its nucleus with protons of knowledge especially compiled for the lay enthusiast and the curious. Accessible science is no longer the domain of the scientist. We can all have a go at broadening our minds … and what’s more, we can do it from the relative comfort of our favourite chair. Relative comfort, because the chair is merely a mass of vibrating particles on a planet, hurtling through space and time, bending both as it goes in a Universe that may itself just be one of an infinite number of possible universes in an undefinable dimension of matter.
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