The Sunday Times Bestseller In Wonders of the Solar System - the book of the acclaimed BBC TV series - Professor Brian Cox will take us on a journey of discovery where alien worlds from your imagination become places we can see, feel and visit. The Wonders of the Solar System - from the giant ice fountains of Enceladus to the liquid methane seas of Titan and from storms twice the size of the Earth to the tortured moon of Io with its giant super-volcanoes - is the Solar System as you have never seen it before. In this series, Professor Brian Cox will introduce us to the planets and moons beyond our world, finding the biggest, most bizarre, most powerful natural phenomena. Using the latest scientific imagery along with cutting edge CGI and some of the most spectacular and extreme locations on Earth, Brian will show us Wonders never thought possible. Employing his trademark clear, authoritative, yet down-to-earth approach, Brian will explore how these previously unseen phenomena have dramatically expanded our horizons with new discoveries about the planets, their moons and how they came to be the way they are.

How smart machines are transforming us all ― and what we should do about it.

The smart-machines revolution is re-shaping our lives and our societies. Here, Nigel Shadbolt, one of Britain’s leading authorities on artificial intelligence, and Roger Hampson dispel terror, confusion, and misconception. They argue that it is human stupidity, not artificial intelligence, that should concern us.

Lucid, well-informed, and deeply human, The Digital Ape offers a unique approach to some of the biggest questions about our future.

'Entertaining and engrossing' Sean Carroll Press the snooze button on your alarm once too often and you soon remember the importance of good timekeeping. That need to tell the time connects you to over five thousand years of human history, from the first solstice markers at Newgrange to quartz crystal oscillating in your watch today. Science underpins time: measuring the movement of Sun, Earth and Moon, and unlocking the mysteries of quantum mechanics and relativity theory - the key to ultra-precise atomic clocks. Yet time is also socially decided: the Gregorian calendar we use today came out of fraught politics, while the ancient Maya used sophisticated astronomical observations to produce a calendar system unlike any other. In his quirky and accessible style, Chad Orzel reveals the wondrous physics that makes time something we can set, measure and know.

What is Big Data, and why should you care? Big data knows where you've been and who your friends are. It knows what you like and what makes you angry. It can predict what you'll buy, where you'll be the victim of crime and when you'll have a heart attack. Big data knows you better than you know yourself, or so it claims. But how well do you know big data? You've probably seen the phrase in newspaper headlines, at work in a marketing meeting, or on a fitness-tracking gadget. But can you understand it without being a Silicon Valley nerd who writes computer programs for fun? Yes. Yes, you can. Timandra Harkness writes comedy, not computer code. The only programmes she makes are on the radio. If you can read a newspaper you can read this book. Starting with the basics - what IS data? And what makes it big? - Timandra takes you on a whirlwind tour of how people are using big data today: from science to smart cities, business to politics, self-quantification to the Internet of Things. Finally, she asks the big questions about where it's taking us; is it too big for its boots, or does it think too small? Are you a data point or a human being? Will this book be full of rhetorical questions? No. It also contains puns, asides, unlikely stories and engaging people, inspiring feats and thought-provoking dilemmas. Leaving you armed and ready to decide what you think about one of the decade's big ideas: big data.

Exploring the revolutionary science behind the power of thought, this book will forever change how you think about your own thinking. This new updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition of The Biology of Belief contains stunning new scientific discoveries about the biochemical effects of the brain's functioning that show all the cells of your body are affected by your thoughts. Bruce H. Lipton PhD, a renowned cell biologist, describes the precise molecular pathways through which this occurs. Using simple language, illustrations, humour and everyday examples, he demonstrates how the new science of epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter, and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species. It has been 10 years since the publication of The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton's seminal book on the relationship between mind and body that changed the way we think about our lives, our health and our planet. During that time, research in this field has grown exponentially - Lipton's ground-breaking experiments have now been endorsed by more than a decade of rigorous scientific study. In this greatly expanded edition, Lipton explores his own experiments and those of other leading-edge scientists that have unravelled in ever greater detail how truly connected the mind, body and spirit are. It is now widely recognized that genes and DNA do not control our biology. Instead, they are controlled by signals from outside the cell, including energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. This profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics puts the power to create a healthy, joyous life back in our own hands. When we transform our conscious and subconscious thoughts, we transform our lives, and in the process help humanity evolve to a new level of understanding and peace.

Phantoms In The Brain, using a series of case histories, introduces strange and unexplored mental worlds. Ramachandran, through his research into brain damage, has discovered that the brain is continually organising itself in response to change. A woman maintains that her left arm is not paralysed, a young man loses his right arm in a motorcycle accident, yet he continues to feel a phantom arm with vivid sensation of movement. In a series of experiments using nothing more than Q-tips and dribbles of warm water the young man helped Ramachandran discover how the brain is remapped after injury. Ramachandran believes that cases such as these illustrate fundamental principles of how the human brain operates. The brain ‘needs to create a "script" or a story to make sense of the world, a unified and internally consistent belief system.’

Ramachandran’s radical new approach will have far-reaching effects.

More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90% of all species and nearly 97% of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists, and during the 1990s and the early part of this century a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come from above and those who thought something more complicated was at work.

Paleontologist Peter D. Ward, fresh from helping prove that an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs, turned to the Permian problem, and he has come to a stunning conclusion. In his investigations of the fates of several groups of mollusks during those extinctions and others, he discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change. But it's not the heat (nor the humidity) that's directly responsible for the extinctions, and the story of the discovery of what is responsible makes for an fascinating, globe-spanning adventure.

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers.
Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that "explanations" have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.
In his previous book, "The Fabric of Reality," Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species. Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, "The Beginning of Infinity" is a groundbreaking book that will become a classic of its kind.

Through an examination of examples from performance, museum displays and popular culture that stage the body as a specimen, Performing Specimens maps the relations between these performative acts and the medical practices of collecting, storing and showing specimens in a variety of modes and contexts. Moving from an examination of the medical and historical contexts of specimen display in the museum and the anatomy theatre to contemporary performance, Gianna Bouchard engages with examples from live art, bio-art, popular culture and theatre that stage the performer's body as a specimen. It examines the ethical relationships involved in these particular moments of display - both in the staging and in how we look at the specimen body. This is a landmark study for those working in the fields of theatre, performance and the medical humanities, with a specific focus on the ethics of display and the ethics of spectatorship, emerging at the intersection of performance and medicine. Among the works and examples considered are 18th-century anatomical waxes from the Museo di Storia Naturale la Specola in Florence, Italy, and their contemporary version in the Bodyworlds exhibition of 'plastinated' corpses; organ retention scandals; current legislation, such as the Human Tissue Act 2004; the work of performance company Clod Ensemble and Stein|Holum Projects, the performer and disability activist, Mat Fraser and live artist, Martin O'Brien, alongside visual artists Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy , artists Peggy Shaw and ORLAN.

The instant Sunday Times bestseller -- a beautiful story of rebellion and science 'Popular science has rarely been so good' Prospect 'A triumph. . . We are left in a world that is not disenchanted by science, but even more magical' Financial Times In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, had retreated to the treeless, wind-battered island of Helgoland in the North Sea in order to think. Walking all night, by dawn he had wrestled with an idea that would transform the whole of science and our very conception of the world. In Helgoland Carlo Rovelli tells the story of the birth of quantum physics and its bright young founders who were to become some of the most famous Nobel winners in science. It is a celebration of youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution. An invitation to a magical place. Here Rovelli illuminates competing interpretations of this science and offers his own original view, describing the world we touch as a fabric woven by relations. Where we, as every other thing around us, exist in our interactions with one another, in a never-ending game of mirrors. A dazzling work from a celebrated scientist and master storyteller, Helgoland transports us to dizzying heights, reminding us of the many pleasures of the life of the mind. Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Times, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and Prospect

One of the world's most outstanding astrophysicists provides a state-of-the-art investigation into the possibility of time travel. Human beings have a strong desire to travel through time. Although scientists are not yet taking out patents on a time machine, they are investigating whether it is possible under the laws of physics. In Newton's three-dimensional world this would have been inconceivable. But with Einstein's theory of relativity a fourth dimension time enters the frame. Is it really inconceivable that we can travel along the timeline? In this book Richard Gott offers an intellectually expansive, witty and engaging study of the viability of time travel, which takes us from the dream of time travel itself in H. G. Wells's path-breaking novel THE TIME MACHINE to cutting-edge research into astrophysics and quantum teleportation. He explores the scientific, social and moral implications of time travel, and looks at recent remarkable experiments in which fundamental particles were actually sent into the future.

In 1900, David Hilbert posed a set of 23 unsolved mathematical problems, thus setting an agenda for mathematics that lasted throughout the 20th Century. Some, like Fermat's last theorem, have now been solved; others, such as the Riemann hypothesis, continue to challenge the best mathematical brains of our time. This book addresses the nature of Hilbert and his problems, and their significance for the progress of mathematics in our time.

It is well known that Einstein founded twentieth-century physics with his work on relativity and quanta, but what do we really know about these ground breaking ideas? How were they discovered? What should we retain today from the conceptual upheavals he initiated? Through a selection of concrete scenes taken from Einstein's life, the author offers a view into the formation of his theories, as well as reminders of the day-to-day applications of his ideas. Simultaneously the reader is lead through a reflection on their philosophical impact: How should we think of time according to the theory of relativity, which removes any meaningful "now" and shows that twins can have different ages? How should we think of reality when quantum theory predicts that spatially separated objects nevertheless remain connected through Einstein's notion of "entanglement," which has recently been verified through scientific observation? This book puts readers in Einstein's place, allowing them to share some of those particular moments when he succeeded in "lifting a corner of the great veil."

During the past century, tropical rain forests have been reduced to about half of their original area, with consequent loss of biodiversity.

Written by leading experts with years of practical and academic experience, this book focuses on the erosion of biodiversity in tropical rain forests, and the role of protected areas in stemming that loss. The book looks at a system of protected areas which could be the cornerstone of all conservation strategies aimed at limiting the inevitable reduction of the planet's biodiversity.

At only nineteen years old Vitalik Buterin published a visionary paper outlining the ideas behind what would become Ethereum. He proposed to take what Bitcoin did for currency - to end the central control of governments and corporations - and apply it to society as a whole. Now, less than a decade later, Ethereum is the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency and has opened the gates for the extraordinary new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate in the metaverse and decentralised autonomous organisations. The essays in Proof of Stake reveal Buterin as a lively, creative thinker, relentlessly curious and adventurous in exploring the fascinating social, economic and political possibilities of his invention, and will guide future generations of Ethereum's community of radicals and builders.

Where did we come from? Where are we going? Homo sapiens is the most successful, the most widespread and the most influential species ever to walk the Earth. In the blink of an evolutionary eye we have spread around the globe, taken control of Earth's biological and mineral resources, transformed the environment, discovered the secrets of the universe and travelled into space. Yet just 7 million years ago, we were just another species of great ape making a quiet living in the forests of East Africa. We do not know exactly what this ancestor was like, but it was no more likely than a chimpanzee or gorilla to sail across the ocean, write a symphony, invent a steam engine or ponder the meaning of existence. How did we get from there to here? Human Origins recounts the most astonishing evolutionary tale ever told. Discover how our ancestors made the first tentative steps towards becoming human, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation - perhaps the only one of its kind in the universe. Meet your long-lost ancestors, the other humans who once shared the planet with us, and learn where the story might end. ABOUT THE SERIES New Scientist Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points to the most important subjects in science; subjects that challenge, attract debate, invite controversy and engage the most enquiring minds. Designed for curious readers who want to know how things work and why, the Instant Expert series explores the topics that really matter and their impact on individuals, society, and the planet, translating the scientific complexities around us into language that's open to everyone, and putting new ideas and discoveries into perspective and context.

"Christopher Wanjek uses a take-no-prisoners approach in debunking the outrageous nonsense being heaped on a gullible public in the name of science and medicine. Wanjek writes with clarity, humor, and humanity, and simultaneously informs and entertains."
–Dr. Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic magazine; monthly columnist,
Scientific American; author of Why People Believe Weird Things

Prehistoric humans believed cedar ashes and incantations could cure a head injury. Ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the center of thought, the liver produced blood, and the brain cooled the body. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates was a big fan of bloodletting. Today, we are still plagued by countless medical myths and misconceptions. Bad Medicine sets the record straight by debunking widely held yet incorrect notions of how the body works, from cold cures to vaccination fears.

Clear, accessible, and highly entertaining, Bad Medicine dispels such medical convictions as:

• You only use 10% of your brain: CAT, PET, and MRI scans all prove that there are no inactive regions of the brain . . . not even during sleep.
• Sitting too close to the TV causes nearsightedness: Your mother was wrong. Most likely, an already nearsighted child sits close to see better.
• Eating junk food will make your face break out: Acne is caused by dead skin cells, hormones, and bacteria, not from a pizza with everything on it.
• If you don’t dress warmly, you’ll catch a cold: Cold viruses are the true and only cause of colds.

Protect yourself and the ones you love from bad medicine–the brain you save may be your own.

'The lessons and practices here will shift a sense of chaos to one of clarity and a mindset of fear to one of hope' Margaret Heffernan, bestselling author of Wilful Blindness ___________________________________________________________________________________ How often do you interrupt? How often do people interrupt you? Can you remember the last time someone listened to you all the way through your thinking? In a time when communication is more challenging than ever and relationships need to be nurtured, listening to one another could not be more important. In her new book, Nancy Kline, bestselling author of Time To Think, suggests that for us to radically improve our communication we should make the propmise 'I won't interrupt you'. This promise matters because when we interrupt each other, we interrupt our thinking, and that interrupts the quality of everything we do. By making this promise to our colleagues and loved ones we can deepen our relationships, increase our productivity, and enjoy deeper, richer conversations. It may, in fact, be the most important promise we ever make. Nancy has spent the last three decades researching independent thought and the barriers that prevent us from thinking for ourselves. In this book she tells us the truth about the damage that interruption can cause, she shares case studies and stories from her work with clients, as well as simple ways we can improve our communication, and change our lives. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 'This generous, useful and important book is a delight to read and will fundamentally change the way you interact with people' - Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler, authors of The Communication Book 'This timely and persuasive book shows us that the foundation for independent thinking is the promise to actually listen, without interruption, to what others have to say' Cal Newport, bestselling author of Digital Minimalism

In About Science, Myself and Others, Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, co-recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics and Editor of the review journal Physics-Uspekhi, provides an insight into modern physics, the lives and works of other prominent physicists he has known, and insight into his own life and views on physics and beyond.
Divided into three parts, the book starts with a review of the key problems in contemporary physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, examining their historical development and why they pose such a challenge to today's physicists and for society. Part One also includes details of some of Professor Ginzburg's work, including superconductivity and superfluidity. Part Two encompasses several articles on the lives and works of several prominent physicists, including the author. The third part is a collection of articles that provide a personal view of the author, describing his personal views and recollections on a range of wider topics.
Taken together, this collection of articles creates an enjoyable review of physics, its philosophy, and key players in its modern development in the 20th Century. Undoubtedly, it will be an enjoyable read for professional physicists and non-scientists alike.

