Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe

Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0262542862
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
How patterns--from diagrams of spacetime to particle trails revealed by supercolliders--offer clues to the fundamental workings of the physical world. Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and consequence. In Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe, Brian Clegg explores the phenomena that make up the very fabric of our world by examining ten essential sequenced systems. From diagrams that show the deep relationships between space and time to the quantum behaviors that rule the way that matter and light interact, Clegg shows how these patterns provide a unique view of the physical world and its fundamental workings. Guiding readers on a tour of our world and the universe beyond, Clegg describes the cosmic microwave background, sometimes called the "echo of the big bang," and how it offers clues to the universe's beginnings; the diagrams that illustrate Einstein's revelation of the intertwined nature of space and time; the particle trail patterns revealed by the Large Hadron Collider and other accelerators; and the simple-looking patterns that predict quantum behavior (and decorated Richard Feynman's van). Clegg explains how the periodic table reflects the underlying pattern of the configuration of atoms, discusses the power of the number line, demonstrates the explanatory uses of tree diagrams, and more.

Probable Impossibilities

Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593081323
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
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.

Ten Days in Physics that Shook the World

Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785787489
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
The breakthroughs that have had the most transformative practical impacts, from thermodynamics to the Internet. Physics informs our understanding of how the world works – but more than that, key breakthroughs in physics have transformed everyday life. We journey back to ten separate days in history to understand how particular breakthroughs were achieved, meet the individuals responsible and see how each breakthrough has influenced our lives. It is a unique selection. Focusing on practical impact means there is no room for Stephen Hawking's work on black holes, or the discovery of the Higgs boson. Instead we have the relatively little-known Rudolf Clausius (thermodynamics) and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (superconductivity), while Albert Einstein is included not for his theories of relativity but for the short paper that gave us E=mc2 (nuclear fission). Later chapters feature transistors, LEDs and the Internet.

How the Universe Got Its Spots

Author: Janna Levin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691232288
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Is the universe infinite, or is it just really big? Does nature abhor infinity? In startling and beautiful prose, Janna Levin's diary of unsent letters to her mother describes what we know about the shape and extent of the universe, about its beginning and its end. She grants the uninitiated access to the astounding findings of contemporary theoretical physics and makes tangible the contours of space and time—those very real curves along which apples fall and planets orbit. Levin guides the reader through the observations and thought-experiments that have enabled physicists to begin charting the universe. She introduces the cosmic archaeology that makes sense of the pattern of hot spots left over from the big bang, a pursuit on the verge of discovering the shape of space itself. And she explains the topology and the geometry of the universe now coming into focus—a strange map of space full of black holes, chaotic flows, time warps, and invisible strings. Levin advances the controversial idea that this map is edgeless but finite—that the universe is huge but not unending—a radical revelation that would provide the ultimate twist to the Copernican revolution by locating our precise position in the cosmos. As she recounts our increasingly rewarding attempt to know the universe, Levin tells her personal story as a scientist isolated by her growing knowledge. This book is her remarkable effort to reach across the distance of that knowledge and share what she knows with family and friends—and with us. Highly personal and utterly original, this physicist’s diary is a breathtaking contemplation of our deep connection with the universe and our aspirations to comprehend it.

A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe

Author: Michael S. Schneider
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062043161
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

Book Description
Discover how mathematical sequences abound in our natural world in this definitive exploration of the geography of the cosmos You need not be a philosopher or a botanist, and certainly not a mathematician, to enjoy the bounty of the world around us. But is there some sort of order, a pattern, to the things that we see in the sky, on the ground, at the beach? In A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael Schneider, an education writer and computer consultant, combines science, philosophy, art, and common sense to reaffirm what the ancients observed: that a consistent language of geometric design underpins every level of the universe, from atoms to galaxies, cucumbers to cathedrals. Schneider also discusses numerical and geometric symbolism through the ages, and concepts such as periodic renewal and resonance. This book is an education in the world and everything we can't see within it. Contains numerous b&w photos and illustrations.

The Universe Inside You

Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Icon Books Limited
ISBN: 9781848315044
Category : Human anatomy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Fascinating facts and mind-boggling science of the human body. Built from the debris of exploding stars that floated through space for billions of years, and controlled by a brain with more possible connections than there are atoms in the universe, the human body is the most incredible thing in existence.

A Quick History of the Universe

Author: Clive Gifford
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
ISBN: 0711258376
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
A Quick History of the Universe takes a whistlestop tour through - funnily enough - the history of the universe, from the Big Bang to right now. The narrative text and cartoons cover all you need to know about space, forces and physics.

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe

Author: Sean Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593186583
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Most appealing... technical accuracy and lightness of tone... Impeccable.”—Wall Street Journal “A porthole into another world.”—Scientific American “Brings science dissemination to a new level.”—Science The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations that often look like gobbledygook. Sean Carroll shows that they are really like meaningful poems that can help us fly over sierras to discover a miraculous multidimensional landscape alive with radiant giants, warped space-time, and bewilderingly powerful forces. High school calculus is itself a centuries-old marvel as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa. And it may come as a surprise the extent to which all our most cutting-edge ideas about black holes are built on the math calculus enables. No one else could so smoothly guide readers toward grasping the very equation Einstein used to describe his theory of general relativity. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.

Ten Billion Tomorrows

Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 125005785X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
An exciting new book about real-life technology derived from science fiction and its impact on the world.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785785699
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Book Description
'Clear and compact ... It's hard to fault as a brief, easily digestible introduction to some of the biggest questions in the Universe' Giles Sparrow, BBC Four's The Sky at Night , Best astronomy and space books of 2019: 5/5 All the matter and light we can see in the universe makes up a trivial 5 per cent of everything. The rest is hidden. This could be the biggest puzzle that science has ever faced. Since the 1970s, astronomers have been aware that galaxies have far too little matter in them to account for the way they spin around: they should fly apart, but something concealed holds them together. That 'something' is dark matter - invisible material in five times the quantity of the familiar stuff of stars and planets. By the 1990s we also knew that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. Something, named dark energy, is pushing it to expand faster and faster. Across the universe, this requires enough energy that the equivalent mass would be nearly fourteen times greater than all the visible material in existence. Brian Clegg explains this major conundrum in modern science and looks at how scientists are beginning to find solutions to it.