Marcus Chown

* Alguien dijo que la gravedad es un acertijo envuelto en un misterio . * Es una fuerza tan débil que, si extiendes la mano, la gravedad de todo el planeta no es capaz de imponerse a la fuerza de tus musculos. * Y aun asi es tan irresistible a gran escal

With wit, colour and clarity, What A Wonderful World quickly and painlessly brings us up to speed on how the world of the 21st century works. From economics to physics and biology to philosophy, Marcus Chown explains the complex forces that shape our universe. Why do we breathe? What is money? How does the brain work? Why did life invent sex? Does time really exist? How does capitalism work - or not, as the case may be? Where do mountains come from? How do computers work? How did humans get to dominate the Earth? Why is there something rather than nothing?In What a Wonderful World, Marcus Chown, bestselling author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and the Solar System app, uses his vast scientific knowledge and deep understanding of extremely complex processes to answer simple questions about the workings of our everyday lives. Lucid, witty and hugely entertaining, it explains the basics of our essential existence, stopping along the way to show us why the Atlantic is widening by a thumbs length each year, how money permits trade to time travel why the crucial advantage humans had over Neanderthals was sewing and why we are all living in a giant hologram.

Stephen Hawking described it as the discovery of the century, if not of all time, yet the scientists who first detected the cosmic radiation that was identified as the afterglow of the big bang had to admit that it was more by accident than intention. At first its discoverers mistook the readings for the disruption caused by the droppings of pigeons that had nested in their telescope, and yet they went on to win the Nobel prize. In the mid-1990s New Scientist writer Marcus Chown drove across America to interview the key scientists who had made this astonishing discovery. Their account and Chowns description of their achievement was published to much acclaim. But now, over a decade later, in this new and fully revised edition he goes behind the hype and the hysteria to provide a clear and lively explanation of one of the biggest discoveries in modern science - and a brilliant picture of what happened next.

Look around you. The reflection of your face in a window tells you that the universe is orchestrated by chance. The iron in a spot of blood on your finger tells you that somewhere out in space there is furnace at a temperature of 4.5 billion degrees. Your TV tells you that the universe had a beginning. In fact, your very existence tells you that this may not be the only universe but merely one among an infinity of others, stacked like the pages of a never-ending book.Marcus Chown, author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, What a Wonderful World and The Solar System, takes familiar features of the world we know and shows how they can be used to explain profound truths about the ultimate nature of reality. His new book will change the way you see the universe: with Chown as your guide, cutting-edge science is made clear and meaningful by a falling leaf, or a rose, or a starry night sky... We Need To Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About The Universe is a hugely accessible exploration of quantum theory, relativity, cosmology, biology and chemistry. Taking our everyday experiences, Marcus Chown quickly and painlessly explains the unltimate truths of reality.

The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal sciences astonishing predictive power.An excellent popular science book.DARA Ó BRIAINA thoroughly informative and entertaining read.ANNA BURNS, Booker Prize-winning author of MilkmanOne of the best-written books about phsyics I have ever come across.POPULAR SCIENCEHighly entertaining and accessible.IRISH TIMESFascinating, life enhancing entertainment.PROSPECTThoroughly enjoyable . . . Chown has down it again.BBC SKY AT NIGHTBreakthrough takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the eureka! moments of modern physics. Charting the spellbinding stories of the scientists who predicted and discovered the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles and even antimatter, Marcus Chown reveals sciences greatest mystery: its astonishing predictive power.***Breakthrough was previously published in 2020 in hardback under the title The Magicians.

Now updated with the journeys of the 2012 Mars rover Curiosity and the 2020 Mars rover Perseverance, Solar System undertakes an astonishing visual journey through time and space through fascinating text, original graphics, and stunning photographs.Never before have the wonders of our solar system been so immediately accessible to readers of all ages. Awardwinning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown combines science and history to visually and narratively explore our neighboring planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets and more, as well as the historical figures who aided in their discoveries. From the explosive surface of the sun to the new missions on Mars; from the gargantuan rings of Saturn to the volcanoes of Io; from the latest images of Pluto from NASAs New Horizons probe, to a simulation of what the Oort Cloud might look like, Solar System offers a window seat from which to view the beauty and magnificence of space.

