Download or read book Impossible Possible and Improbable written by John Gribbin and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Gribbin has inspired generations with his popular science writing' Jim Al-Khalili A scintillating collection of short essays that really does cover 'life, the Universe, and everything'. From the mysteries of the subatomic world to the curious property of water that makes our planet inhabitable, master of popular science John Gribbin delves into the astonishing facts that underlie our existence. Some aspects of the quantum world really do seem impossible to 'common sense', but have been proved correct by experiments. Other features of the Universe appear obvious, such as the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. But this familiarity hides the truly amazing truths underpinning these observations. And some things merely seem improbable but are also hiding a Deep Truth, such as the fact that the Moon and Sun look the same size as viewed from Earth. This book will change forever the way you view the world.
Download or read book Make the Impossible Possible written by Bill Strickland and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Inspired and inspiring . . . By telling his remarkable story, Bill Strickland shows us that an impossible notion is just an idea nobody had the guts to try.”—Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of A Whole New Mind “Make the Impossible Possible will show you how you can achieve even your wildest dreams.”—Jeff Skoll, first president of eBay and founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation Bill Strickland has spent over thirty years transforming the lives of thousands of people through Manchester Bidwell, the jobs training center and community arts program he founded in Pittsburgh. Working with corporations, community leaders, and schools, he and his staff strive to give disadvantaged kids and adults the opportunities and tools they need to envision and build a better, brighter future. In Make the Impossible Possible, he shows how each of us, by adopting the attitudes and beliefs he has lived by every day, can reach our fullest potential and achieve the impossible in our lives and careers—and perhaps change the world a little in the process. Through lessons from Strickland’s own life experiences and those of countless others who have overcome challenging circumstances and turned their lives around, Make the Impossible Possible teaches us how to build on our passions and strengths, dream bigger and set the bar higher, achieve meaningful success, and inspire the lives of others.
Download or read book Climbing Mount Improbable written by Richard Dawkins and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997-09-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant book celebrating improbability as the engine that drives life, by the acclaimed author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. The human eye is so complex and works so precisely that surely, one might believe, its current shape and function must be the product of design. How could such an intricate object have come about by chance? Tackling this subject—in writing that the New York Times called "a masterpiece"—Richard Dawkins builds a carefully reasoned and lovingly illustrated argument for evolutionary adaptation as the mechanism for life on earth. The metaphor of Mount Improbable represents the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in the seemingly "designed" complexity of living things. Dawkins skillfully guides the reader on a breathtaking journey through the mountain's passes and up its many peaks to demonstrate that following the improbable path to perfection takes time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of extraordinary adaptations such as the teeming populations of figs, the intricate silken world of spiders, and the evolution of wings on the bodies of flightless animals. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Climbing Mount Improbable is a book of great impact and skill, written by the most prominent Darwinian of our age.
Download or read book Improbable Planet written by Hugh Ross and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Latest Scientific Discoveries Point to an Intentional Creator Most of us remember the basics from science classes about how Earth came to be the only known planet that sustains complex life. But what most people don't know is that the more thoroughly researchers investigate the history of our planet, the more astonishing the story of our existence becomes. The number and complexity of the astronomical, geological, chemical, and biological features recognized as essential to human existence have expanded explosively within the past decade. An understanding of what is required to make possible a large human population and advanced civilizations has raised profound questions about life, our purpose, and our destiny. Are we really just the result of innumerable coincidences? Or is there a more reasonable explanation? This fascinating book helps nonscientists understand the countless miracles that undergird the exquisitely fine-tuned planet we call home--as if Someone had us in mind all along.
Download or read book Six Impossible Things written by John Gribbin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An elegant and accessible” investigation of quantum mechanics for non-specialists—“highly recommended” for students of the sciences, sci-fi fans, and anyone interested in the strange world of quantum physics (Forbes) Rules of the quantum world seem to say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time and a particle can be in two places at once. And that particle is also a wave; everything in the quantum world can described in terms of waves—or entirely in terms of particles. These interpretations were all established by the end of the 1920s, by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and others. But no one has yet come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. In this concise and engaging book, astrophysicist John Gribbin offers an overview of six of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics. Gribbin calls his account “agnostic,” explaining that none of these interpretations is any better—or any worse—than any of the others. Gribbin presents the Copenhagen Interpretation, promoted by Niels Bohr and named by Heisenberg; the Pilot-Wave Interpretation, developed by Louis de Broglie; the Many Worlds Interpretation (termed “excess baggage” by Gribbin); the Decoherence Interpretation (“incoherent”); the Ensemble “Non-Interpretation”; and the Timeless Transactional Interpretation (which theorized waves going both forward and backward in time). All of these interpretations are crazy, Gribbin warns, and some are more crazy than others—but in the quantum world, being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.