Cheese puffs. Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. Hand sanitiser. George Zaidan reveals the weird science behind everyday items that may or may not kill you, depending on whom you ask. If you want easy answers, this book is not for you. But if you're curious which health studies to trust, what dense scientific jargon really means, and how to make better choices when it comes to food and health - dive right in! Zaidan makes chemistry more fun than potions class as he reveals exactly what science can (and can't) tell us about the packaged ingredients we buy in the supermarket. He demystifies the ingredients of life and death - and explains how we know whether something is good or bad for you - in exquisite, hilarious detail at breakneck speed. PRAISE FOR INGREDIENTS 'If you ever thought that chemistry might be really interesting (it is), but your eyes glazed over in high school chem class, this is the book for you. George Zaidan will keep you laughing out loud as he shares the wonders of our most useful, practical science, with brilliant analogies that even an 11-year old can understand.' Daniel J. Levitin, author of Successful Aging and This is Your Brain on Music 'If you crossed Bill Nye with Stephen Colbert, you'd get George Zaidan. Ingredients is a masterful piece of science writing.' Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive 'Ingredients lifts the film from our eyes with humour and reassurance.' Hank Green, author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing 'At last, a book on nutrition that tries to make you understand how little we know instead of offering blanket prognostications. If instead of a simple solution, you want a guide to how to think about health, this is it.' Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times best-selling authors of Soonish 'Ingredients, is everything that should lead you to expect: funny, edgy, fascinating, dismaying, reassuring, and overall just incredibly smart.' Deborah Blum, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Poison Squad 'You should buy Ingredients because it teaches you how to think better - like a smart, informed, and wickedly funny scientist.' Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon 'Omfg this book is FABULOUS! It's hilarious, insightful, sassy, and reassuring. A delightful roller-coaster of science communication.' Kallie Moore, Co-host of PBS Eons

'This is the most important conversation of our time, and Tegmark's thought-provoking book will help you join it' Stephen Hawking THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR SELECTED AS ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2018 AI is the future - but what will that future look like? Will superhuman intelligence be our slave, or become our god? Taking us to the heart of the latest thinking about AI, Max Tegmark, the MIT professor whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial, separates myths from reality, utopias from dystopias, to explore the next phase of our existence. How can we grow our prosperity through automation, without leaving people lacking income or purpose? How can we ensure that future AI systems do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will AI help life flourish as never before, or will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, and even, perhaps, replace us altogether? 'This is a rich and visionary book and everyone should read it' The Times

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 'A thrilling deep-dive through our evolutionary past, and a witty and learned commentary on why we are the way we are - and what wisdom we've lost along the way' Cal Flynn, author of Islands of Abandonment 'A wild ride: brave, outrageous, hilarious, helpful and urgent ... essential reading' Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Lives What kind of creature is a human? If we don't know what we are, how can we know how to act? Charles Foster sets out to understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history. Foster begins his quest with his son in a Derbyshire wood, trying to find a way of experiencing the world that recognises the deep expanse of time when we understood ourselves as hunter-gatherers, and when modern consciousness was first ignited. From there he travels to the Neolithic, a way of being defined by fences, farms, sky gods and slaughterhouses, and finally to the Enlightenment, when we decided that the universe was a machine and we were soulless cogs within it.

OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD 'A remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain' Oliver Sacks 'Utterly wonderful . . . without question one of the most important books about the brain you will ever read; yet it is beautifully written, immensely approachable, and full of humanity' Iain McGilchrist MA, author of The Master and His Emissary Meet the ninety-year-old doctor who is still practicing medicine, the stroke victim who learned to move and talk again and the woman with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole. All these people had their lives transformed by the remarkable discovery that our brains can repair themselves through the power of positive thinking. Here bestselling author, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge reveals the secrets of the cutting-edge science of 'neuroplasticity'. He introduces incredible case histories - blind people helped to see, IQs raised and memories sharpened - and tells the stories of the maverick scientists who are overturning centuries of assumptions about the brain. This inspiring book will leave you with a sense of wonder at the capabilities of the mind, and the self-healing power that lies within all of us.

What are the chances?! This exclamation greets the scarcely believable coincidence - you're picked up by the same taxi driver several years and thousands of miles apart or, in a second-hand bookshop far from home, you find your own childhood copy of Winnie-the-Pooh on the shelf. But the unlikely is more probable than you think. Against every fibre of common sense, the fact is that it's quite likely that some squirrel, somewhere, will be struck by lightning as it crosses the road. The chaos and unpredictability of our lives is an illusion. There is a rational order to the universe, and it's called mathematics. Fluke is a fascinating investigation into the true nature of chance, a must-read for maths enthusiasts and avid storytellers alike, it tears down the veil of improbability to reveal the wonderfully possible.