Showing titles in Physics

Brought to you by Penguin. Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future: The Inventions that will Transform our Lives is a hypothetical journey through the next 100 years of scientific innovation, as told by the scientists who are making it happen. We all wish we could predict the future, but most of us...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of a Field Guide to Lies by David Levitin, read by Dan Piraro. The bestselling author of The Organized Mind explains and debunks statistics in the information age We live in a world of information overload. Facts and figures on...

For a physicist, all the world is information. The universe and its workings are the ebb and flow of information. We are all transient patterns of information, passing on the recipe for our basic forms to future generations using a four-letter digital code called DNA. In this engaging and mind-stretching account, Vlatko Vedral considers some of the deepest questions about the universe and considers the implications of interpreting it in terms of information.

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe.

Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius.

Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality.

In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.

Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic field is real and has its equivalent in science's zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness.

The brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For over a century, a diverse array of researchers have been trying to find a language that can be used to capture the essence of what these neurons do and how they communicate - and how those communications create thoughts, perceptions, and actions. The language they were looking for was mathematics, and we would not be able to understand the brain as we do today without it.

Atomic weaponry is widely understood as a story of American scientific achievement—but scientists working in Britain played a vital role in its development. Including Nobel Prize winners and Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, these scientists have long since been forgotten. But without their expertise, Robert Oppenheimer's research at Los Alamos would never have succeeded. Gareth Williams unearths the true story of the top-secret British atomic program, codenamed "Tube Alloys," established in 1940.

Tim Coulson – Professor of Zoology at Oxford – takes us back to the beginning of everything: the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. From there, he leads us step by step along the path to the most astonishing thing we have yet encountered – the staggering complexity of the modern human mind. Covering physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, the emergence of life, evolution, consciousness and the rise of humankind, yet written to be understood by anyone with a child’s curiosity, this book takes the biggest story of all and tells it simply, grippingly and, above all, entertainingly.

In 1965, the great American physicist Richard Feynman famously proclaimed, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics." Is there any wonder why? Particles that pop in and out of existence... Spooky action at a distance that travels faster than light... Infinite universes and branching realities? In this book, we will break through the confusion and reveal to you the most important ideas of Quantum Physics, told through the amazing true story of just 4 bizarre discoveries.

Are you fascinated by the cosmos and eager to explore the quantum realm without complex equations? Curious about wave-particle duality or how quantum theories impact everyday life, from computing to futuristic tech? Quantum Physics Simplified breaks down mind-bending concepts into engaging, easy-to-follow explanations, making the quantum world accessible to anyone with a curious mind.

The Man Who Mastered Gravity is an intimate profile of Thomas Townsend Brown, a little-known scientist whose unorthodox ideas about electricity and gravity have made him the subject of decades of speculation and intrigue. Brown developed his novel concepts while serving in the U.S. Navy through the 1930s. In the first months of World War II he was abruptly discharged–despite his expertise in radio, radar, and mine sweeping.

This book offers a grounded, honest look at how the principles of quantum physics resonate with the workings of the human mind — not through hype, but through clarity. You won’t find exaggerated promises or vague metaphors here. Instead, you’ll find a precise, thought-provoking approach to consciousness, inner transformation, and the deeper mechanics of experience.

In this special themed collection, Melvyn Bragg is joined by guest experts including Simon Schaffer, John Gribbin, Jim Al-Khalili and Sir Martin Rees to discuss 25 of the key laws, principles and problems of physics. Here are examinations of major concepts including plasma, radiation, matter and antimatter and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as well as discourses on historical theories such as Zeno's paradoxes, the speed of light and relativity. 

When asked to explain Relativity simply, Albert Einstein himself once joked, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's Relativity.” But when most normal people without advanced training attempt to study the subject seriously, they’re quickly weighed down by the mathematics…

This audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson shares the story of a world-renowned physicist who seeks gravity’s true nature and finds wisdom in embracing its force in her life.

From the ancient Greeks to Buddhism, our ability to check reality and recalibrate has fascinated philosophers for thousands of years. Yet it is only recently that we've developed the technology to create a rigorous science of self-awareness, what we call metacognition. Head of the Metacognition Lab at University College London, Stephen Fleming is the world's leading expert in this new field of neuroscience. In Know Thyself, he explains both the vast potential of metacognition and why it is that we still so often get it wrong. 

Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions: What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at ninety percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators.