Today we know what no previous generation knew: the history of the universe and of the unfolding of life on Earth. Through the astonishing combined achievements of natural scientists worldwide, we ...now have a detailed account of how galaxies and stars, planets and living organisms, human beings and human consciousness came to be. And yet . . . we thirst for answers to questions that have haunted humanity from the very beginning. What is our place in the 14-billion-year history of the universe? What roles do we play in Earth's history? How do we connect with the intricate web of life on Earth?
InJourney of the UniverseBrian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker tell the epic story of the universe from an inspired new perspective, weaving the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples. The authors explore cosmic evolution as a profoundly wondrous process based on creativity, connection, and interdependence, and they envision an unprecedented opportunity for the world's people to address the daunting ecological and social challenges of our times.
Journey of the Universetransforms how we understand our origins and envision our future. Though a little book, it tells a big story-one that inspires hope for a way in which Earth and its human civilizations could flourish together.
This book is part of a larger project that includes a documentary film, an educational DVD series, and a website. The film and the DVD series will be released in 2011. For more information, please consult the website, journeyoftheuniverse.org.
What do a bumble bee and a 747 jet have in common? It's not a trick question. The fact is they have quite a lot in common. They both have wings. They both fly. And they're both ideally suited to it. ...They just do it differently.Why Don't Jumbo Jets Flap Their Wings? offers a fascinating explanation of how nature and human engineers each arrived at powered flight. What emerges is a highly readable account of two very different approaches to solving the same fundamental problems of moving through the air, including lift, thrust, turning, and landing. The book traces the slow and deliberate evolutionary process of animal flight-in birds, bats, and insects-over millions of years and compares it to the directed efforts of human beings to create the aircraft over the course of a single century.Among the many questions the book answers:Why are wings necessary for flight?How do different wings fly differently?When did flight evolve in animals?What vision, knowledge, and technology was needed before humans could learn to fly?Why are animals and aircrafts perfectly suited to the kind of flying they do?David E. Alexander first describes the basic properties of wings before launching into the diverse challenges of flight and the concepts of flight aerodynamics and control to present an integrated view that shows both why birds have historically had little influence on aeronautical engineering and exciting new areas of technology where engineers are successfully borrowing ideas from animals.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The open-access edition of this text was made possible by a ...Philip Leverhulme Prize from The Leverhulme Trust. Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Where does a password end and an identity begin? A person might be more than his chosen ten-character combination, but does a bank know that? Or an email provider? What’s an ‘identity theft’ in the digital age if not the unauthorized use of a password? In untangling the histories, cultural contexts and philosophies of the password, Martin Paul Eve explores how ‘what we know’ became ‘who we are’, revealing how the modern notion of identity has been shaped by the password. Ranging from ancient Rome and the ‘watchwords’ of military encampments, through the three-factor authentication systems of Harry Potter and up to the biometric scanner in the iPhone, Password makes a timely and important contribution to our understanding of the words, phrases and special characters that determine our belonging and, often, our being. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
In an age of pandemics the relationship between the health of the city and good sanitation has never been more important. Waste and the City is a call to action on one of modern urban life 39 most ...neglected issues: sanitation infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the devastating consequences of unequal access to sanitation in cities across the globe. At this critical moment in global public health, Colin McFarlane makes the urgent case for Sanitation for All. The book outlines the worldwide sanitation crisis and offers a vision for a renewed, equitable investment in sanitation that democratises and socialises the modern city. Adopting Henri Lefebvre 39 concept of the right to the city 39, it uses the notion of 39 citylife 39 to reframe the discourse on sanitation from a narrowly-defined policy discussion to a question of democratic right to public life and health. In doing so, the book shows that sanitation is an urbanizing force whose importance extends beyond hygiene to the very foundation of urban social life.
