The layer of ozone that shields the earth from the sun's ultraviolet radiation is being depleted. The culprits are chlorofluorocarbons and other manmade materials. Though this problem has been discussed in newspapers and magazines, few up-to-date…
The story of the exploration of deep space that has largely taken place in the final decades of the 20th century. Space probes have now visited all of the major planets of our Solar System. However, beyond the Solar System, across the final frontier…
IN SEARCH OF SUSY is a concise and comprehensive tour of the particle world, from the electron to the search for a supersymmetric theory or SUSY. Here John Gribbin takes us into the most exciting area of physics today -- string theory. Combining the…
Quantum theory is so shocking that Einstein could not bring himself to accept it. It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no nuclear power or nuclear weapons, no TV, no computers,…
The seventeen chapters of this book were originally published in the "Griffith Observer" (a monthly magazine issued by the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles). More often than not, essay collections suffer from a lack of cohesiveness, but this book…
Where do we come from? How did the Universe of stars, planets and people come into existence? The questions are much older than science -but in the 1980s, for the first time, science is able to answer them, not just in a vague way but in incredible…
At the end of the twentieth century, scientists understand better than ever before the scope of the Universe and its origins; the variety of objects it contains, from quasars and pulsars to galaxies; and the inner workings of our own Sun. But such…
In 1922 Barnes Wallis, who later invented the bouncing bomb immortalized in the movie The Dam Busters, fell in love for the first and last time, aged 35. The object of his affection, Molly Bloxam, was 17 and setting off to study science at…
REPRINT of a historical work from 1835
Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) - astronomer, mathematician, chemist - was one of the most important English scientists of the nineteenth century. Son of the famous astronomer William Herschel…