Showing titles in Physics

For going on two decades, Scientific American’s “Ask the Experts” column has been answering reader questions on all fields of science. We’ve taken your questions from the basic to the esoteric and reached out to top scientists, professors, and researchers to find out why the sky is blue or whether we really only use 10 percent of our brains. Now, we’ve combed through our archives and have compiled some of the most interesting questions (and answers) into a series of books. 

From Aristotle's Physics to quantum teleportation, learn about the scientific pursuit of instantaneous connections in this insightful examination of our world. For millennia, scientists have puzzled over a simple question: Does the universe have a speed limit? If not, some effects could happen...

In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.

In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.  

Exploring many of the most significant concepts in physics, Professor Kouzes explains each in a very straightforward and approachable manner. He begins by examining the history of physics - the "knowledge of nature" - as a science which encompasses the study of matter and all of the phenomena that are observed in our universe. He also explores the origins of physics, tracing it back to the ancient world.

The authoritative story of the headline-making discovery of gravitational waves—by an eminent theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer. From the author of How the Universe Got Its Spots and A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, the epic story of the scientific campaign to record the...

A BEST BOOK OF 2023 FOR THE TELEGRAPH, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW SCIENTIST AND STYLIST A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST READ 2023 You may be familiar with the idea of our body’s biome – the bacterial fauna that populates our gut and can so profoundly affect our health. In We Are Electric we cross the...

By the star physicist and author of multiple #1 Sunday Times bestsellers, a major and definitive narrative work on black holes and how they can help us understand the universe. At the heart of our galaxy lies a monster so deadly it can bend space, throwing vast jets of radiation millions of...

This book begins with a simple physical law and follows it far beyond its usual domain. Ohm’s law, often taught as a practical rule of electrical engineering, is here treated as a structural statement about reality itself. Resistance is not presented as an obstacle to be eliminated, but as the...

For millennia, the North Star has stood as humanity’s ultimate emblem of constancy—the unmoving nail around which the night turns, guiding ancient caravans, ocean-going caravel fleets, and fugitives walking toward freedom. Yet almost every element of that legendary reputation collapses under...

Everything in the world runs one way. Coffee cools, glass shatters, memory reaches backward and never forward. In the last decades of the nineteenth century one Viennese physicist tried to explain that one-way world using nothing but particles obeying laws that work perfectly well in reverse. He...

By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all? Here prominent cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities...

Brought to you by Penguin. What is the best way to age well and live longer? For decades, millions of people have tried to crack the secret of time and how to withstand it. The question affects the way we eat, treatments we invest in, and expensive packages sold by online gurus offering magical...

 Block by Block offers an original perspective on thermodynamic science and history based on the three approaches of a practicing engineer, academician, and historian. The book synthesizes and gathers into one accessible volume a strategic range of foundational topics involving the atomic theory, energy, entropy, and the laws of thermodynamics. 

A Momentous Change Is Upon Us In his groundbreaking book, The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton outlined the evidence that our thoughts are just as important as our genes in controlling our health and evolution. As the emerging science of epigenetics shows, our beliefs and choices can control...

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? This audiobook introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the size of the Earth while their caliphs conquered much of it and more.

In June of 1916, Albert Einstein published his ambitious paper proposing the existence of gravitational waves. In 2016, Einstein's 100-year-old theory was proven correct when scientists detected ripples in the fabric of space. Einstein and Relativity: A Conversation by Paul Rudd and Brian Greene celebrates this achievement, with Greene and Rudd sitting down to talk about string theory, relativity, and the discovery of gravitational waves.

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY PRIZE 2016 'Dazzling' Literary Review 'Brilliant' Sunday Express 'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist 'A superb biography' The Economist 'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday Alexander von...

From the discovery of entirely new kinds of galaxies to a window into cosmic ‘prehistory’, Bothwell shows us the Universe as we’ve never seen it before – literally. Since the dawn of our species, people all over the world have gazed in awe at the night sky. But for all the beauty and...

At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.