Engineering Physics

Cuando Newton formuló la ley de la gravedad, unificó las reglas que rigen los cielos y la Tierra. Hoy el mayor desafío de la física es encontrar una síntesis de las dos grandes teorías, basadas en principios matemáticos diferentes: la de la relatividad y la cuántica. Combinarlas sería el mayor logro de la ciencia, una profunda fusión de todas las fuerzas de la naturaleza en una hermosa y magnífica ecuación que nos permitiría comprender los misterios más profundos del universo.

We all know that numbers go on forever, that you could spend your life counting and never reach the end of the line, so there can’t be such a thing as a "biggest number". Or can there? To find out, David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee embark on an epic quest, revealing the answers to questions like: are there more grains of sand on Earth or stars in the universe? Is there enough paper on Earth to write out the digits of a googolplex? And what is a googolplex? Then things get serious.

Magnetic Current is a short pamphlet by eccentric sculptor and writer Edward Leedskalnin. Detailing his many experiments with magnets, this work posits that it is not metal itself that is magnetic. Rather, tiny individual magnet particles that circulate in and around the metal give it its pull.

The Superluminal Universe reveals, for the first time in English, the incredible insights of French quantum physicist Professor Regis Dutheil. Thanks to the development of particle accelerators, physicists are now able to propel particles (tachyons) at a speed close to that of light (300,000 km per second). At these extreme speeds, the laws that govern our universe no longer apply. Professor Dutheil's work has shown that the theory of relativity is not incompatible with that of tachyons, provided that we allow for the possibility of a double reality.

In this Very Short Introduction, John Heilbron draws on sources never before presented in English to cover the life and work of one of the most creative physicists of the 20th century. In addition to his role as a scientist, Heilbron considers Bohr as a statesman and Danish cultural icon, who built scientific institutions and pushed for the extension of international cooperation in science to all nation states. As a humanist he was concerned with the cultivation of all sides of the individual, and with the complementary contributions of all peoples to the sum of human culture.

What do you get if you put a comedian, a scientist and an internet expert in a room together? The answer is Great Unanswered Questions, a panel game in which resident funnyman Colin Murphy teams up with brainiac Dr David Booth and computer geek Matthew Collins to tackle ludicrous questions and provide the correct (or at least the funniest) answers.

In Zoom, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an informative and entertaining style and a knack for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone.

Time is the most commonly used noun in the English language; it's always on our minds, and it advances through every living moment. But what is time exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we're bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly? In this witty and meditative exploration, award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick takes listeners on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do.

In Earth-Shattering, astronomy writer Bob Berman guides us through an epic, all-inclusive investigation into these instances of violence both mammoth and microscopic. From the sudden creation of dazzling "new stars" to the furiously explosive birth of our moon, from the uncomfortable truth about ultra-high-energy cosmic rays bombarding us to the incredible ways in which humanity has harnessed cataclysmic energy for its gain, Berman masterfully synthesizes some of our worst fears into an astonishing portrait of the universe.

Mind Openers 2.0 is the second installment in a two-part set. It takes a fresh look at relativity, cosmology, and quantum theory by imagining a “sandbox universe”, in which space and time are treated as tangible and visualizable phenomena. In addition to providing an intuitive feel for the physics, the model makes a number of acutely unexpected predictions. The author is a geophysicist (MSc, fellow of geoscientists, Canada) and educator, who specializes in translating scientific material for the non-expert.

Can we ever truly comprehend the universe before we fully understand consciousness and the wonders, and limits, of the mind? Ulf Danielsson, an acclaimed theoretical physicist who has dedicated his career to probing the deepest mysteries of nature, thinks not. As he dismantles the arguments of esteemed mathematicians and scientists, who would substitute their mathematical models for reality and equate the mind to a computer, he makes a lucid and passionate case that it is nature, full of beauty and meaning, which must compel us.

The Physics of Life argues that the evolution phenomenon is much broader and older than the evolutionary designs that constitute the biosphere, empowering listeners with a new view of the globe and the future, revealing that the urge to have better ideas has the same physical effect as the urge to have better laws and better government. This is evolution explained loudly but also elegantly, forging a path that flows sustainability.

Der Siegeszug der klassischen Physik hat die Welt entzaubert. Die Realität, so die gängige Auffassung, wird von Naturgesetzen geregelt, die letztlich alles erklären können. Doch dieses Bild ist falsch. Viele grundlegende Fragen sind noch immer unbeantwortet. Und die neuesten Erkenntnisse der Quantentheorie weisen sogar darauf hin, dass es eine Realität jenseits von unserer Vorstellung von Raum und Zeit gibt.

The product of research around the globe and interviews with dozens of prominent scientists, God's Equation tells us it is almost as though Einstein were God's mouthpiece, revealing the most fundamental truths about our larger environment, truths scientists are just now confirming.

Einstein’s Shadow follows a team of elite scientists on a historic mission to take the first picture of a black hole, putting Einstein’s theory of relativity to its ultimate test and helping to answer our deepest questions about space, time, the origins of the universe, and the nature of reality.

Beginning with a detailed discussion of the role of mathematics and experimentation in validating generalizations in physics-looking closely at the reasoning of scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier, and Maxwell-Harriman skillfully argues that the inductive method used in philosophy is in principle indistinguishable from the method used in physics.

The marvelous complexity of the universe emerges from several deep laws and a handful of fundamental constants that fix its shape, scale, and destiny. Where did these laws and these constants come from? And why are the laws so fruitful when written in the language of mathematics? Author Peter Atkins considers the minimum effort needed to equip the universe with its laws and its constants. He explores the origin of the conservation of energy, of electromagnetism, of classical and quantum mechanics, and of thermodynamics, showing how all these laws spring from deep symmetries.

Big History, the field that studies the entire known past of our universe to give context to human existence, has so far been the domain of historians. Geologist Walter Alvarez - best known for his Impact Theory explaining dinosaur extinction - makes a compelling case for a new, science-first approach to Big History.

An earthquake shatters Haiti and a hurricane slices through Texas. We hear that nature runs rampant, seeking to destroy us through these 'natural disasters'. Science recounts a different story, however: disasters are not the consequence of natural causes; they are the consequence of human choices and decisions. we put ourselves in harm's way; we fail to take measures which we know would prevent disasters, no matter what the environment does.

In Vaxxers, we hear directly from Professor Gilbert and her colleague, Dr Catherine Green, as they reveal the inside story of making the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the cutting-edge science and sheer hard work behind it. This is their story of fighting a pandemic as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah and Cath share the heart-stopping moments in the eye of the storm, they separate fact from fiction, they explain how they made a safe vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching and they give us hope for the future.