A Little History of Science
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0300197136
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A spirited volume on the great adventures of science throughout history, for curious readers of all ages
Parrots of the Wild: A Natural History of the World’s Most Captivating Birds
this ‘peer review’, and the process is part of the openness that scientists pride themselves on. The Royal Society chose Hooke to read the paper since he, too, had investigated light. Newton did not like Hooke's comments at all, and even wanted to resign as a Fellow of the Royal Society. The Society quietly ignored his letter of resignation. Following his amazing burst of creative energy in the 1660s, Newton turned his attention to other matters, including alchemy and theology. As always, he
‘X-ray resistant’ underwear was quickly for sale. Physicists debated what exactly X-rays were. After more than a decade of further research, X-rays were shown to be radiation with an unusually short wavelength and high energy. Early on, laboratory workers noticed that X-rays could damage human flesh, causing burns to appear, so they were used to try to kill cancer cells as early as 1896. It took a while longer for people to realise just how dangerous they were, and several of the early
relative to you, as you both fall together. At any time, you can simply reach out and take hold of the apple. It will never reach the floor so long as the lift (and you) continue to fall. This is of course what happens in space, where there is no gravity. Astronauts and their spacecraft are essentially in free fall. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity demonstrated that space, or rather space-time, is curved. It made predictions about several puzzling things that physicists had had difficulty
through common stages of social development. E.B. Tylor (1832–1917) became the first professor of anthropology at Oxford. He used an idea of ‘survivals’ to put forward a grand path of human social and cultural evolution. By this he meant social and religious practices, superstitions and different ways of organising family relationships. According to Tylor, these survivals were frozen in the ‘primitive’ people of Africa, for instance, and gave clues to the common past of humankind. Tylor and
dense state, and then there was the big bang. Ever since this moment, it has been cooling and expanding, carrying the galaxies outwards from this original point. Ours is a dynamic and exciting universe, in which we are the tiniest of tiny specks. It is composed of the stars, planets and comets making up the visible galaxies; there is also much that's invisible – black holes and the much more abundant ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’. So, did the Big Bang really happen, and can it explain the
