Download or read book Losing the Nobel Prize A Story of Cosmology Ambition and the Perils of Science s Highest Honor written by Brian Keating and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting."—Science A Forbes, Physics Today, Science News, and Science Friday Best Science Book Of 2018 Cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment, Brian Keating tells the inside story of the mesmerizing quest to unlock cosmology’s biggest mysteries and the human drama that ensued. We follow along on a personal journey of revelation and discovery in the publish-or-perish world of modern science, and learn that the Nobel Prize might hamper—rather than advance—scientific progress. Fortunately, Keating offers practical solutions for reform, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may finally be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.
Download or read book Losing the Nobel Prize written by Brian Keating and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting."—Science A Forbes, Physics Today, Science News, and Science Friday Best Science Book Of 2018 Cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment, Brian Keating tells the inside story of the mesmerizing quest to unlock cosmology’s biggest mysteries and the human drama that ensued. We follow along on a personal journey of revelation and discovery in the publish-or-perish world of modern science, and learn that the Nobel Prize might hamper—rather than advance—scientific progress. Fortunately, Keating offers practical solutions for reform, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may finally be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.
Download or read book Losing the Nobel Prize written by Brian Keating and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Forbes, Physics Today, Science News, and Science Friday Best Science Book Of 2018 The inside story of a quest to unlock one of cosmology’s biggest mysteries, derailed by the lure of the Nobel Prize. What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they’d glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been deceived by a galactic mirage? In Losing the Nobel Prize, cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2’s mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued. In an adventure story that spans the globe from Rhode Island to the South Pole, from California to Chile, Keating takes us on a personal journey of revelation and discovery, bringing to vivid life the highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, publish-or-perish world of modern science. Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. In a thoughtful reappraisal of the wishes of Alfred Nobel, Keating offers practical solutions for reforming the prize, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may, finally, be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.
Download or read book Spineless written by Juli Berwald and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A book full of wonders" —Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk "Witty, insightful. . . .The story of jellyfish. . . is a significant part of the environmental story. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter to our oceans' future." —New York Times Book Review Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting—microscopic spears that pierce with five million times the acceleration of gravity—is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others glow with a luminescence that has revolutionized biotechnology. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers. More than a decade ago, Juli Berwald left a career in ocean science to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back to the sea. Recent, massive blooms of billions of jellyfish have clogged power plants, decimated fisheries, and caused millions of dollars of damage. Driven by questions about how overfishing, coastal development, and climate change were contributing to a jellyfish population explosion, Juli embarked on a scientific odyssey. She traveled the globe to meet the biologists who devote their careers to jellies, hitched rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raised jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marveled at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders. Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless is the story of how Juli learned to navigate and ultimately embrace her ambition, her curiosity, and her passion for the natural world. She discovers that jellyfish science is more than just a quest for answers. It’s a call to realize our collective responsibility for the planet we share.
Download or read book Into The Impossible written by Brian Keating and published by Manjul Publishing. This book was released on with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can you unlock creativity and imagination to inspire, teach, and lead? What mental models do the world's most accomplished scientists use to supercharge their creativity and strengthen their most precious collaborations? In this mesmerizing collection of interviews with some of the world's brightest minds, you'll discover that achieving greatness doesn't require genius. Instead, dedication to a simple set of principles, habits, and tools can boost your creativity, stoke your imagination, and unlock your full potential for out-of-this-universe success. Through their own words, you will discover why Nobel Prize-winning scientists credit often-overlooked ‘soft skills’ like communication, motivation, and introspection as keys to their success. You'll see why they turn to curiosity, beauty, serendipity, and joy when they need a fresh view of some of the universe's most vexing problems... and how you can too, no matter what you do! Within the pages of ‘Into the Impossible: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner’, the wisdom of nine Nobel Laureates has been distilled and compressed into concentrated, actionable data you can use. While each mind is unique, they are united in their emphasis that no one wins alone, and that science, and success itself, belongs to us all.
Download or read book The Beginner s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize written by Peter Doherty and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, Doherty recounts his unlikely path to becoming a Nobel Laureate. Beginning with his humble origins in Australia, he tells how he developed an interest in immunology and describes his award-winning, influential work with Rolf Zinkernagel on T-cells and the nature of immune defense. In prose that is at turns amusing and astute, Doherty reveals how his nonconformist upbringing, sense of being an outsider, and search for different perspectives have shaped his life and work. Doherty offers a rare, insider's look at the realities of being a research scientist. He lucidly explains his own scientific work and how research projects are selected, funded, and organized; the major problems science is trying to solve; and the rewards and pitfalls of a career in scientific research. For Doherty, science still plays an important role in improving the world, and he argues that scientists need to do a better job of making their work more accessible to the public. Throughout the book, Doherty explores the stories of past Nobel winners and considers some of the crucial scientific debates of our time, including the safety of genetically modified foods and the tensions between science and religion. He concludes with some "tips" on how to win a Nobel Prize, including advice on being persistent, generous, and culturally aware, and he stresses the value of evidence. The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Noble Prize is essential reading for anyone interested in a career in science.
Download or read book Conjuring the Universe written by Peter William Atkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The marvellous complexity of the Universe emerges from several deep laws and a handful of fundamental constants that fix its shape, scale, and destiny. There is a deep structure to the world which at the same time is simple, elegant, and beautiful. Where did these laws and these constants come from? And why are the laws so fruitful when written in the language of mathematics? Peter Atkins considers the minimum effort needed to equip the Universe with its laws and its constants. He explores the origin of the conservation of energy, of electromagnetism, of classical and quantum mechanics, and of thermodynamics, showing how all these laws spring from deep symmetries. The revolutionary result is a short but immensely rich weaving together of the fundamental ideas of physics. With his characteristic wit, erudition, and economy, Atkins sketches out how the laws of Nature can spring from very little. Or arguably from nothing at all.
