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Space : Our Final Frontier
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Author:
John GribbinNumber Of Downloads:
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Language:
English
File Size:
25.89 MB
Category:
Natural ScienceSection:
Pages:
248
Quality:
excellent
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510
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Book Description
The BBC documentary series Space is sure to inspire purchases of the accompanying coffee-table book. Some will buy it for the pictures--and they won't be disappointed. Young stars eject gas and dust in pearl-coloured billows that wrinkle up under their own weight until they resemble morel. Radiation sculpts a molecular cloud into fingers clustered with rings of newborn suns.
Those who buy Space for its account of the Cosmos, however, are in for the biggest treat. The author, John Gribbin, is a scientist of some reputation, having helped calculate the best current estimate of the age of the universe. But it is in the rarely celebrated role of popular educator that Gribbin excels. He is a most prolific science writer (not least thanks to his wife Mary, a science writer in her own right and John's frequent and adept collaborator).
In Space, Gribbin's task is to cover everything cosmological. In the first few pages, we learn that the Sun is a star. By the end, we're slipping comfortably and entertainingly through mini essays on quantum fluctuations, the negativity of gravity and how to create your own universe. And this in a book of only 230 pages, many filled by pictures.
John Gribbin
John Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction. John Gribbin graduated with his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. Gribbin then earned his Master of Science (MSc) degree in astronomy in 1967, also from the Univ. of Sussex, and he earned his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (1971).
In 1968, Gribbin worked as one of Fred Hoyle's research students at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, and wrote a number of stories for New Scientist about the Institute's research and what were eventually discovered to be pulsars.
In 1974, Gribbin, along with Stephen Plagemann, published a book titled The Jupiter Effect, which predicted that the alignment of the planets in a quadrant on one side of the Sun on 10 March 1982 would cause gravitational effects that would trigger earthquakes in the San Andreas Fault, possibly wiping out Los Angeles and its suburbs Gribbin distanced himself from The Jupiter Effect in the 17 July 1980, issue of New Scientist magazine, stating that he had been "too clever by half".
In February 1982, he and Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, claiming that the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption proved their theory true despite a lack of planetary alignment. In 1999, Gribbin repudiated it, saying "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
In 1984, Gribbin published In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. The Spectator Book Club described it as among the best of the first wave of physics popularisations preceding Stephen Hawking's multi-million-selling A Brief History of Time.Gribbin's book was cited by BBC World News as an example of how to revive an interest in the study of mathematics.
In 2006, Gribbin took part in a BBC radio 4 broadcast as an "expert witness". Presenter Matthew Parris discussed with Professor Kathy Sykes and Gribbin whether Albert Einstein "really was a 'crazy genius'".
At the 2009 World Conference of Science Journalists, the Association of British Science Writers presented Gribbin with their Lifetime Achievement award.
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