Magic Universe A Grand Tour of Modern Science

by Calder, Nigel

• ISBN13: 9780192806697
• ISBN10: 0192806696
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

As a prolific author, BBC commentator, and magazine editor, Nigel Calder has spent a lifetime spotting and explaining the big discoveries in all branches of science. In Magic Universe, he draws on his vast experience to offer readers a lively, far-reaching look at modern science in all its glory, shedding light on the latest ideas in physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, and many other fields. What is truly magical about Magic Universe is Calder's incredible breadth. Migrating birds, light sensors in the human eye, black holes, antimatter, buckyballs and nanotubes--with exhilarating sweep, Calder can range from the strings of a piano to the superstrings of modern physics, from Pythagoras's theory of musical pitch to the most recent ideas about atoms and gravity and a ten-dimensional universe--all in one essay. The great virtue of this wide-ranging style--besides its liveliness and versatility--is that it allows Calder to illuminate how the modern sciences intermingle and cross-fertilize one another. Indeed, whether discussing astronauts or handedness or dinosaurs, Calder manages to tease out hidden connections between disparate fields of study. What is most wondrous about the "magic universe" is that one can begin with stellar dust and finish with life itself. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 researchers, from graduate students to Nobel prize-winners, Magic Universe takes us on a high-spirited tour through the halls of science, one that will enthrall everyone interested in science, whether a young researcher in a high-tech lab or an amateur buff sitting in the comfort of an armchair.

