Science, Mathematics & Technology

Electricity was the scientific fashion of the Enlightenment, 'an Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men'. Lecturers attracted huge audiences to marvel at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks, pirouetting dancers and electrified boys. Enlightenment optimists predicted that this new-found power of nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production, even bring the dead back to life. Benjamin Franklin, better known as one of America's founding fathers, played a key role in developing the ...

Are we alone in the Universe, or are there as many planets supporting life as there are stars in the sky? It's one of the most important and fascinating questions human beings can ponder, and astrobiology is the emerging field of science that tries to answer it. Astronomer Rhodri Evans gives an expert overview of our current state of knowledge, looking at how life started on Earth, considering other places in the Solar System that might harbour life, then discussing possible Earth-like 'exopl...

The controversial science that claims to have revolutionised economics. For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimise our own 'utility'. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don't really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational we are prone to 'cognitive biases' with complex effects on de...

In the late 1940s, a handful of visionaries were working to steer Europe towards a more peaceful future through science, and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, was duly born. James Gillies tells the gripping story of particle physics, from the original atomists of ancient Greece, through the people who made the crucial breakthroughs, to CERN itself, one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of our time, and its eventual confirmation of the Higgs boson.Paperback: 176 Pages...

All the matter and light we can see in the universe makes up a trivial 5 percent of everything. The rest is hidden. This could be the biggest puzzle that science has ever faced. Since the 1970s, astronomers have been aware that galaxies have far too little matter in them to account for the way they spin around: they should fly apart, but something concealed holds them together. That 'something' is dark matter - invisible material in five times the quantity of the familiar stuff of stars and p...

Progress in genetics today would not be possible without Darwin's revolution, but the mysterious man who laid the rational basis for undermining belief in God's creation was remarkable timid. He spent most of his life in seclusion; a semi-invalid, riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash. In this brilliantly lucid book - a classic originally published in 1982 - Jonathan Miller unravels Darwin's life and his contribution to biology, and traces the path from his s...

When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However NASA's Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot. The much-anticipated crewed mission failed to materialise, defeated by a combination of technological and political challenges. Four decades after Viking and almost half a century after Apollo technology has improved beyond recognition - as has politics. As private ventures like SpaceX seize centre stage from NASA, Mars has undergone ...

In 1859, Charles Darwin shocked the world with a radical theory - evolution by natural selection. One hundred and fifty years later, his theory still challenges some of our most precious beliefs. Evolution: A Graphic Guide provides a step-by-step guide to 'Darwin's dangerous idea' and takes a fresh look at the often misunderstood concepts of natural selection and the selfish gene. Drawing on the latest findings from genetics, ecology and animal behaviour - as well as the work of best-selling ...

On 14 September 2015, after 50 years of searching, gravitational waves were detected for the first time and astronomy changed for ever. Until then, investigation of the universe had depended on electromagnetic radiation: visible light, radio, X-rays and the rest. But gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space and time - are unrelenting, passing through barriers that stop light dead. At the two 4-kilometre long LIGO observatories in the US, scientists developed incredibly sensitive d...

Francis Bacon - a leading figure in the history of science - never made a major discovery, provided a lasting explanation of any physical phenomena or revealed any hidden laws of nature. How then can he rank as he does alongside Newton? Bacon was the first major thinker to describe how science should be done, and to explain why. Scientific knowledge should not be gathered for its own sake but for practical benefit to mankind. And Bacon promoted experimentation, coming to outline and define th...

When Pete Etchells was 14, his father died from motor neurone disease. In order to cope, he immersed himself in a virtual world - first as an escape, but later to try to understand what had happened. Etchells is now a researcher into the psychological effects of video games, and was co-author on a recent paper explaining why WHO plans to classify 'game addiction' as a danger to public health are based on bad science and (he thinks) are a bad idea. In this, his first book, he journeys through ...