Download or read book Finding Our Place in the Universe written by Helene Courtois and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a team of researchers, led by the author, discovered our home galaxy's location in the universe. You are here: on Earth, which is part of the solar system, which is in the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is within the extragalactic supercluster Laniakea. And how can we pinpoint our location so precisely? For twenty years, astrophysicist Hélène Courtois surfed the cosmos with international teams of researchers, working to map our local universe. In this book, Courtois describes this quest and the discovery of our home supercluster. Courtois explains that Laniakea (which means “immense heaven” in Hawaiian) is the largest galaxy structure known to which we belong; it is huge, almost too large to comprehend—about five hundred million light-years in diameter. It contains about 100,000 large galaxies like our own, and a million smaller ones. Writing accessibly for nonspecialists, Courtois describes the visualization and analysis that allowed her team to map such large structures of the universe. She highlights the work of individual researchers, including portraits of several exceptional women astrophysicists—presenting another side of astronomy. Key ideas are highlighted in text insets; illustrations accompany the main text. The French edition of this book was named the Best Astronomy Book of 2017 by the astronomy magazine Ciel et espace. For this MIT Press English-language edition, Courtois has added descriptions of discoveries made after Laniakea: the cosmic velocity web and the Dipole and Cold Spot repellers. An engaging account of one of the most important discoveries in astrophysics in recent years, her story is a tribute to teamwork and international collaboration.
Download or read book The Collapse of Complex Societies written by Joseph Tainter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.
Download or read book At the Edge of Time written by Dan Hooper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.
Download or read book The Disappearing Spoon written by Sam Kean and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters?* The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. THE DISAPPEARING SPOON masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery--from the Big Bang through the end of time. *Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.
Download or read book The Lathe Of Heaven written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new introduction by Kelly Link, the Locus Award-winning science fiction novel by legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin, set in a world where one man’s dreams rewrite the future. During a time racked by war and environmental catastrophe, George Orr discovers his dreams alter reality. George is compelled to receive treatment from Dr. William Haber, an ambitious sleep psychiatrist who quickly grasps the immense power George holds. After becoming adept at manipulating George’s dreams to reshape the world, Haber seeks the same power for himself. George—with some surprising help—must resist Haber’s attempts, which threaten to destroy reality itself. A classic of the science fiction genre, The Lathe of Heaven is prescient in its exploration of the moral risks when overwhelming power is coupled with techno-utopianism.
Download or read book Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos written by Dennis Overbye and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-12-21 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award: the "intensely exciting" story of a group of brilliant scientists who set out to answer the deepest questions about the origin of the universe and changed the course of physics and astronomy forever (Newsday). In southern California, nearly a half century ago, a small band of researchers — equipped with a new 200-inch telescope and a faith born of scientific optimism — embarked on the greatest intellectual adventure in the history of humankind: the search for the origin and fate of the universe. Their quest would eventually engulf all of physics and astronomy, leading not only to the discovery of quasars, black holes, and shadow matter but also to fame, controversy, and Nobel Prizes. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos tells the story of the men and women who have taken eternity on their shoulders and stormed nature in search of answers to the deepest questions we know to ask. "Written with such wit and verve that it is hard not to zip through in one sitting." —Washington Post
Download or read book The Cosmic Cocktail written by Katherine Freese and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inside story of the epic quest to solve the mystery of dark matter The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe—from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars—constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known as dark matter and dark energy, because their precise identities are unknown. The Cosmic Cocktail is the inside story of the epic quest to solve one of the most compelling enigmas of modern science—what is the universe made of?—told by one of today's foremost pioneers in the study of dark matter. Blending cutting-edge science with her own behind-the-scenes insights as a leading researcher in the field, acclaimed theoretical physicist Katherine Freese recounts the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Fritz Zwicky—the Swiss astronomer who coined the term "dark matter" in 1933—to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists contend that dark matter consists of fundamental particles known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. Billions of them pass through our bodies every second without us even realizing it, yet their gravitational pull is capable of whirling stars and gas at breakneck speeds around the centers of galaxies, and bending light from distant bright objects. Freese describes the larger-than-life characters and clashing personalities behind the race to identify these elusive particles. Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving the mystery. The Cosmic Cocktail provides the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind’s quest to understand the universe.
Download or read book The Sciences of the Artificial reissue of the third edition with a new introduction by John Laird written by Herbert A. Simon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herbert Simon's classic work on artificial intelligence in the expanded and updated third edition from 1996, with a new introduction by John E. Laird. Herbert Simon's classic and influential The Sciences of the Artificial declares definitively that there can be a science not only of natural phenomena but also of what is artificial. Exploring the commonalities of artificial systems, including economic systems, the business firm, artificial intelligence, complex engineering projects, and social plans, Simon argues that designed systems are a valid field of study, and he proposes a science of design. For this third edition, originally published in 1996, Simon added new material that takes into account advances in cognitive psychology and the science of design while confirming and extending the book's basic thesis: that a physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for intelligent action. Simon won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978 for his research into the decision-making process within economic organizations and the Turing Award (considered by some the computer science equivalent to the Nobel) with Allen Newell in 1975 for contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing. The Sciences of the Artificial distills the essence of Simon's thought accessibly and coherently. This reissue of the third edition makes a pioneering work available to a new audience.
Download or read book Going Clear written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary. Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label.
Download or read book The Nobel Prize written by Burton Feldman and published by Arcade Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the Nobel Institution in detail, telling about the award and its beginnings, what it means to win a Nobel Prize, the fields in which it is presented, who judges and how the prize is awarded, and more.
