Strange Universe: The Weird and Wild Science of Everyday Life -- on Earth and Beyond
Bob Berman
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0805073280
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Bob Berman's Strange Universe is a unique guidebook to some of the more bizarre moments in astronomy and astonishingly true facts about the world around us. Berman is motivated by a straightforward philosophy: everyone can understand science. He feels passionately that basic realities of our existence are truly marvelous, and it only takes a little bit of science to appreciate them.
Geared to the nonscientist, Berman's original essays are filled with the trademark wit and cleverness that has earned him acclaim over many years in his columns for Astronomy and Discover magazines. He emphasizes curiosities of the natural world to which everyone can relate, and dishes on the little-known secrets about space and some of science's biggest blunders (including a very embarrassing moment from Buzz Aldrin's trip to the moon).
Fascinating to anyone interested in the wonders of our world and the cosmos beyond, Strange Universe will make you smile and think.
The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything
Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things
First Steps in Seismic Interpretation
Plant Life of Kentucky: An Illustrated Guide to the Vascular Flora
strikes our planet, you can use either term when describing or witnessing an impact. Beyond Earth, the silent, dark, tail-less flying stones have yet another name—meteoroids, which would be the correct term for anything that punches a hole in the Space Station or the shuttle. Eighteen-year-old Michelle Knapp of Peekskill, New York, didn’t believe it herself when she heard a loud crunch outside her house on October 9, 1992. Finding the back of her Chevy grotesquely destroyed, she attributed the
(or any other phase) it is rare for that to habitually and reliably repeat. Even if the Moon does not causally match the female reproductive cycle at the present time, it may still have relevance to it. Many millennia ago, humans were probably more apt to venture out on bright than on dark nights. Perhaps our reproductive rhythms grew attuned to the recurrent times of bright nights, when it would make more biological sense to be fertile. Dates on dark moonless nights were more likely to end
that have been abandoned in the region. “You didn’t dare wait by yourself for the train back to Moscow,” said Landis. Added another NASA engineer, “You’d never see this in Houston.” In fact, you’d never see a lot of Russian stuff in or above the United States. “There was far more alcohol aboard Mir and Salyut than anyone imagined,” reported a NASA official in a position to know. One Russian space module was dedicated to smoking. Up in space they offered what no American airliner any longer has:
night sky. Sure, the patterns are strange—given human history, could it have been otherwise? Chapter 27 Cosmic Name Calling Names have power. Catchy ones stay with us, dull ones earn obscurity. Which is why Reginald Dwight decided to call himself Elton John and Cherilyn Sarkisian became Cher. But when it came to labeling the universe’s inventory, phonetic ease and majestic nuance played no role. We established systems every bit as goofy and erratic as those we imposed on the constellations.
quickly than a lighter object like a pebble? The answer is: You are. Despite the apocryphal demonstration by Galileo from the Leaning Tower of Pisa—in which he is supposed to have dropped objects of two different weights to show that they would hit the ground together, thus proving that everything is pulled equally by gravity—heavier objects are yanked more forcefully than lighter ones. Your body is tugged with more force than a pebble. If you jump off a table just as a fork falls off, Earth’s
