Engineering Physics

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change.

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this "beautiful question". With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek's groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature.

Some see dust as dull stuff, useless at best, and sneeze-inducing at worst. But in the hands of writer Hannah Holmes, dust becomes a dazzling and mysterious force. As Holmes says, dust is a messenger, and air is its medium. And by the end of this fascinating journey through The Secret Life of Dust, we cannot help but agree.

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.

Asked to name a great physicist, most people would mention Newton or Einstein, Feynman or Hawking. But ask a physicist and there’s no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list. Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive color. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein’s special relativity to modern electronics.

From adrenaline to dopamine, most of us are familiar with the chemicals that control us. They are the hormones and neurotransmitters that our brains run on, and Overloaded looks at the role they play in every aspect of our lives, from what we remember, how we make decisions and who we love to basic survival drives such as hunger, fear and sleep.

Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can't affect the other. Quantum entanglement rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying?

How big is the universe? How many numbers are there? And is infinity + 1 is the same as 1 + infinity? Such questions occur to young children and our greatest minds. And they are all the same question: What is infinity? In Beyond Infinity, Eugenia Cheng takes us on a staggering journey from elemental math to its loftiest abstractions. Along the way, she considers how to use a chessboard to plan a worldwide dinner party, how to make a chicken-sandwich sandwich, and how to create infinite cookies from a finite ball of dough.

What's the nature of reality? Does the universe ever end? What is time, and does it even exist? These are the biggest imagination-stretching, brain-staggering questions in the universe - and here are their fascinating answers. From quantum weirdness to freaky cosmology (like white holes - which spew out matter instead of sucking it in), This Book Will Blow Your Mind takes you on an epic journey to the furthest extremes of science, to the things you never thought possible.

From quarks to computing, this fascinating introduction covers every element of the quantum world in clear and accessible language. Drawing on a wealth of expertise to explain just what a fascinating field quantum physics is, Rae points out that it is not simply a maze of technical jargon and philosophical ideas, but a reality which affects our daily lives.

Number theory is the branch of mathematics that is primarily concerned with the counting numbers. Of particular importance are the prime numbers, the "building blocks" of our number system. The subject is an old one, dating back over two millennia to the ancient Greeks, and for many years has been studied for its intrinsic beauty and elegance, not least because several of its challenges are so easy to state that everyone can understand them, and yet no one has ever been able to resolve them. But number theory has also recently become of great practical importance.

This book is about science and how it works. It is about what it means for a paradigm to shift and what it really takes to shift it. And it is about the strange and unusual world of quantum physics and what it tells us about who we are. At the start of the 20th Century, a dramatic revolution in science occurred. Over the course of a few decades our most fundamental notions of time, space and consciousness were all being called into question. In undeniable ways, it became clear that the nature of reality is intimately interwoven with our experience of it.

End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable - and inevitable - end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race.

Think you could be a theoretical physicist, but you need to brush up on your knowledge of relativity first? Want to carry a book on the subway that will make your fellow passengers think you’re totally sophisticated? Great! Then Quantum Physics for Beginners is the book for you.

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called "the Pope" by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics.

In 1927, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein began a debate about the interpretation and meaning of the new quantum theory. This would become one of the most famous debates in the history of science. What (if any) limits should we place on our expectations for what science can tell us about physical reality? As Quantum Drama reveals, science owes a large debt to those who kept the discussions going before definitive experimental inquiries became possible. Although experiment moved the Bohr-Einstein debate to a new level, it has by no means removed or resolved the fundamental question.

Navigating poverty, violence, and instability, a young James Plummer had two guiding stars - a genius IQ and a love of science. But a bookish nerd is a soft target, and James faced years of bullying and abuse. As he struggled to survive his childhood in some of the country’s toughest urban neighborhoods in New Orleans, Houston, and LA, and later in the equally poor backwoods of Mississippi, he adopted the persona of “gangsta nerd” - dealing weed in juke joints while winning state science fairs with computer programs that model Einstein’s theory of relativity.

In this Very Short Introduction, William Lowrie describes the internal and external processes that affect the planet, as well as the principles and methods of geophysics used to investigate them. From analyses of Earth's deepest interior to measurements made from Earth-orbiting satellites, Lowrie shows how geophysical exploration is vitally important in the search for mineral resources and emphasizes our need to understand the history of our planet and the processes that govern its continuing evolution.

One of the most influential physicists of our time, Stephen Hawking touched the lives of millions. Recalling his nearly two decades as Hawking’s collaborator and friends, Leonard Mlodinow brings this complex man into focus in a unique and deeply personal portrayal. We meet Hawking the genius, who pours his mind into uncovering the mysteries of the universe - ultimately formulating a pathbreaking theory of black holes that reignites the discipline of cosmology and paves the way for physicists to investigate the origins of the universe in completely new ways.

You are reading the word now right now. But what does that mean? What makes the ephemeral moment "now" so special? Its enigmatic character has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. Einstein showed that the flow of time is affected by both velocity and gravity, yet he despaired at his failure to explain the meaning of now. Equally puzzling: Why does time flow? Some physicists have given up trying to understand and call the flow of time an illusion.