Download or read book Dispatches from Planet 3 written by Marcia Bartusiak and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning science writer presents a captivating collection of cosmological essays for the armchair astronomer The galaxy, the multiverse, and the history of astronomy are explored in this engaging compilation of cosmological tales by multiple-award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak. In thirty-two concise and engrossing essays, the author provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe and those who strive to uncover its mysteries. Bartusiak shares the back stories for many momentous astronomical discoveries, including the contributions of such pioneers as Beatrice Tinsley, with her groundbreaking research in galactic evolution, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the scientist who first discovered radio pulsars. An endlessly fascinating collection that you can dip into in any order, these pieces will transport you to ancient Mars, when water flowed freely across its surface; to the collision of two black holes, a cosmological event that released fifty times more energy than was radiating from every star in the universe; and to the beginning of time itself.
Download or read book Dispatches from Planet 3 written by Marcia Bartusiak and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning science writer presents a captivating collection of cosmological essays for the armchair astronomer The galaxy, the multiverse, and the history of astronomy are explored in this engaging compilation of cosmological tales by multiple-award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak. In thirty-two concise and engrossing essays, the author provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe and those who strive to uncover its mysteries. Bartusiak shares the back stories for many momentous astronomical discoveries, including the contributions of such pioneers as Beatrice Tinsley, with her groundbreaking research in galactic evolution, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the scientist who first discovered radio pulsars. An endlessly fascinating collection that you can dip into in any order, these pieces will transport you to ancient Mars, when water flowed freely across its surface; to the collision of two black holes, a cosmological event that released fifty times more energy than was radiating from every star in the universe; and to the beginning of time itself.
Download or read book Dispatches from Ray s Planet written by Claire Finlayson and published by Caitlin Press. This book was released on 2020-09-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a child, Claire's big brother Ray was always bright and inquisitive, and she looked up to him. But as the two became teenagers, Ray struggled to acquire the social skills that came more easily to Claire and their friends. Claire tried to help, pointing out what he should or shouldn't have said or done. Ray insisted that he wasn't the problem--"On my planet...", he would explain, there were no social climbers, no cocktail parties, no subtle hints or subliminal messages to miss. On his planet, the telling of little white lies would be a capital offence. At sixteen, sitting with him in the high school cafeteria, Claire vowed to find Ray's "planet." After graduation, Ray took a job as a letter carrier with Canada Post, but after thirty-three years on the job he had developed plantar fasciitis, his feet so painful he couldn't walk. Instead of seeking medical help, he began leaving mail in his truck overnight--a serious dereliction of duty. He was fired, blew his appeal, and spiralled into a suicidal depression. Claire didn't know he was in trouble until he reached out to her by email. Thus began a remarkable email correspondence that pulled back the curtain on an inner life Claire couldn't have imagined. Where in-person interactions plunged him into hot water, by email, Ray's writing revealed a compassionate, funny, sad man who showed extraordinary insight into his often self-destructive way of navigating the world. Ray was fifty when Claire realized he might have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but by then, having survived without a diagnosis his whole life, Ray was reluctant to have a label pinned on him and resisted Claire's efforts to fix him by trying, in all sincerity, to make him more like her. Dispatches From Ray's Planet draws on Ray and Claire's correspondence to tell the story of two siblings from two very different planets. There are thousands of Rays in our world, hiding in basements or holding up walls at social functions. In this collective memoir, Claire and Ray share their journey with the hope that others can also learn that we all perceive the world in different ways, and that "different" does not necessarily mean dangerous.