Download or read book Improbable written by Adam Fawer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2006-01-31 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a brilliant new talent comes a riveting novel of chance, fate, and numbers, and one man's strange journey past the boundaries of the possible. David Caine inhabits a world of obsession, rich rewards, and rapid, destructive downfalls. A compulsive gambler and brilliant mathematician prone to crippling epileptic seizures, he possesses the uncanny ability to calculate odds of any hand in the blink of an eye. But one night at an underground poker club, Caine makes a costly mi scalculation, sending his life spinning out of control. Desperate, he agrees to test an experimental drug with unnerving side effects: inexplicable visions of the past, present, and future. Unsure whether he's perceiving an alternate reality or suffering a psychotic breakdown, Caine embarks on a journey that stretches beyond the possible into the world of the improbable. Gradually, he discovers the extent of his astonishing new ability -- but powerful, shadowy forces know Caine's secret. Now Caine must fight for his survival -- and his sanity . . .
Download or read book Probable Impossibilities written by Alan Lightman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.
Download or read book Improbable Destinies written by Jonathan B. Losos and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.
Download or read book Physics of the Impossible written by Michio Kaku and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, the renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future. Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.
Download or read book Impossible Languages written by Andrea Moro and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the possibility of impossible languages, searching for the indelible “fingerprint” of human language. Can there be such a thing as an impossible human language? A biologist could describe an impossible animal as one that goes against the physical laws of nature (entropy, for example, or gravity). Are there any such laws that constrain languages? In this book, Andrea Moro—a distinguished linguist and neuroscientist—investigates the possibility of impossible languages, searching, as he does so, for the indelible “fingerprint” of human language. Moro shows how the very notion of impossible languages has helped shape research on the ultimate aim of linguistics: to define the class of possible human languages. He takes us beyond the boundaries of Babel, to the set of properties that, despite appearances, all languages share, and explores the sources of that order, drawing on scientific experiments he himself helped design. Moro compares syntax to the reverse side of a tapestry revealing a hidden and apparently intricate structure. He describes the brain as a sieve, considers the reality of (linguistic) trees, and listens for the sound of thought by recording electrical activity in the brain. Words and sentences, he tells us, are like symphonies and constellations: they have no content of their own; they exist because we listen to them and look at them. We are part of the data.
Download or read book Bending Reality written by Victoria Song and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bending Reality is the innovative process used by billionaires, tech leaders, and the world's most successful people to make the impossible . . . probable. Victoria Song teaches readers how to unlock the hidden power within their bodies to get what they want. After achieving success but lacking fulfillment as a student at Yale University and Harvard Business School, and then as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Venture Capitalist, Victoria set off on an unusual quest to study, train, and work with more than 24 of the best coaches, therapists, and healers in the world. She then deployed the skills and tools she'd learned with a diverse group of the world's highest performers. Through it all, she's discovered the codes that enable her clients to bend reality toward the directions they want. By accessing this extraordinary ability, Victoria's clients have sold a company for 4 billion dollars, grown revenue 1,000% during a pandemic, and pivoted to design a more effective COVID-19 vaccine. Victoria reveals the meta-framework behind peak performance, self-development, therapy, and meditation that is accessible for all. Whether you've studied these areas closely or this is the first book you've read on this topic, you'll have a front row seat to how the world's elite use this knowledge to achieve more while doing less. In this fast-paced guide to success, you will learn how to: Bend reality by mastering two states of being that most people aren't even aware of. Navigate change and face the unknown like the greatest leaders. Access creative downloads that artists, musicians, and geniuses receive. Make your own luck--there's literally a recipe! Find your unique "zone of genius" and live from it every day. Packed with powerful tools and exercises, Bending Reality will move you beyond intellectual understanding to embodiment. This is not another mindset book. You're ready for Bending Reality if you realize it's time to go beyond the mind and harness the full capacity of your consciousness to make quantum leaps in every area of your life. After learning how to bend reality, you will no longer need to memorize rules, tips, or tricks, but you will embody the essence of a remarkable leader who can make the impossible--probable.
Download or read book Eight Improbable Possibilities written by John Gribbin and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mind-warping excursion into the wildly improbable truths of science. Echoing Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.' With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science, Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science. For example: We know that the Universe had a beginning, and when it was – and also that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. We can detect ripples in space that are one ten-thousandth the width of a proton, made by colliding black holes billions of light years from Earth. And, most importantly from our perspective, all complex life on Earth today is descended from a single cell – but without the stabilising influence of the Moon, life forms like us could never have evolved.
Download or read book Eight Improbable Possibilities written by John Gribbin and published by . This book was released on 2023-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mind-warping excursion into the wildly improbable truths of science.