Fuel: An Ecocritical History is the first book to chart our changing attitudes to fuel and energy through the literature and culture of the modern era, focusing on the 18th-century to the present. ...Reading a wide range of writers from Blake, Austen and Dickens to Upton Sinclair and Edward Abbey, Heidi Scott explores how our move from a pre-industrial reliance on biomass and elemental energy sources to our current dependence on the fossil fuels of coal, oil and natural gas have fundamentally shaped human identity and culture. The book’s Anthropocene perspective reshapes our view of energy history and climate change, and Fuel looks forward to ways in which we can reimagine our culture away from the fossil fuel paradigm towards a more sustainable energy future driven by renewable, elemental energy.
In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating tour through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human ...thinking can never be emulated by a machine.
Fly me to the moon Belbruno, Edward
2013., 20130912, 2013, 2007, 2007-01-01
eBook
When a leaf falls on a windy day, it drifts and tumbles, tossed every which way on the breeze. This is chaos in action. InFly Me to the Moon, Edward Belbruno shows how to harness the same principle ...for low-fuel space travel--or, as he puts it, "surfing the gravitational field."
Belbruno devised one of the most exciting concepts now being used in space flight, that of swinging through the cosmos on the subtle fluctuations of the planets' gravitational pulls. His idea was met with skepticism until 1991, when he used it to get a stray Japanese satellite back on course to the Moon. The successful rescue represented the first application of chaos to space travel and ushered in an emerging new field.
Part memoir, part scientific adventure story,Fly Me to the Moongives a gripping insider's account of that mission and of Belbruno's personal struggles with the science establishment. Along the way, Belbruno introduces readers to recent breathtaking advances in American space exploration. He discusses ways to capture and redirect asteroids; presents new research on the origin of the Moon; weighs in on discoveries like 2003 UB313 (now named Eris), a dwarf planet detected in the far outer reaches of our solar system--and much more.
Grounded in Belbruno's own rigorous theoretical research but written for a general audience,Fly Me to the Moonis for anybody who has ever felt moved by the spirit of discovery.
A roboticist imagines life with robots that sell us products, drive our cars, even allow us to assume new physical form, and more. With robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material ...and part digital. The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking, talking androids that are indistinguishable from people. Future robots will have superhuman abilities in both the physical and digital realms. They will be embedded in our physical spaces, with the ability to go where we cannot, and will have minds of their own, thanks to artificial intelligence. In Robot Futures , the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhsh considers how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as it incorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings. Nourbakhsh imagines a future that includes adbots offering interactive custom messaging; robotic flying toys that operate by means of “gaze tracking”; robot-enabled multimodal, multicontinental telepresence; and even a way that nanorobots could allow us to assume different physical forms. Nourbakhsh examines the underlying technology and the social consequences of each scenario. He also offers a counter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps us understand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.
Down to Earth Parks, Lisa; Schwoch, James
2012, 20120613, 2012-06-30
eBook
Down to Earthpresents the first comprehensive overview of the geopolitical maneuvers, financial investments, technological innovations, and ideological struggles that take place behind the scenes of ...the satellite industry. Satellite projects that have not received extensive coverage-microsatellites in China, WorldSpace in South Africa, SiriusXM, the failures of USA 193 and Cosmos 954, and Iridium-are explored. This collection takes readers on a voyage through a truly global industry, from the sites where satellites are launched to the corporate clean rooms where they are designed, and along the orbits and paths that satellites traverse. Combining a practical introduction to the mechanics of the satellite industry, a history of how its practices and technologies have evolved, and a sophisticated theoretical analysis of satellite cultures,Down to Earthopens up a new space for global media studies.
Nearly all major planets and moons in our Solar System have been visited by spacecraft and the data they have returned has revealed the incredible diversity of planetary surfaces. Featuring a wealth ...of images, this textbook explores the geological evolution of the planets and moons. Introductory chapters discuss how information gathered from spacecraft is used to unravel the geological complexities of our Solar System. Subsequent chapters focus on current understandings of planetary systems. The textbook shows how planetary images and remote sensing data are analyzed through the application of fundamental geological principles. It draws on results from spacecraft sent throughout the Solar System by NASA and other space agencies. Aimed at undergraduate students in planetary geology, geoscience, astronomy and solar system science, it highlights the differences and similarities of the surfaces at a level that can be readily understood by non-specialists.
