The solar system most of us grew up with included nineplanets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outeredge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of alifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. Butinstead of its resulting in one more planet being added to oursolar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy thatriled the usually sedate world of astronomy and launched him intothe public eye. The debate culminated in the demotion of Pluto fromreal planet to the newly coined category of “dwarf” planet.Suddenly Brown was receiving hate mail from schoolchildren andbeing bombarded by TV reporters—all because of the discovery he hadspent years searching for and a lifetime dreaming about. Filled with both humor and drama, How I Killed Pluto and Why ItHad It Coming is Mike Brown’s engaging first-person account of themost tumultuous year in modern astronomy—which he inadvertentlycaused. As it guides readers through important scientifi
Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spendtwenty years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos studyingnatural selection. They recognize each individual bird on theisland, when there are four hundred at the time of the author'svisit, or when there are over a thousand. They have observed abouttwenty generations of finches -- continuously. Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin'sfinches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
Tile dynamics underlying tile major problems of ourtime--,cancer,crime, pollution, nuclear powej', inflation, theenergy shortage are alltile same. We have reach~d.a time ofdramatic and potentiallydangerous change, a turning point for theplanet as a whole. We need a new vision of reality, one that allowstile forces transforming our world to flow together as a positivemovement for social change. Now (listinguished scientist FritjofCapra gives us that vision, a holisticpara(ligm of science andspirit.
Starred Review。 What Aczel did for mathematician Fermat（Fermat’s Last Theorem）he now does for Descartes in this splendidstudy about the French philosopher and mathematician （1596–1650）most famous for his paradigm-smashing declaration， “I think;therefore， I am。” Part historical sketch， part biography and partdetective story， Aczel’s chronicle of Descartes’s hidden workhinges on his lost secret notebook。 Of 16 pages of codedmanu*， one and a half were copied in 1676 by fellowphilosopher and mathematician Leibniz。 For him， Descartes’sin*ion of the cryptic letters“GFRC” immediately revealed hisassociation with the occult fraternity of the Rosicrucians—Leibnizwas also a member。 The notebook also revealed to Leibniz adiscovery made by Descartes that would have transformedmathematics。 As Aczel so deftly demonstrates， Descartes'smathematical theories were paths to an understanding the order andmystery of the cosmos， and he kept the notebook hidden because itcont
Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-relatedfevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclearwinter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a newkilling field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of massdestruction--by doctors who had committed themselves to creating abiological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story ofRussia's darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold Warsecret. No one knows more about Russia's astounding experiments withbiowarfare than Ken Alibek. Now the mastermind behind Russia's germwarfare effort reveals two decades of shocking breakthroughs...howMoscow's leading scientists actually reengineered hazardousmicrobes to make them even more virulent...the secrets behind thediscovery of an invisible, untraceable new class of biologicalagents just right for use in political assassinations...thestartling story behind Russia's attempt to turn a sample of theAIDS virus into the ultimate bioweapon. And in a chilling
A riveting tale of the battle over genetically engineeredfoods, and an inside look at a biotech food empire. Ultimately astory of idealism, and conflicting dreams about the shape of abetter world. Softcover.