Download or read book The Second Kind of Impossible written by Paul Steinhardt and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize* One of the most fascinating scientific detective stories of the last fifty years, an exciting quest for a new form of matter. “A riveting tale of derring-do” (Nature), this book reads like James Gleick’s Chaos combined with an Indiana Jones adventure. When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s thirty-five-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter—one that raises the possibility of new materials with never before seen properties, but that violates laws set in stone for centuries. Steinhardt dubs this new form of matter “quasicrystal.” The rest of the scientific community calls it simply impossible. The Second Kind of Impossible captures Steinhardt’s scientific odyssey as it unfolds over decades, first to prove viability, and then to pursue his wildest conjecture—that nature made quasicrystals long before humans discovered them. Along the way, his team encounters clandestine collectors, corrupt scientists, secret diaries, international smugglers, and KGB agents. Their quest culminates in a daring expedition to a distant corner of the Earth, in pursuit of tiny fragments of a meteorite forged at the birth of the solar system. Steinhardt’s discoveries chart a new direction in science. They not only change our ideas about patterns and matter, but also reveal new truths about the processes that shaped our solar system. The underlying science is important, simple, and beautiful—and Steinhardt’s firsthand account is “packed with discovery, disappointment, exhilaration, and persistence...This book is a front-row seat to history as it is made” (Nature).
Download or read book Impossible Owls written by Brian Phillips and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. SEMI-FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR ART OF THE ESSAY. One of Amazon, Buzzfeed, ELLE, Electric Literature and Pop Sugar's Best Books of 2018. Named one of the Best Books of October and Fall by Amazon, Buzzfeed, TIME, Vulture, The Millions and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. “Hilarious, nimble, and thoroughly illuminating.” —Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad A globe-spanning, ambitious book of essays from one of the most enthralling storytellers in narrative nonfiction In his highly anticipated debut essay collection, Impossible Owls, Brian Phillips demonstrates why he’s one of the most iconoclastic journalists of the digital age, beloved for his ambitious, off-kilter, meticulously reported essays that read like novels. The eight essays assembled here—five from Phillips’s Grantland and MTV days, and three new pieces—go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world’s most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular oddities (though they do that, too). Researched for months and even years on end, they explore the interconnectedness of the globalized world, the consequences of history, the power of myth, and the ways people attempt to find meaning. He searches for tigers in India, and uncovers a multigenerational mystery involving an oil tycoon and his niece turned stepdaughter turned wife in the Oklahoma town where he grew up. Through each adventure, Phillips’s remarkable voice becomes a character itself—full of verve, rich with offhanded humor, and revealing unexpected vulnerability. Dogged, self-aware, and radiating a contagious enthusiasm for his subjects, Phillips is an exhilarating guide to the confusion and wonder of the world today. If John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead was the last great collection of New Journalism from the print era, Impossible Owls is the first of the digital age.
Download or read book The 5Cs Positive Teacher Interpersonal Behaviors written by Ali Derakhshan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-16 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that, in line with the tenets of positive psychology in SLA and the rhetorical/relational goal theory, positive teacher-student interpersonal relationships are deemed to be of great significance for empowering students to accomplish favorable academic outcomes and to successfully learn a second/foreign language (L2), whether at its affective, behavioral, or cognitive levels. Therefore, understanding the role of teacher interpersonal behaviors and their effect on students' learning gains in the domain of SLA is of utmost importance, particularly as this line of research is at its nascent stage of development, and, as a result, available empirical evidence is still inconclusive. To address this issue, drawing on the mixed methods design, this book mainly aims to, first, empirically scrutinize the role of “5Cs” positive teacher interpersonal variables (i.e., care, clarity, closeness, confirmation, and credibility) in L2 students' affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning outcomes through the mediation of student-perceived learner empowerment in the L2 context of Iran. Second, it is intended to show how L2 teacher educators, teachers, and materials developers, among other key educational stakeholders, can facilitate the provision of interpersonally rich language learning environments with the ultimate goal of enhancing students' L2 learning.
Download or read book Radical Coherency written by David Antin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We got to talking”—so David Antin begins the introduction to Radical Coherency, embarking on the pursuit that has marked much of his breathless, brilliantly conversational work. For the past forty years, whether spoken under the guise of performance artist or poet, cultural explorer or literary critic, Antin’s innovative observations have helped us to better understand everything from Pop to Postmodernism. Intimately wedded to the worlds of conceptual art and poetics, Radical Coherency collects Antin’s influential critical essays and spontaneous, performed lectures (or “talk pieces”) for the very first time, capturing one of the most distinctive perspectives in contemporary literature. The essays presented here range from the first serious assessment of Andy Warhol published in a major art journal, as well as Antin’s provocative take on Clement Greenberg’s theory of Modernism, to frontline interventions in present debates on poetics and fugitive pieces from the ’60s and ’70s that still sparkle today—and represent a gold mine for art historians of the period. From John Cage to Allan Kaprow, Mark Rothko to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Antin takes the reader on an idiosyncratic, personal journey through twentieth-century culture with his trademark antiformalist panache—one thatwill be welcomed by any fan of this consummate trailblazer.