A Crack in Everything is the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage As a journalist Marcus Chown interviews many of the scientists who made the key discoveries and as a former physicist he translates the most esoteric of science into everyday language The result is a uniquely engaging page turner that tells one of the great untold stories in modern science What is space What is time Where did the universe come from The answers to mankind s most enduring questions may lie in science s greatest enigma black holes A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing not even light can escape This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life Unable to generate enough heat to maintain its outer layers it shrinks catastrophically down to an infinitely dense point When this phenomenon was first proposed in 1916 it defied scientific understanding so much that Albert Einstein dismissed it as too ridiculous to be true But scientists have since proven otherwise In 1971 Paul Murdin and Louise Webster discovered the first black hole Cygnus X 1 Later in the 1990s astronomers found that not only do black holes exist supermassive black holes lie at the heart of almost every galaxy It would

The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal sciences astonishing predictive power.An excellent popular science book.DARA Ó BRIAINA thoroughly informative and entertaining read.ANNA BURNS, Booker Prize-winning author of MilkmanOne of the best-written books about phsyics I have ever come across.POPULAR SCIENCEHighly entertaining and accessible.IRISH TIMESFascinating, life enhancing entertainment.PROSPECTThoroughly enjoyable . . . Chown has down it again.BBC SKY AT NIGHTThe Magicians takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the eureka! moments of modern physics. Charting the spellbinding stories of the scientists who predicted and discovered the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles and even antimatter, Marcus Chown reveals sciences greatest mystery: its astonishing predictive power.

Marcus Chowns highly accessible exploration of reality, the nature of the universe, and the place of life within it. Starting with the questions being asked by the worlds most daring and imaginative scientists, he takes us to the frontier of science and reveals that the mysteries being examined there are those that matter most to all of us: could we live for ever? where did we come from? and what the hell are we doing here?

«Su idea es absurda,» dijo el gran físico Niels Bohr. «La pregunta es: ¿lo suficientemente absurda para ser verdad?».¿Puede ir el tiempo al revés?¿Existen realidades múltiples poniendo en juego el co

LA SCIENCE À PORTÉE DE MAINVous vous sentez dépassé par le sujet complexe du quantique ? Vous confondez neutrons et atomes ? Le temps vous manque pour vous plonger dans un livre entier sur le Big Ban

The Dragon, an enormous comet, is on a trajectory that will bring it perilously close to an Earth that is still suffering from the scars of a nuclear incident, and from the problems of the Greenhouse Effect. For the optimists - those that remain - it is a sign of change for the better; for others, the comet foreshadows humanitys final doom.But to Francis Reese and the hard-pressed astronauts of the depleted space programme, the Dragon presents a third outrageous, yet irresistible possibility - the transformation of a barren world into a new home for the beleaguered peoples of Earth.

It is over a thousand years since the events of Double Planet, when a group of cosmonauts crashed a comet into the Moon, thereby bringing a potential life-supporting atmosphere to that desolate planet.Tugela is a young girl who has grown up in the austere post-technological society that has settled there in that time, a society dominate by the all-powerful City and its insidious cult of the Eye. As the comets stopped coming, and the atmosphere became increasingly thin, the Priests power grew with the claim that only their rituals could bring the comets back.But a revolution is brewing among the Moon colony that aims to smash both the City and the poisonous stranglehold of superstition that has been holding it back for so long. Within this violent struggle, Tugela has a vital role to play. When she stumbles into a secret vital to the cause, she soon realises her destiny lies far beyond her homeland, beyond the deadly Forbidden Zone, perhaps even beyond the Moon itself...

