By Nigel Calder
As a prolific writer, BBC commentator, and journal editor, Nigel Calder has spent an entire life recognizing and explaining the massive discoveries in all branches of technological know-how. In Magic Universe, he attracts on his titanic adventure to supply readers a full of life, far-reaching examine sleek technological know-how in all its glory, laying off gentle at the most modern principles in physics, biology, chemistry, drugs, astronomy, and plenty of different fields. what's really magical approximately Magic Universe is Calder's excellent breadth. Migrating birds, mild sensors within the human eye, black holes, antimatter, buckyballs and nanotubes--with exhilarating sweep, Calder can variety from the strings of a piano to the superstrings of contemporary physics, from Pythagoras's conception of musical pitch to the newest rules approximately atoms and gravity and a ten-dimensional universe--all in a single essay. the good advantage of this wide-ranging style--besides its liveliness and versatility--is that it permits Calder to light up how the trendy sciences intermingle and cross-fertilize each other. certainly, even if discussing astronauts or handedness or dinosaurs, Calder manages to tease out hidden connections among disparate fields of research. what's such a lot wondrous in regards to the "magic universe" is that you can still commence with stellar dirt and end with existence itself. Drawing on interviews with greater than 2 hundred researchers, from graduate scholars to Nobel prize-winners, Magic Universe takes us on a high-spirited journey in the course of the halls of technological know-how, person who will enthrall every body attracted to technology, even if a tender researcher in a high-tech lab or an novice buff sitting within the convenience of an armchair.
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Extra resources for Magic Universe: The Oxford Guide to Modern Science
Example text
As we were discussing plans to meet for lunch, I noticed that he had on a blue baseball cap. Later that day as I walked to lunch, I spotted an unrecognizable figure standing in front of the cafeteria. All that I could tell about the person was that he was wearing a blue cap. From all this information, I know with some confidence that it is my friend waiting for me (I am five minutes late for our lunch meeting). The point is simply that the use of logic to draw conclusions in science is nothing fundamentally new or magical.
The difference seems to be that the sun is shining. These statements may seem too obvious to be worth mentioning. You may be beginning to wonder about the quality of my science training, that I am so fascinated at discovering such obvious connections. Of course we know that you can’t see in the dark! But in fact we have observed something quite remarkable that we normally take for granted. When we say that we need light in order to see, we haven’t really explained anything, because we don’t even know what light is.
35 of my society in the future. I will have a better understanding of the past, of how we came to be where we are today, and so may have a better view of where we should be going in the future. This suggests that we should move the feeling of wanting significance for things up to the level of the society. Here it may be easier to see why a view for the long term is important. We have made great progress in gaining for ourselves the material freedom we have today. We can, for example, hop in a car and drive nearly anywhere we wish to go.