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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In Earth, a planetary scientist and a literary humanist explore what happens when we think of the Earth as an object viewable from space. As a “blue marble,” “a blue pale dot,” or, as Chaucer described it, “this litel spot of erthe,” the solitary orb is a challenge to scale and to human self-importance. Beautiful and self-contained, the Earth turns out to be far less knowable than it at first appears: its vast interior an inferno of incandescent and yet solid rock and a reservoir of water vaster than the ocean, a world within the world. Viewing the Earth from space invites a dive into the abyss of scale: how can humans apprehend the distances, the temperatures, and the time scale on which planets are born, evolve, and die? Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
From one of the world’s leading planetary scientists, a luminous memoir of exploration on Earth, in space, and within oneself—equal parts ode to the beauty of science, meditation on loss, and roadmap for personal resilience "Fierce, absorbing, and ultimately inspiring." —ELIZABETH KOLBERT "[A] riveting book, beautifully written." —Washington Post Named a Best Book of the Year by Christian Science Monitor and Science News Deep in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, three times farther from the sun than the Earth is, orbits a massive asteroid called (16) Psyche. It is one of the largest objects in the belt, potentially containing the equivalent of the world’s total economy in...
Explores the relationship between the Sun and Mars from the point of view of a planetary scientist, examining the role of Mars as a recorder of the formation of the solar system.
Compares the Earth equally with other planets to display the similarities and differences between the various orbiting bodies. This volume discusses the fundamental aspects of the Earth as a planet. It also covers the evolution of the moon in relation to the geological features of the Earth.
Uniting the foundations of physics and biology, this groundbreaking multidisciplinary and integrative book explores life as a planetary process.
Explores the orbital movements of Jupiter in the solar system and its internal and external composition, movements, and temperatures, as well as Saturn's ring system. Useful for those interested in understanding the science and history behind the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn, this volume looks into the geological profiles of these planets.
The taste of fresh berries, the quiet cadence of waves lapping a lakeshore, the song of an owl in the night, the glory of a sunset: so many details manifest the reality that Earth is not merely the place where we are, but that it is truly our home and is meant to be our home. Most modern scientists dismiss this notion as romantic nonsense, arguing instead that Earth and, indeed, the entire universe is actually a cosmic accident, the mystifying result of billions of years of random events. Here in this work of basic science written for nonspecialists, scientist Gerard Verschuuren confronts those men and women on their own territory force for force, atom for atom, cell for cell, and even plane...
Composed of a broad cross section of European and Asian immigrants, America ultimately morphed into a world power with many of the same hallmarks of the late Roman Empire. Are these similarities coincidental or the realization of preordained fate? History teaches/reinforces the power of cycles, these recurring themes are inexhorable and...
Explains the fundamentals of astronomy together with the hottest current topics in this field, such as exoplanets and gravitational waves.
This unique book presents hundreds of spectacular photographs of large-scale to small-scale field geological features of flood basalt volcanism from around the world. Major flood basalt provinces covered in this book include the British Palaeogene, Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, Columbia River, Deccan, East Greenland, Emeishan, Ethiopian, Ferrar-Karoo-Tasmania, Iceland, Indo-Madagascar, Paraná, Siberian, West Greenland, and others. Intermediate- to small-sized flood basalts (such as Saudi Arabia and South Caucasus) are also included. Different chapters of the book illustrate varied features of flood basalts, including landscapes, lava flow morphology and stacking, structures formed dur...