Popular Science

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of--From publisher description

"The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist. What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day. While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe"-- Provided by publisher.

After Ed Bair gives an analysis of the current and possible sources of electricity, readers will discover that the concept of a solar space station the subject of Bair’s final chapter is anything but whimsical. Bair shows that the “inexorable decline” in the supply and quality of fossil fuels coupled with the supply and efficiency limitations of nuclear hydroelectric geothermal solar and other alternatives will force governments to explore “not the technical feasibility” of the solar space station “but the technical economic and political feasibility of constructing it in orbit.”
Bair’s authority in the realm of electric power is beyond question. A Brown University PhD he has spent much of his career at Indiana University where he is currently an emeritus professor of Chemistry. A longtime consultant in the solar power industry Ed Bair is a scientist as well as an engineer/technician. -- Foreward

This beautiful book draws parallels between Eastern dance, mysticism, culture and physics, presenting audiences with a provocative read without any complex mathematics. Explores the history and concepts of physics, including quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

Explores the strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up?

Over the centuries, we have toyed with our fellow creatures such as domesticating and breeding dogs that herd and hunt, housecats that look like tigers, etc. But what happens when we take animal alteration a step further. Science has given us a whole new toolbox for tinkering with life. How are we using it? In this book the author, a journalist explores how biotechnology is shaping the future of our furry and feathered friends. She discovers how we can use cloning to protect endangered species, craft prosthetics to save injured animals, and employ genetic engineering to supply farms with disease-resistant livestock. We also meet sensor-wearing seals, cyborg beetles, a bionic bulldog, and the world's first cloned cat. We follow her encounters with scientists, conservationists, ethicists, and entrepreneurs. So what does biotechnology really mean for the world's wild things? And what do our brave new beasts tell us about ourselves? Here the author highlights both the peril and the promise of our scientific superpowers, taking us on an adventure into a world where our grandest science fiction fantasies are fast becoming reality.
"A report from the frontiers of the scientific campaign to reengineer animals to fulfill human desires"--Dust jacket back.

In these six chapters, Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman introduces the general reader to the following topics: atoms, basic physics, the relationship of physics to other topics, energy, gravitation, and quantum force. With his inimitable wit, Feynman presents each discussion without equations or technical jargon.

The book was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the nature of the universe, but since that time there have been extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring his original text the new knowledge revealed by these many observations, as well as his most recent research, for this expanded edition Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on the fascinating subject of wormholes and time travel, and updated the original chapters as of 1996.

The untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race.

Men first flew into space in 1961, but until The Right Stuff was first published in 1979 few people had a sense of the most engrossing side of that adventure: namely, the perceptions and goals of the astronauts themselves, aloft and during certain remarkable odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner world of the early astronauts, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and their confreres, that Tom Wolfe describes with his extraordinary powers of empathy. He shows us the bidden olympus to which all ambitious combat and test pilots aspired, the top of the pyramid of the right stuff. And we learn the nature of the ineffable pilot's grace without which all else meant nothing. We see the men whose achievements dominated the flying fraternity in the late 1950's as the space age began, men like Chuck Yeager and Joe Walker, pilots of the first rocket planes, most notably the X-1 and the X-15. The selection of the Mercury astronauts in 1959 shook up the fraternity as thoroughly as had Yeager's breaking of the sound barrier twelve years before. Public excitement and concern over the space race with the Soviets immediately elevated the seven astronauts to the uneasy eminence of heroes, long before their first flight. We see the seven men, in the very moment of their idolization by the outside world, struggling to gain the respect of their peers within the flying fraternity, even to the point of altering NASA's original conception of the astronaut's role in keeping with the unspoken prerequisites of the right stuff. - Author web site

The true story of Homer Hickam Jr., a high school student in rural West Virginia, who seemed destined to repeat his father's harsh life in the coal mines, until he and his friends turned their attention to the skies.

Told with Sagan's remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting, Cosmos is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies and the origins of matter, suns and worlds. -- from publisher.

Ever since Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity burst upon the world in 1915 some of the most brilliant minds of our century have sought to decipher the mysteries bequeathed by that theory, a legacy so unthinkable in some respects that even Einstein himself rejected them.
Which of these bizarre phenomena, if any, can really exist in our universe? Black holes, down which anything can fall but from which nothing can return; wormholes, short spacewarps connecting regions of the cosmos; singularities, where space and time are so violently warped that time ceases to exist and space becomes a kind of foam; gravitational waves, which carry symphonic accounts of collisions of black holes billions of years ago; and time machines, for traveling backward and forward in time.

A mind-bending book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes. What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did--and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. This is the story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories with their own sense of reality--effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space.--From publisher description.

A theoretical physicist describes how the current focus on exotic particles, string theory, multiple universes, and other provocative but untested ideas dominates the field of physics and may hinder the progress of science. These speculations dominate the field, attracting the best talent and much of the funding, while creating a climate in which emerging physicists are often penalized for pursuing other avenues. The situation threatens to impede the very progress of science.

A journey to Earth's extremes to unlock the secrets of the universe
Ananthaswamy weaves together stories about the people and places at the heart of today's research in physics, while beautifully explaining the problems that scientists are trying to solve. In so doing, he provides a unique portrait of the universe and our quest to understand it.

Explains how science will shape human destiny and everyone's daily life by the year 2100. Kaku gives a picture of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world's top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs.
Michio Kaku is an American physicist, science communicator, futurologist, and writer of popular-science. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Kenneth Ford's mission is to help us understand the "great ideas" of quantum physics - ideas such as wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle, superposition, and conservation. These fundamental concepts provide the structure for this authoritative yet engaging book for the general reader.

The sun's family of planets become a familiar place in this personal account of the lives of other worlds. With her gift for weaving difficult scientific concepts into a compelling story, Sobel explores the planets' origins and oddities through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history.--From publisher description.

Before becoming the man who introduced us to the wonders of the sea through his beloved television series, Jacques Cousteau was better known as an engineer and the inventor of scuba. He chronicled his early days of underwater adventure in The Silent World—a memoir that was an instant, international bestseller upon its publication in 1954. -- Amazon

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived―a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history. -- Amazon
Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . .

A stunning graphic adaptation of one of the most famous, contested, and important books of all time: "On the Origin of Species." Includes sections about Darwin's pioneering research, the book's initial public reception, his correspondence with other leading scientists, as well as the most recent breakthroughs in evolutionary theory.

Over the last half billion years, there have been five major mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around the cataclysm is us. In this book the author tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. She provides a moving account of the disappearances of various species occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up to Lyell and Darwin, and through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. -- Publisher description.