¿Que sintieron los grandes cientificos de la historia en el momento en que alcanzaron sus grandes descubrimientos? ¿Como llegaron al instante magico en el que sus predicciones se hicieron realidad? Este increible viaje de la prediccion a la prueba nos transporta desde laboratorios ubicados en Paris y Cambridge hasta el frente ruso devastado por la guerra, pasando por bunkeres construidos bajo reactores nucleares y enormes tuneles subterraneos en la frontera suizo-francesa. Desde el electromagnetismo hasta las ondas gravitacionales de Einstein y el escurridizo neutrino de Wolfgang Pauli, el aclamado escritor y cientifico Marcus Chown nos acompana en un recorrido impresionante por los avances de la fisica moderna, deteniendose en ese instante magico en el que las matematicas y la fisica, de la mano de sus mas brillantes representantes, cambiaron para siempre la historia de la ciencia.

The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year 2017Does Einstein proud . . . Eminently readableGuardianNo one has covered the topic with such a light touch and joie de vivre . . . a delight Brian CleggGravity was the first force to be recognised and described yet it is still the least understood. If we can unlock its secrets, the force that keeps our feet on the ground holds the key to understanding the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?Award-winning writer Marcus Chown takes us on an unforgettable journey from the recognition of the force of gravity in 1666 to the discovery of gravitational waves in the twenty-first century. And, as we stand on the brink of a seismic revolution in our worldview, he brings us up to speed on the greatest challenge ever to confront physics.

Savez-vous que la lumière d’aujourd’hui a 30 000 ans ? Que l’énergie électrique d’un seul moustique peut suffire à provoquer une extinction de masse ? Que l’Univers a peut-être au moins 10 dimensions

Hay muchas cosas en nuestro mundo que damos por supuestas. Además, muchísimos descubrimientos científicos de gran importancia nos han ayudado a entendernos a nosotros mismos, a nuestro planeta y a comprender cual nuestro lugar en el universo de un modo fascinantemente detallado. Pero nuestras aventuras en el espacio, nuestro cada vez mas profundo conocimiento del mundo cuantico y nuestros inmensos brincos en la tecnologia en el ultimo siglo tambien han revelado un universo mucho mas extraño de lo que jamas hubieramos podido imaginar.Con brillante claridad y con mucho ingenio, el autor super ventas Marcus Chown examina la profunda ciencia que hay detras de cincuenta notables hechos cientificos que ayudan a explicar la vasta complejidad de nuestra existencia. ¿Sabias que podrias meter a toda la raza humana dentro del volumen de un terron de azucar? ¿O que la energia electrica presente en un simple mosquito es suficiente para causar una extincion global? ¿O que, ahi fuera en el cosmos, hay un numero infinito de copias tuyas leyendo un infinito numero de copias de este libro?'El infinito en la palma de la mano' es todo un viaje increible a traves de los mas extraños y maravillosos hechos sobre nuestro universo, vividamente iluminando las verdades ocultas que gobiernan nuestra vida cotidiana.

Every atom in our bodies has an extraordinary history. Our blood, our food, our books, our clothes - everything contains atoms forged in blistering furnaces deep inside stars, which were blown into space by those stars cataclysmic explosions and deaths. From red giants - stars so enormous they could engulf a million suns - to supernova explosions - the most violent events in the universe - the birth of every atom was marked by cosmic events on an enormous scale, against a backdrop of unimaginable heat and cold, brightness and darkness, space and time. But how did we discover the astonishing truth about our cosmic origins? THE MAGIC FURNACE is Marcus Chowns extraordinary account of how scientists unravelled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life. It is one of the greatest detective stories in the history of science. In fact, it is two puzzles intertwined, for the stars contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of stars.

Este no es un libro cualquiera. En él cabe el universo entero, desde lo que siempre quisiste saber hasta lo que nunca te habías planteado: el origen de la vida, la civilización, el dinero, los ordenadores, el sexo, el tiempo, la relatividad, los agujeros negros. Todo eso tiene una explicacion cientifica, pero ¿puede darse siempre de forma clara y comprensible? Con una gran habilidad comunicativa, Marcus Chown demuestra que si. Y no solo eso: ademas sabe contestar a las mas complejas cuestiones con respuestas entusiastas y muy entretenidas, y con una enorme cantidad de datos sorprendentes.