Download or read book Understanding Gaia written by Gabriella Bernardi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-16 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to provide a comprehensive, readily understandable report on the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission that will meet the needs of a general audience. It takes the reader on an exciting journey of discovery, explaining how such a scientific satellite is made, presenting the scientific results available from Gaia to date, and examining how the collected data will be used and their likely scientific consequences. The Gaia mission will provide a complete and high-precision map of the positions, distances, and motions of the stars in our galaxy. It will revolutionize our knowledge on the origin and evolution of the Milky Way, on the effects of mysterious dark matter, and on the birth and evolution of stars and extrasolar planets. The Gaia satellite was launched in December 2013 and has a foreseen operational lifetime of five to six years, culminating in a final stellar catalogue in the early 2020s. This book will appeal to all who have an interest in the mission and the profound impact that it will have on astronomy.
Download or read book Gaia written by James Lovelock and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaia, in which James Lovelock puts forward his inspirational and controversial idea that the Earth functions as a single organism, with life influencing planetary processes to form a self-regulating system aiding its own survival, is now a classic work that continues to provoke heated scientific debate.
Download or read book Gaia written by J. E. Lovelock and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2000-09-28 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic work is reissued with a new preface by the author. Written for non-scientists the idea is put forward that life on Earth functions as a single organism.
Download or read book Facing Gaia written by Bruno Latour and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.
Download or read book The Sacred Balance written by David Suzuki and published by Greystone Books. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extensively revised and enlarged edition of his best-selling book, David Suzuki reflects on the increasingly radical changes in nature and science — from global warming to the science behind mother/baby interactions — and examines what they mean for humankind’s place in the world. The book begins by presenting the concept of people as creatures of the Earth who depend on its gifts of air, water, soil, and sun energy. The author explains how people are genetically programmed to crave the company of other species, and how people suffer enormously when they fail to live in harmony with them. Suzuki analyzes those deep spiritual needs, rooted in nature, that are a crucial component of a loving world. Drawing on his own experiences and those of others who have put their beliefs into action, The Sacred Balance is a powerful, passionate book with concrete suggestions for creating an ecologically sustainable, satisfying, and fair future by rediscovering and addressing humanity’s basic needs.
Download or read book On Gaia written by Toby Tyrrell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-21 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical examination of James Lovelock's controversial Gaia hypothesis One of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis posits that life itself has intervened in the regulation of the planetary environment in order to keep it stable and favorable for life. First proposed in the 1970s, Lovelock's hypothesis remains highly controversial and continues to provoke fierce debate. On Gaia undertakes the first in-depth investigation of the arguments put forward by Lovelock and others—and concludes that the evidence doesn't stack up in support of Gaia. Toby Tyrrell draws on the latest findings in fields as diverse as climate science, oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. He takes readers to obscure corners of the natural world, from southern Africa where ancient rocks reveal that icebergs were once present near the equator, to mimics of cleaner fish on Indonesian reefs, to blind fish deep in Mexican caves. Tyrrell weaves these and many other intriguing observations into a comprehensive analysis of the major assertions and lines of argument underpinning Gaia, and finds that it is not a credible picture of how life and Earth interact. On Gaia reflects on the scientific evidence indicating that life and environment mutually affect each other, and proposes that feedbacks on Earth do not provide robust protection against the environment becoming uninhabitable—or against poor stewardship by us.
Download or read book The Revenge of Gaia written by James Lovelock and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-08-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Revenge of Gaia , bestselling author James Lovelock- father of climate studies and originator of the influential Gaia theory which views the entire earth as a living meta-organism-provides a definitive look at our imminent global crisis. In this disturbing new book, Lovelock guides us toward a hard reality: soon, we may not be able to alter the oncoming climate crisis. Lovelock's influential Gaia theory, one of the building blocks of modern climate science, conceives of the Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, as a single living super-organism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of the combination of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from "flipping" into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, and force migration to the poles. The Revenge of Gaia explains the stress the planetary system is under and how humans are contributing to it, what the consequences will be, and what humanity must do to rescue itself.
Download or read book Scientists Debate Gaia written by Stephen Henry Schneider and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scientists bring the controversy over Gaia up to date by exploring a broad range of recent thinking on Gaia theory.
Download or read book Animate Earth written by Stephan Harding and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2006-09-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern science and western culture both teach that the planet we inhabit is a dead and passive lump of matter, but as Stephan Harding points out, this wasn't always the prevailing sentiment and in Animate Earth he sets out to explain how these older notions of an animate earth can be explained in rational, scientific terms. In this astounding book Harding lays out the facts and theories behind one of the most controversial notions to come out of the hard sciences arguably since Sir Isaac Newton's Principia or the first major publications to come out of the Copenhagen School regarding quantum mechanics. The latter is an important parallel: Whereas quantum mechanics is a science of the problem--it gave rise to the atomic bomb among other things--Gaia Theory in this age of global warming and dangerous climate change is a science of the solution. Its utility: Healing a dying planet becomes an option in a culture otherwise poised to fall into total ecological collapse. Replacing the cold, objectifying language of science with a way of speaking of our planet as a sentient, living being, Harding presents the science of Gaia in everyday English. His scientific passion and rigor shine through his luminous prose as he calls us to experience Gaia as a living presence and bringing to mind such popular science authors as James Gleick. Animate Earth will inspire in readers a profound sense of the interconnectedness of life, and to discover what it means to live harmoniously as part of a sentient creature of planetary proportions. This new understanding may solve the most serious problems that face us as a species today.
