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If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.

The solar system most of us grew up with included nine planets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outer edge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of its resulting in one more planet being added to our solar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy that riled the usually sedate world of astronomy and launched him into the public eye.

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.

From the 18th century vicar who was the first to look up at the night's sky and suggest there was something very dark and extraordinarily heavy that was moving the stars, to the first actual photograph of a black hole, 250 years later, Jonas Enander has travelled the world, visited telescopes and observatories, interviewed world-leading space researchers, and delved deep into the archives to investigate how our relationship with black holes has changed over time.

To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation.

Ciencia, mujeres y divulgación científica constituyen el entramado de este texto. Algunas de ellas son: Agnódice de Atenas, Isabella Cortese, Martine de Bertereau, Marie Meurdrac, María Winckelmann Kirch y María Gaetana Agnesi. La autora las reconduce al lugar al que pertenecen, la ciencia, a la que deberíamos todos tener acceso si es que queremos realmente entendernos y entender el mundo que nos rodea.

There are few visible markers of the accomplishments of public health. When epidemiologists do their jobs, nothing happens. An outbreak does not grow into an epidemic. A child does not go hungry. A would-be smoker never lights up. In this fascinating window into the secret life of public health, Caitlin Rivers weaves together stories of triumph and tragedy to show that by making sure things don't happen, she and legions of scientists, practitioners, and policymakers change the course of history.

In this gripping sequel to Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, 19th-century iconoclast Ignatius Donnelly sets his sights on Earth’s forgotten disasters. Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel argues that a comet struck the Earth thousands of years ago, unleashing firestorms, floods, and a dark age that buried civilizations in myth and rubble.

The Contrarians is a critical history of the scientific community, past and present, as Matt Kaplan shows how scientific breakthroughs often occur in spite of, rather than because of, the scientific community. Alternating between the past and the present, the book is anchored by the story of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who helped discover germ theory by realizing Puerperal fever—a devastating infection that most often strikes women who have recently given birth—was spread by doctors not washing their hands.

Anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-reason beliefs seem to be triumphing over common sense today. How did we get here? Sick brings a huge missing piece to this puzzle—the experience of actually being ill. History tells us about human life and death, but there’s too often a blank spot in those stories. What did it feel like to be a woman or man struggling with illness in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, in the seventeenth century, or in 1920? And how did that shape our thoughts and convictions?

“How many creatures walking on this earth / Have their first being in another form?” the Roman poet Ovid asked two thousand years ago. He could not have known the full extent of the truth: today, biologists estimate a stunning three-quarters of all animal species on Earth undergo some form of metamorphosis. But why do tadpoles transform into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies, elvers into eels, immortal jellyfish from sea sprigs to medusae and back again, growing younger and younger in frigid ocean depths?

Unlock the secrets of tomorrow with The Precision Prognosticator: Navigating the Path to Accurate Future Prediction. This incredible audiobook will transform your understanding of the future, sharpen your mind, and empower you to make life-changing decisions. Dive into a journey of innovation, insight, and inspiration that will elevate your life to new heights! The Precision Prognosticator is an extraordinary exploration of forecasting’s art & science.

Quantum theory is at the heart of modern physics, but how does it actually work? NASA scientist and communicator Sten Odenwald demystifies the subject and makes this crucial topic accessible to everyone. Featuring topics such as Schrodinger's cat, the wave-particle duality and the newly emerging theories of quantum gravity, as well as the personalities behind the science, such as Max Planck, Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Richard Feynman and many more, Knowledge in a Nutshell: Quantum Physics provides an essential introduction to cutting edge science.

Today it's routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, or watch a movie or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous. In Flashes of Brilliance, New York Times photo editor Anika Burgess engagingly blends art, science, and social history to reveal the most dramatic developments in photography from its birth in the 1830s to the early twentieth century.

What has quantum physics taught us about consciousness and the nature of reality? Are we living in a simulation? In order for matter to exist, does it need to be observed? Join Dr. Trevor Lohman as he grapples with these questions and others, plunging listeners into a sea of quantum strangeness while simultaneously helping them navigate these incredibly choppy waters.

In 1665, an infectious disease swept through the British capital and claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. It would take another two hundred years for the cause of the Great Plague of London to be confirmed: a powerful bacterium called Yersinia pestis. In those centuries, our understanding of diseases was transformed. In So Very Small, Thomas Levenson reveals how human hubris led us to overestimate our own ability and underestimate the threat that microorganisms truly pose.

Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us. Periodic Tales isa dazzling tour through history and literature, science and art, in which you’ll meet iron that rains from the heavens and neon as it lights its way to vice.

Jimena Canales desgrana en este libro uno de los aspectos más desconocidos y fascinantes de la historia de la ciencia. Porque son estos siervos imaginarios y ocultos los que han ayudado a desvelar los secretos de la entropía, la herencia, la relatividad, la mecánica cuántica y otras maravillas científicas, y son ellos los que siguen inspirando hoy los avances en los ámbitos de la informática, la física y la inteligencia artificial.

What began as a utopian environment, where mice had sumptuous accommodations, had all the food and water they could want, and were free from disease and predators, turned into a mouse hell. Science writer and animal behaviorist Lee Alan Dugatkin introduces listeners to the work of rodent researcher John Bumpass Calhoun. Dugatkin shows how an ecologist-turned-psychologist-turned-futurist became a science rock star embedded in the culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

O istorie ingenioasa si antrenanta a universului, Pamintului, vietii si omului, o poveste care merge de la Big Bang, cind nu eram nimic, pina la aparitia civilizatiei si la noi, cei de astazi. Bill Bryson pleaca de la propria experienta de elev care, intrigat de o imagine a Pamintului in sectiune, citeste manualul de stiinte ca sa gaseasca aici un amestec de lucruri de neinteles – mai putin raspunsurile la ceea ce ii stirnise curiozitatea, inclusiv cum si de unde stim toate aceste lucruri.