Physical Science

The classic account of the structure and evolution of the early universe from Nobel Prize-winning physicist P. J. E. Peebles

An instant landmark on its publication, The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe remains the essential introduction to this vital area of research. Written by one of the world's most esteemed theoretical cosmologists, it provides an invaluable historical introduction to the subject, and an enduring overview of key methods, statistical measures, and techniques for dealing with cosmic evolution. With characteristic clarity and insight, P. J. E. Peebles focuses on the largest known structures--galaxy clusters--weighing the empirical evidence of the nature of clustering and the theories of how it evolves in an expanding universe. A must-have reference for students and researchers alike, this edition of The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe introduces a new generation of readers to a classic text in modern cosmology.

Climate change is one of the most hotly contested environmental topics of our day. To answer criticisms and synthesize available information, scientists have been driven to devise increasingly complex models of the climate system. This book conveys that the basics of climate and climate change have been known for decades, and that relatively simple descriptions can capture the major features of the climate system and help the general public understand what controls climate and weather, and how both might be changing.

Renowned environmental scientist and educator John D. Aber distills what he has learned from a long fascination with weather and climate, the process of science, and the telling of the story of science. This is not a book about policies and politics. Instead, it explores how weather happens, how it relates to climate, and how science has been used to answer major questions about the Earth as a system and inform policies that have reversed environmental degradation. By providing a guided tour of the science of weather, this thoughtful survey will contribute clarity and rationality to the public understanding of climate change.

How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today's kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?

What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn't shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues--from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.

In Lucky Planet, astrobiologist David Waltham argues that Earth's climate stability is one of the primary factors that makes it able to support life, and that nothing short of luck made such conditions possible. The four-billion-year stretch of good weather that our planet has experienced is statistically so unlikely, he shows, that chances are slim that we will ever encounter intelligent extraterrestrial others.

Describing the three factors that typically control a planet's average temperature--the heat received from its star, how much heat the planet absorbs, and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere--Waltham paints a complex picture of how special Earth's climate really is. He untangles the mystery of why, although these factors have shifted by such massive measures over the history of life on Earth, surface temperatures have never fluctuated so much as to make conditions hostile to life. Citing factors such as the size of our Moon and the effect of an ever-warming Sun, Waltham challenges the prevailing scientific consensus that other Earth-like planets have natural stabilizing mechanisms that allow life to flourish.

A lively exploration of the stars above and the ground beneath our feet, Lucky Planet seamlessly weaves the story of Earth and the worlds orbiting other stars to give us a new perspective of the surprising role chance plays in our place in the universe.

More than 2,000 years ago, Eratosthenes, in Alexandria, used a stick, a hole in the ground, sunllght at summer solstice, and elementary geometry to measure the circumference of the Earth with surprising accuracy, long before anyone was able to circumnavigate it. Today, scientists are attempting to measure the entire universe and to determine its origin. Although the methods have changed, the quest to chart the horizons of space and time continues to be one of the great adventures of science.

Measuring the Universe is an eloquent chronicle of the men and women- from Aristarchus to Cassini, Sir Isaac Newton to Henrietta Leavitt and Stephen Hawking-who have gradually unlocked the mysteries of "how far" and in so doing have changed our ideas about the size and nature of the universe and our place in it. Kitty Ferguson reveals their methods to have been as inventive as their results were-and are-eye-opening. Advances such as Copernicus's revolutionary insights about the arrangement of the solar system, William Herschel's meticulous creation of the first three-dimensional map of the universe, and Edwin Hubble's astonishing discovery that the universe is expanding have by turns revolutionized our concept of the universe. Connecting centuries of breakthroughs with the political and cultural events surrounding them, Ferguson makes astronomy part of the sweep of history.

To measure the seemingly immeasurable, scientists have always pushed the boundaries of the imagination-today, for example, facing the paradox of an ever-expanding universe that doesn't appear to expand into anything. In Kitty Fergeson's skillfill hands, the unimaginable becomes accessible and the splendid quest something we all can share.

In 1973, on the 500th anniversary of Copernicus's birth, the Polish Academy of Sciences announced its intention to publish all of the astronomer's extant works, both in their original Latin and in modern translations. Here, available for the first time in softcover, are Edward Rosen's authoritative English translations and commentaries.

Best-selling author Mary Roach was a hit columnist in the Reader's Digest magazine, and this book features the articles she wrote in that time. Insightful and hilarious, Mary explores the ins and outs of the modern world: marriage, friends, family, food, technology, customer service, dental floss, and ants--she leaves no element of the American experience unchecked for its inherent paradoxes, pleasures, and foibles.

On Cleanliness:
Ed has crud vision, and I don't. I don't notice filth. Ed sees it everywhere. I am reasonably convinced that Ed can actually see bacteria. . . . He confessed he didn't like me using his bathrobe because I'd wear it while sitting on the toilet.
"It's not like it goes in the water," I protested, though if you counted the sash as part of the robe, this wasn't strictly true.

On the Internet:
The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me. Right now, for instance, I'm feeling a shooting pain on the side of my neck. A Web search produces five matches, the first three for a condition called Arnold-Chiari Malformation.
While my husband, Ed, reads over my shoulder, I recite symptoms from the list. "'General clumsiness' and 'general imbalance, '" I say, as though announcing arrivals at the Marine Corps Ball. "'Difficulty driving, ' 'lack of taste, ' 'difficulty feeling feet on ground.'"
"Those aren't symptoms," says Ed. "Those are your character flaws."
On Fashion:
My husband recently made me try on a bikini. A bikini is not so much a garment as a cloth-based reminder that your parts have been migrating all these years. My waist, I realized that day in the dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my rib cage, which now rests directly on my hips. I'm exhibiting continental drift in reverse.

On Eating Healthy:
So Ed and I were eating a lot of vegetables. Vegetables on pasta, vegetables on rice. This was extremely healthy, until you got to the part where Ed and I are found in the kitchen at 10 p.m., feeding on Froot Loops and tubes of cookie dough.

Milburn illuminates the practices of nanotechnology by examining an enormous range of cultural artifacts, including scientific research articles, engineering textbooks, laboratory images, popular science writings, novels, comic books, and blockbuster films. In so doing, he reveals connections between the technologies of visualization that have helped inaugurate nano research, such as the scanning tunneling microscope, and the prescient writings of Robert A. Heinlein, James Blish, and Theodore Sturgeon. He delves into fictive and scientific representations of "gray goo," the nightmare scenario in which autonomous nanobots rise up in rebellion and wreak havoc on the world. He shows that nanoscience and "splatterpunk" novels share a violent aesthetic of disintegration: the biological body is breached and torn asunder only to be refabricated as an assemblage of self-organizing machines. Whether in high-tech laboratories or science fiction stories, nanovision deconstructs the human subject and galvanizes the invention of a posthuman future.

Introducing The Natural History Book - a complete guide to the nature and wildlife of our world and written by a worldwide team of natural history experts. In the 11 years since the book was originally released, thousands of new species have been identified, and new revelations have redrawn the tree of life.

Already featuring galleries of more than 5,000 species, The Natural History Book has since been updated to include dynamic discoveries such as the olinguito (the "kitty bear" of the Andean cloud forest), and a new species of deep-sea Bolosoma glass sponge photographed by the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, alongside a reorganization of the groups of living things to reflect the latest scientific understanding.

Explore each and every page of this stunning nature book to discover:

This treasure-trove of natural history is accompanied with easy-to-read, accessible information and beautifully-striking imagery, making it a riveting reference guide to pass down for generations to come. The only book to offer a complete visual survey of all kingdoms of life, this nature book for adults is the perfect addition to every family bookshelf, as well as an ideal gift for the nature, animal and plant lover in your life! Gardeners, hikers, and visitors to wildlife parks and natural history museums alike would also love this niche nature book, which also doubles up as the perfect coffee table book.

Split into 6 core chapters, covering Living Earth, Minerals, Rocks and Fossils, Microscopic Life, Plants, Fungi, and Animals - there truly is something for everyone to explore, love and learn. From granites to grape vines, from microbes to mammals, The Natural History Book is the ultimate celebration of the diversity of the natural world.

Domesticated crops were not human creations, and agriculture was not simply invented. As Robert N. Spengler shows, domestication was the result of an evolutionary process in which people played a role only unwittingly and as actors in a numberless cast that spanned the plant and animal kingdoms. Nature's Greatest Success is the first book to bring together recent scientific discoveries and fascinating ongoing research to provide a systematic account of not only how agriculture really developed but why.

Through fifteen chapters, this book dives deep into the complex processes that drove domestication and the various roles that plants and animals, including humans, played in bringing about those changes. At the intersection of popular history, archaeology, and evolutionary biology, Nature's Greatest Success offers a revolutionary account of humanity not at the apex of nature but deeply embedded in the natural world and the evolutionary processes that continue to guide it even today.

For the first time in paperback, here is a newly expanded edition of the best-selling book that was hailed as "setting a new standard" for quotation books. Tens of thousands of readers have enjoyed The Quotable Einstein and The Expanded Quotable Einstein, with translations into twenty-two languages. This updated edition--which appears on the 100th anniversary of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death--offers more than 300 new quotations, or over 1,200 altogether. Nearly all are by Einstein himself and a few are about the self-professed "lone wolf" Time magazine named "Man of the Century" at the turn of the millennium.

The New Quotable Einstein also includes a new section, "On Aging," and fresh material has been added to the appendix-from a touching account by Helen Dukas of Einstein's last days to a day-by-day summary of Johanna Fantova's telephone conversations with Einstein during the final year and a half of his life.

Also included are a poem called "Einstein," by Robert Service; and three virtually unknown verses to the song "As Time Goes By" (made famous in the movie Casablanca) that refer to Einstein. New photographs have been selected to introduce each section of the book.

Through well-documented quotations and supplementary information, The New Quotable Einstein provides a bigger and better biographical account of this multifaceted man-as son, husband, father, lover, scientist, philosopher, aging widower, humanitarian, and friend. It shows us even more vividly why the real and imagined Einstein continues to fascinate people across the world into the twenty-first century.

A Guardian "Favourite Reads--as Chosen by Scientists" Selection

"Tackles some of science's most enduring misconceptions."
--Discover

A falling apple inspired Isaac Newton's insight into the law of gravity--or did it really?

Among the many myths debunked in this refreshingly irreverent book are the idea that alchemy was a superstitious pursuit, that Darwin put off publishing his theory of evolution for fear of public reprisal, and that Gregor Mendel was ahead of his time as a pioneer of genetics. More recent myths about particle physics and Einstein's theory of relativity are discredited too, and a number of dubious generalizations, like the notion that science and religion are antithetical, or that science can neatly be distinguished from pseudoscience, go under the microscope of history.

Newton's Apple and Other Myths about Science brushes away popular fictions and refutes the widespread belief that science advances when individual geniuses experience "Eureka!" moments and suddenly grasp what those around them could never imagine.

"Delightful...thought-provoking...Every reader should find something to surprise them."
--Jim Endersby, Science

"Better than just countering the myths, the book explains when they arose and why they stuck."
--The Guardian