Author Biography

Nigel Calder is the author of dozens of books on science, including Einstein's Universe, Restless Earth, Nuclear Nightmares, Spaceship Earth, and The Manic Sun. The former editor of New Scientist, he has conceived and scripted many special science documentaries for BBC Television. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(3)
Welcome to the spider's web
Alcohol	4	(2)
Genetic revelations of when yeast invented booze
Altruism and aggression	6	(9)
Looking for the origins of those human alternatives
Antimatter	15	(9)
Does the coat that Sakharov made really explain its absence?
Arabidopsis	24	(5)
The modest weed that gave plant scientists the big picture
Astronautics	29	(6)
Will interstellar pioneers be overtaken by their grandchildren?
Bernal's ladder	35	(2)
Pointers
Big Bang	37	(9)
The Inflationary Universe's sleight-of-hand
Biodiversity	46	(9)
The mathematics of co-existence
Biological clocks	55	(6)
Molecular machinery that governs life's routines
Biosphere from space	61	(7)
`I want to do the whole world'
Bits and qubits	68	(4)
The digital world and its looming quantum shadow
Black holes	72	(8)
The awesome engines of quasars and active galaxies
Brain images	80	(6)
What do all the vivid movies really mean?
Brain rhythms	86	(5)
The mathematics of the beat we think to
Brain wiring	91	(4)
How do all those nerve connections know where to go?
Buckyballs and nanotubes	95	(8)
Doing very much more with very much less
Cambrian explosion	103	(4)
Easy come and easy go, among the early animals
Carbon cycle	107	(7)
Exactly how does it interact with the global climate?
Cell cycle	114	(4)
How and when one living entity becomes two
Cell death	118	(4)
How life makes suicide part of the evolutionary deal
Cell traffic	122	(4)
Zip codes, stepping-stones and the recognition of life's complexity
Cereals	126	(7)
Genetic boosts for the most cosseted inhabitants of the planet
Chaos	133	(8)
The butterfly versus the ladybird, and the Mercury Effect
Climate change	141	(8)
Shall we freeze or fry?
Cloning	149	(6)
Why doing without sex carries a health warning
Comets and asteroids	155	(8)
Snowy dirtballs and their rocky cousins
Continents and supercontinents	163	(6)
Collage-making since the world began
Cosmic rays	169	(5)
Where do the punchiest particles come from?
Cryosphere	174	(7)
Ice sheets, sea-ice and mountain glaciers tell a confusing tale
Dark energy	181	(6)
Revealing the power of an accelerating Universe
Dark matter	187	(6)
A wind of wimps or the machinations of machos?
Dinosaurs	193	(4)
Why small was beautiful in the end
Discovery	197	(8)
Why the top experts are usually wrong
Disorderly materials	205	(3)
The wonders of untidy solids and tidy liquids
DNA fingerprinting	208	(3)
From parentage cases to facial diversity
Earth	211	(8)
Why is it so very different from all the other planets of the Sun?
Earthquakes	219	(7)
Why they may never be accurately predicted, or prevented
Earthshine	226	(6)
How bright clouds reveal climate change, and perhaps drive it
Earth system	232	(1)
Pointers
Eco-evolution	233	(5)
New perspectives on variability and survival
Electroweak force	238	(6)
How Europe recovered its fading glory in particle physics
Elements	244	(9)
A legacy from stellar puffs, collapsing giants and exploding dwarfs
El Nino	253	(4)
When a warm sea wobbles the global weather
Embryos	257	(6)
`Think of the control genes operating a chemical computer'
Energy and mass	263	(5)
The cosmic currency of Einstein's most famous equation
Evolution	268	(9)
Why Darwin's natural selection was never the whole story
Extinctions	277	(6)
Were they nearly all due to bolts from the blue?
Extraterrestrial life	283	(8)
Could we be all alone in the Milky Way?
Extremophiles	291	(6)
Creatures that thrive in unexpected places
Flood basalts	297	(5)
Can impacting comets set continents in motion?
Flowering	302	(4)
Colourful variations on a theme of genetic pathways
Forces	306	(2)
Pointers
Galaxies	308	(4)
Looking for Juno's milk in the infant Universe
Gamma-ray bursts	312	(5)
New black holes being fashioned every day
Genes	317	(8)
Words of wisdom from our ancestors, in four colours
Genomes in general	325	(8)
The whole history of life in a chemical code
Global enzymes	333	(8)
Why they now fascinate geologists, chemists and biologists
Grammar	341	(6)
Does it stand between computers and the dominion of the world?
Gravitational waves	347	(3)
Shaking the Universe with weighty news
Gravity	350	(10)
Did Uncle Albert really get it right?
Handedness	360	(7)
Mysteries of left versus right that won't go away
Higgs bosons	367	(6)
The multi-billion-dollar quest for the mass-maker
High-speed travel	373	(7)
The common sense of special relativity
Hopeful monsters	380	(8)
How they herald a revolution in evolution
Hotspots	388	(5)
Are there really chimneys deep inside the Earth?
Human ecology	393	(8)
How to progress beyond eco-colonialism
Human genome	401	(8)
The industrialization of fundamental biology
Human origins	409	(8)
Why most of those exhumations are only of great-aunts
Ice-rafting events	417	(6)
Glacial surges in sudden changes of climate
Immortality	423	(5)
Should we be satisfied with 100 years?
Immune system	428	(10)
What's me, what's you, and what's a nasty bug?
Impacts	438	(7)
Physical consequences of collisions with comets and asteroids
Languages	445	(6)
Why women often set the new fashions in speaking
Life's origin	451	(8)
Will the answer to the riddle come from outer space?
Mammals	459	(6)
Tracing our milk-making forebears in a world of drifting continents
Matter	465	(1)
Pointers
Memory	466	(7)
Tracking down the chemistry of retention and forgetfulness
Microwave background	473	(6)
Looking for the pattern on the cosmic wallpaper
Minerals in space	479	(4)
From stellar dust to crystals to stones
Molecular partners	483	(4)
Letting natural processes do the chemist's work
Molecules evolving	487	(5)
How the Japanese heretics were vindicated
Molecules in space	492	(6)
Exotic chemistry among the stars
Neutrino oscillations	498	(5)
When ghostly particles play hide-and-seek
Neutron stars	503	(6)
Ticking clocks in the sky, and their silent shadows
Nuclear weapons	509	(6)
The desperately close-run thing
Ocean currents	515	(6)
A central-heating system for the world
Origins	521	(1)
Pointers
Particle families	522	(7)
Completing the Standard Model of matter and its behaviour
Photosynthesis	529	(7)
How does your garden grow?
Plant diseases	536	(5)
An evolutionary arms race or just trench warfare?
Plants	541	(1)
Pointers
Plasma crystals	542	(6)
How a newly found force empowers dust
Plate motions	548	(8)
What rocky machinery refurbishes the Earth's surface?
Predators	556	(3)
Come back Brer Wolf, all is forgiven
Prehistoric genes	559	(8)
Sorting the travelling salesmen from the settlers
Primate behaviour	567	(5)
Clues to the origins of human culture
Prions	572	(6)
From cannibals and mad cows to new modes of heredity and evolution
Protein-making	578	(4)
From an impressionistic dance to a real molecular movie
Protein shapes	582	(6)
Look forward to seeing them shimmy
Proteomes	588	(7)
The molecular corps de ballet of living things
Quantum tangles	595	(9)
From puzzling to spooky to useful
Quark soup	604	(3)
Recreating a world without protons
Relativity	607	(1)
Pointers
Smallpox	608	(4)
The dairymaid's blessing and the general's curse
Solar wind	612	(8)
How it creates the heliosphere in which we live
Space weather	620	(9)
Why it is now more troublesome than in the old days
Sparticles	629	(4)
A wished-for superworld of exotic matter and forces
Speech	633	(7)
A gene that makes us more eloquent than chimpanzees
Starbursts	640	(3)
Galactic traffic accidents and stellar baby booms
Stars	643	(5)
Hearing them sing and sizing them up
Stem cells	648	(4)
Tissue engineering, natural and medical
Sun's interior	652	(8)
How sound waves made our mother star transparent
Superatoms, superfluids and superconductors	660	(6)
The march of the boson armies
Superstrings	666	(6)
Retuning the cosmic imagination
Time machines	672	(3)
The biggest issue in contemporary physics?
Transgenic crops	675	(6)
For better or worse, a planetary experiment has begun
Tree of life	681	(9)
Promiscuous bacteria and the course of evolution
Universe	690	(9)
`It must have known we were coming'
Volcanic explosions	699	(7)
Where will the next big one be?
Sources of quotes	706	(28)
Name index	734	(9)
Subject index	743