Faraday's forte was electricity, a revolutionary force in nineteenth-century society. The electric telegraph had made mass-communication possible and inventors looked forward to the day when electricity would control all aspects of life. By the end of the century, this dream was well on its way to being realised. But what was Faraday's role in all this? How did his science come to have such an impact on the lives of the Victorians (and ultimately on us)? Iwan Morus tells the story of Faraday'...

When Nicolaus Copernicus claimed that the Earth was not stationary at the centre of the universe but circled the Sun, he brought about a total revolution in the sciences and consternation in the Church. Copernicus' theory demanded a new physics to explain motion and force, a new theory of space, and a completely new conception of the nature of our universe. He also showed for the first time that a common-sense view of things isn't necessarily correct, and that mathematics can and does reveal ...

In 2013 Kate Greene moved to Mars. On NASA's first HI-SEAS simulated Mars mission in Hawaii, she lived for four months in an isolated geodesic dome with her crewmates, gaining incredible insight into human behaviour in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory. Greene draws on her experience to contemplate what makes an astronaut, the challenges of freeze-dried eggs and time-lagged correspondence, the ...

For centuries mankind has waged war against the infections that, left untreated, would have the power to wipe out communities, or even entire populations. Yet for all our advanced scientific knowledge, only one human disease - smallpox - has ever been eradicated globally. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola and Zika have provided vivid examples of how difficult it is to contain an infection once it strikes, and the panic that a rapidly spreading epidemic can ignite. But while we chase the dis...

In Science for Life acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg cuts through the vested interests and confusing contradictory statements that litter the media and the internet, to give a clear picture of what science is telling us right now about changing our lives for the better. Discover the much-advertised antioxidants that aren't good for you, the truth about fat and sugar and why one of the healthiest foods contains carcinogens and 21 E-numbers. Find out what does and what doesn't enhance brain...

Was the pursuit of scientific truth really what drove Enlightenment science? When the imperial explorer James Cook returned from his first voyage to Australia, scandal writers mercilessly satirised the amorous exploits of his botanist Joseph Banks, whose trousers were reportedly stolen while he was inside the tent of Queen Oberea of Tahiti. Was the pursuit of scientific truth really what drove Enlightenment science? In Sweden and Britain, both imperial powers, Banks and Carl Linneaus ruled ov...

Quantum physics is strange. It tells us that a particle can be in two places at once. Indeed, that particle is also a wave, and everything in the quantum world can be described entirely in terms of waves, or entirely in terms of particles, whichever you prefer. All of this was clear by the end of the 1920s. But to the great distress of many physicists, let alone ordinary mortals, nobody has ever been able to come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. Physicists have sought '...

Having escaped domestic servitude in Germany by teaching herself to sing, and established a career in England, Caroline Herschel learned astronomy while helping her brother William, then Astronomer Royal. Soon making scientific discoveries in her own right, she swept to international scientific and popular fame. She was awarded a salary by George III in 1787 - the first woman in Britain to make her living from science. But, as a woman in a male-dominated world, Herschel's great success was ac...

In 2003, Russian physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov found a way to produce graphene - the thinnest substance in the world - by using sticky tape to separate an atom-thick layer from a block of graphite. Their efforts would win the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics, and now the applications of graphene and other `two-dimensional' substances form a worldwide industry. Graphene is far stronger than steel, a far better conductor than any metal, and able to act as a molecular sieve to purif...

The history of the computer is entwined with that of the modern world and with the life of one man, the brilliant but troubled Alan Turing. How did the computer come to structure and dominate our lives so totally? In Jon Agar's enlightening story of the 'universal machine', we discover how Turing's groundbreaking work not only helped break German codes during the Second World War but also founded the beginnings of the modern computer. Persecuted by the authorities for his homosexuality, and u...

Popular science master Brian Clegg's new book is an entertaining tour through the science of what makes you you. From the atomic level, through life and energy to genetics and personality, it explores how the billions of particles which make up you - your DNA, your skin, your memories - have come to be. It starts with the present-day reader and follows a number of trails to discover their origins: how the atoms in your body were created and how they got to you in space and time, the sources o...