The Time and Space of Uncle Albert is book one in the bestselling Uncle Albert science and adventure series. Famous scientist Uncle Albert and his niece Gedanken enter the dangerous and unknown world of a thought bubble. Their mission: to unlock the deep mysteries of Time and Space... In this action-packed adventure story, discover why you can't break the ultimate speed barrier, find out how to become older than your mother, how to put on weight without getting fat, and how to live forever without even knowing it. When you have enjoyed The Time and Space of Uncle Albert you may also like Uncle Albert and the Quantum Test, book two in the Uncle Albert series.

Mr. Tompkins is back! The mild-mannered bank clerk with the short attention span and vivid imagination has inspired, charmed, and informed young and old alike since the publication of the hugely successful Mr Tompkins in Paperback (by George Gamow) in 1965. Now, this highly affable character returns to embark on a set of adventures that explore the extreme edges of the universe--the smallest, the largest, the fastest, and the farthest. Just by following the experiences and dreams of Mr. Tompkins, readers discover and come to know the merry dance of cosmic mysteries, including: Einstein's theory of relativity, bizarre effects near light-speed, the birth and death of the universe, black holes, quarks, space warps and antimatter, the fuzzy world of the quantum, and that ultimate cosmic mystery--love. The story of Mr. Tompkins' journey to the frontiers of modern physics will delight and inform all readers. Russell Stannard is a best-selling popular science writer and the author of the critically acclaimed Uncle Albert series of science books for children.

Book Two in the best-selling Uncle Albert science/adventure series. Uncle Albert and his intrepid niece, Gedanken, make some astonishing discoveries when they set out on their next mission: to investigate the universe...Discover, in this adventure story set in deepest space, black holes that swallow up everything, tape measures that shrink when you take them downstairs, speeded-up time, and how it is that you are made of stardust.

If you move at high speed, time slows down, space squashes up and you get heavier. Travel fast enough and you could weigh as much as a jumbo jet, be flattened thinner than a CD without feeling a thing-and live forever As for the angles of a triangle, they do not always have to add up to 180 degrees. And then, of course, there are black holes. These are but a few of the extraordinary consequences of Einstein's theory of relativity. It is now over a hundred years since he made these discoveries, and yet the general public is still largely unaware of them. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and fascinating accounts of experiments, this book aims to introduce the interested lay person to the subject of relativity in a way which is accessible and engaging and at the same time scientifically rigorous. With relatively few mathematical equations--nothing more complicated than the Pythagoras's Theorem--this VSI packs a lot time into very little space, and for anyone who has felt intimidated by Einstein's groundbreaking theory, it offers the perfect place to start.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

This science fiction adventure story is set in the country of Erasia, on planet Orb. Here time runs backwards. You are raised up out of the ground as an old person full of experience, knowing everything about the future. As you dutifully follow through the main events of your life, as mapped out for you by the Goddess of the underworld from where you came, all knowledge of them is progressively erased. Ultimately, as a helpless baby knowing nothing, you are inserted in your mother's womb. Nine months later: oblivion. But the man, Nomolos, yearns for the freedom to decide for himself what he should do with his life. This sets him on a collision course with the sinister Portent Enforcement Agency...

Many scientists make extravagant claims as to the scope and power of scientific thinking, claiming that ultimately it will provide a complete understanding of everything. But Russell Stannard, himself an eminent high-energy physicist, strongly disagrees with this grandiose claim. Indeed, in The End of Discovery, Stannard argues that eventually--perhaps in a few decades, perhaps in a few centuries--fundamental science will reach the limit of what it can explain. On that day, the scientific age, like the stone age and the iron age before it, will come to an end.
To highlight the boundaries of scientific understanding, Stannard takes readers on an engaging tour of some of the deepest questions facing science today--questions to do with consciousness, free will, the nature of space, time, and matter, the existence of extraterrestrial life, and much more. For instance, from his own research field, he points out that to understand the subatomic world, scientists depend of particle accelerators, but to understand the very smallest units of nature, it has been calculated that we would need an accelerator the size of a galaxy. Clearly, unless a new approach comes along, we might never understand fully the most basic building blocks of the universe.
As a scientist, Stannard remains hopeful that several of the questions addressed will one day be answered. But other puzzles will remain for all time--and we may never even realize it when we have hit an insuperable barrier in those directions.
He assures us that there will always be new uses of scientific knowledge. Technology will continue. But fundamental science itself--the making of fresh discoveries as to how the world works--must ultimately grind to a halt.

Recently, scientists appear to have captured the public imagination, distracting it from Christianity in the process. The author attempts to unravel what the new physicists are really saying about God and the origins of time, and to reveal both the strength and weaknesses of their understanding.

As an eminent scientist, Stannard agrees with the New Atheists that we cannot prove the existence of God from a study of the physical world

Mr. Tompkins is back! The mild-mannered bank clerk with the short attention span and vivid imagination has inspired, charmed, and informed young and old alike since the publication of the hugely successful Mr Tompkins in Paperback (by George Gamow) in 1965. Now, this highly affable character returns to embark on a set of adventures that explore the extreme edges of the universe--the smallest, the largest, the fastest, and the farthest. Just by following the experiences and dreams of Mr. Tompkins, readers discover and come to know the merry dance of cosmic mysteries, including: Einstein's theory of relativity, bizarre effects near light-speed, the birth and death of the universe, black holes, quarks, space warps and antimatter, the fuzzy world of the quantum, and that ultimate cosmic mystery--love. The story of Mr. Tompkins' journey to the frontiers of modern physics will delight and inform all readers. Russell Stannard is a best-selling popular science writer and the author of the critically acclaimed Uncle Albert series of science books for children.