Download or read book Rainforest written by Tony Juniper and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rainforests have long been recognized as hotspots of biodiversity--but they are crucial for our planet in other surprising ways. Not only do these fascinating ecosystems thrive in rainy regions, they create rain themselves, and this moisture is spread around the globe. Rainforests across the world have a powerful and concrete impact, reaching as far as America's Great Plains and central Europe. In Rainforest: Dispatches from Earth's Most Vital Frontlines, a prominent conservationist provides a comprehensive view of the crucial roles rainforests serve, the state of the world's rainforests today, and the inspirational efforts underway to save them. In Rainforest, Tony Juniper draws upon decades of work in rainforest conservation. He brings readers along on his journeys, from the thriving forests of Costa Rica to Indonesia, where palm oil plantations have supplanted much of the former rainforest. Despite many ominous trends, Juniper sees hope for rainforests and those who rely upon them, thanks to developments like new international agreements, corporate deforestation policies, and movements from local and Indigenous communities. As climate change intensifies, we have already begun to see the effects of rainforest destruction on the planet at large. Rainforest provides a detailed and wide-ranging look at the health and future of these vital ecosystems. Throughout this evocative book, Juniper argues that in saving rainforests, we save ourselves, too.
Download or read book The Day We Found the Universe written by Marcia Bartusiak and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting and mesmerizing story behind a watershed period in human history, the discovery of the startling size and true nature of our universe. On New Years Day in 1925, a young Edwin Hubble released his finding that our Universe was far bigger, eventually measured as a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed. Hubble’s proclamation sent shock waves through the scientific community. Six years later, in a series of meetings at Mount Wilson Observatory, Hubble and others convinced Albert Einstein that the Universe was not static but in fact expanding. Here Marcia Bartusiak reveals the key players, battles of will, clever insights, incredible technology, ground-breaking research, and wrong turns made by the early investigators of the heavens as they raced to uncover what many consider one of most significant discoveries in scientific history.
Download or read book A Man s Life written by Mark Jenkins and published by Rodale. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an all-new compendium of travel tales, the Outside magazine columnist, explorer, and author of The Hard Way presents accounts of his true-life adventures and experiences in the farthest corners of the globe.
Download or read book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars written by Michael E. Mann and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change examines the fossil-fuel industry's public relations campaign to discredit the science of climate change and deny the reality of global warming.
Download or read book Dante and the Early Astronomer written by Tracy Daugherty and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the evolution of astronomy from Dante to Einstein, as seen through the eyes of trailblazing Victorian astronomer Mary Acworth Evershed In 1910, Mary Acworth Evershed (1867–1949) sat on a hill in southern India staring at the moon as she grappled with apparent mistakes in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Was Dante’s astronomy unintelligible? Or was he, for a man of his time and place, as insightful as one could be about the sky? As the twentieth century began, women who wished to become professional astronomers faced difficult cultural barriers, but Evershed joined the British Astronomical Association and, from an Indian observatory, became an experienced observer of sunspots, solar eclipses, and variable stars. From the perspective of one remarkable amateur astronomer, readers will see how ideas developed during Galileo’s time evolved or were discarded in Newtonian conceptions of the cosmos and then recast in Einstein’s theories. The result is a book about the history of science but also a poetic meditation on literature, science, and the evolution of ideas.
Download or read book Through a Universe Darkly written by Marcia Bartusiak and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America's most talked-about science writers--and author of the award-winning book, Thursday's Universe--explores the phenomenon of "dark matter", the hypothesized, invisible substance that is changing our view of the universe. Photographs.
Download or read book War of the Worlds Global Dispatches written by Kevin J. Anderson and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of H.G. Wells's classic tale of Martian invasion comes this anthology of some of today's leading authors' own renditions of the Martian invasion as it might have been seen through the eyes of such notables as Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, Teddy Roosevelt and Pablo Picasso. Authors included are: Mike Resnick, Walter Jon Williams, Daniel Marcus, Robert Silverberg, Janet Berliner, Howard Waldrop, Doug Beason, Barbara Hambly, George Alec Effinger, Allen Steele, Mark W. Tiedemann, Gregory Benford and David Brin, Don Webb, Daniel Keys Moran and Jodi Moran, M. Shayne Bell, Dave Wolverton and Connie Willis.