Download or read book Jabari Jumps written by Gaia Cornwall and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working up the courage to take a big, important leap is hard, but Jabari is almost absolutely ready to make a giant splash. Jabari is definitely ready to jump off the diving board. He’s finished his swimming lessons and passed his swim test, and he’s a great jumper, so he’s not scared at all. “Looks easy,” says Jabari, watching the other kids take their turns. But when his dad squeezes his hand, Jabari squeezes back. He needs to figure out what kind of special jump to do anyway, and he should probably do some stretches before climbing up onto the diving board. In a sweetly appealing tale of overcoming your fears, newcomer Gaia Cornwall captures a moment between a patient and encouraging father and a determined little boy you can’t help but root for.
Download or read book Novacene written by James Lovelock and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating new study from the originator of the Gaia Theory, “who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin” (Independent) One of the world’s leading scientific thinkers offers a vision of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence unite to save the Earth. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the Anthropocene—the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies—is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age—the Novacene—has already begun. In the Novacene, new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by science fiction. These hyperintelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project. It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Perhaps, he speculates, the Novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age of 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.
Download or read book The Gaia Hypothesis Interpreting Earth s Integrated Life Systems written by Nicky Huys and published by Nicky Huys Books. This book was released on 2024-02-17 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Gaia Hypothesis: Interpreting Earth's Integrated Life Systems" explores the groundbreaking concept of Gaia, which suggests that Earth functions as a self-regulating and integrated system. This book delves into the interconnectedness of Earth's ecosystems, from the intricate relationships between living organisms to the impact of environmental changes on the planet. Through compelling scientific insights and thought-provoking analysis, it offers a fascinating exploration of the Gaia hypothesis and its implications for understanding the intricate balance of life on Earth.
Download or read book The Gaia Hypothesis written by Michael Ruse and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The book is full of empathetic, insightful, and often very funny portraits of Margulis, Lovelock, and a community of other figures associated with Gaia.” —Carla Nappi, New Books in Science, Technology, and Society In 1965 English scientist James Lovelock had a flash of insight: the Earth is not just teeming with life; the Earth, in some sense, is life. He mulled this revolutionary idea over for several years, first with his close friend the novelist William Golding, and then in an extensive collaboration with the American scientist Lynn Margulis. In the early 1970s, he finally went public with the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that everything happens for an end: the good of planet Earth. Lovelock and Margulis were scorned by professional scientists, but the general public enthusiastically embraced Lovelock and his hypothesis. In The Gaia Hypothesis, philosopher Michael Ruse, with his characteristic clarity and wit, uses Gaia and its history, its supporters and detractors, to illuminate the nature of science itself. Gaia emerged in the 1960s, a decade when authority was questioned and status and dignity stood for nothing, but its story is much older. Ruse traces Gaia’s connection to Plato and a long history of goal-directed and holistic—or organicist—thinking and explains why Lovelock and Margulis’s peers rejected it as pseudoscience. But Ruse also shows why the project was a success. He argues that Lovelock and Margulis should be commended for giving philosophy firm scientific basis and for provoking important scientific discussion about the world as a whole, its homeostasis or—in this age of global environmental uncertainty—its lack thereof. “[Ruse’s] treatment is thought-provoking and original, as you would expect from this perceptive, irrepressible philosopher of biology.” —New Scientist
Download or read book Becoming Gaia written by Sean Kelly and published by Integral Imprint. This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Designing Regenerative Cultures written by Daniel Christian Wahl and published by Triarchy Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.
Download or read book The Unforgotten Sisters written by Gabriella Bernardi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking inspiration from Siv Cedering’s poem in the form of a fictional letter from Caroline Herschel that refers to “my long, lost sisters, forgotten in the books that record our science”, this book tells the lives of twenty-five female scientists, with specific attention to astronomers and mathematicians. Each of the presented biographies is organized as a kind of "personal file" which sets the biographee’s life in its historical context, documents her main works, highlights some curious facts, and records citations about her. The selected figures are among the most representative of this neglected world, including such luminaries as Hypatia of Alexandra, Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabetha Hevelius, and Maria Gaetana Agnesi. They span a period of about 4000 years, from En HeduAnna, the Akkadian princess, who was one of the first recognized female astronomers, to the dawn of the era of modern astronomy with Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. The book will be of interest to all who wish to learn more about the women from antiquity to the nineteenth century who played such key roles in the history of astronomy and science despite living and working in largely male-dominated worlds.
Download or read book Gaia s Garden written by Toby Hemenway and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extensively revised and expanded edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban gardeners. The text's message is that working with nature, not against it, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens.