Download or read book Feeling the Heat written by From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-06-22 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of chapter-length visits to world "hot" spots, where people are already coping with the consequences of climactic disruption. It reveals the process of climate change to be ongoing, serious and immediate
Download or read book Rising written by Elizabeth Rush and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this powerful elegy for our disappearing coast “captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry” (The New York Times). Hailed as “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. With every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through these dramatic changes, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish. Rush sheds light on the unfolding crises through firsthand testimonials—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—woven together with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities. A Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal Best Book Of 2018 Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award A Chicago Tribune Top Ten Book of 2018
Download or read book Galileo written by Mario Livio and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “intriguing and accessible” (Publishers Weekly) interpretation of the life of Galileo Galilei, one of history’s greatest and most fascinating scientists, that sheds new light on his discoveries and how he was challenged by science deniers. “We really need this story now, because we’re living through the next chapter of science denial” (Bill McKibben). Galileo’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises—such as minimizing the dangers of climate change—because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities. Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise and uses his “gifts as a great storyteller” (The Washington Post) to provide a “refreshing perspective” (Booklist) into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin. Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science—which, as Livio reminds us in this “admirably clear and concise” (The Times, London) book, remains threatened everyday.
Download or read book Thursday s Universe written by Marcia Bartusiak and published by Tempus Publishing, Limited. This book was released on 1988 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the history of the science to the cutting edge of knowledge and technology, the story of modern astrophysics is told through interviews with and profiles of leading scientists and theoreticians.
Download or read book Through Two Doors at Once written by Anil Ananthaswamy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself--and continues to almost two hundred years later. Many of science's greatest minds have grappled with the simple yet elusive "double-slit" experiment. Thomas Young devised it in the early 1800s to show that light behaves like a wave, and in doing so opposed Isaac Newton. Nearly a century later, Albert Einstein showed that light comes in quanta, or particles, and the experiment became key to a fierce debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality. Richard Feynman held that the double slit embodies the central mystery of the quantum world. Decade after decade, hypothesis after hypothesis, scientists have returned to this ingenious experiment to help them answer deeper and deeper questions about the fabric of the universe. How can a single particle behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle exist before we look at it, or does the very act of looking create reality? Are there hidden aspects to reality missing from the orthodox view of quantum physics? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and the familiar classical world of our daily lives begins, and if so, can we find it? And if there's no such place, then does the universe split into two each time a particle goes through the double slit? With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. Through Two Doors at Once is the most fantastic voyage you can take.
Download or read book Chatter written by Patrick Radden Keefe and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2005 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look inside the secret world of the American intelligence establishment and its link to the global eavesdropping network "Echelon" assesses how much privacy Americans have unwittingly sacrificed in favor of national security.
Download or read book The Moon Come to Earth written by Philip Graham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-11-15 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dispatch from a foreign land, when crafted by an attentive and skilled writer, can be magical, transmitting pleasure, drama, and seductive strangeness. In The Moon, Come to Earth, Philip Graham offers an expanded edition of a popular series of dispatches originally published on McSweeney’s, an exuberant yet introspective account of a year’s sojourn in Lisbon with his wife and daughter. Casting his attentive gaze on scenes as broad as a citywide arts festival and as small as a single paving stone in a cobbled walk, Graham renders Lisbon from a perspective that varies between wide-eyed and knowing; though he’s unquestionably not a tourist, at the same time he knows he will never be a local. So his lyrical accounts reveal his struggles with (and love of) the Portuguese language, an awkward meeting with Nobel laureate José Saramago, being trapped in a budding soccer riot, and his daughter’s challenging transition to adolescence while attending a Portuguese school—but he also waxes loving about Portugal’s saudade-drenched music, its inventive cuisine, and its vibrant literary culture. And through his humorous, self-deprecating, and wistful explorations, we come to know Graham himself, and his wife and daughter, so that when an unexpected crisis hits his family, we can’t help but ache alongside them. A thoughtful, finely wrought celebration of the moment-to-moment excitement of diving deep into another culture and confronting one’s secret selves, The Moon, Come to Earth is literary travel writing of a rare intimacy and immediacy.
