Mostrando títulos en Física

How big is the universe? How many numbers are there? And is infinity + 1 is the same as 1 + infinity? Such questions occur to young children and our greatest minds. And they are all the same question: What is infinity? In Beyond Infinity, Eugenia Cheng takes us on a staggering journey from elemental math to its loftiest abstractions. Along the way, she considers how to use a chessboard to plan a worldwide dinner party, how to make a chicken-sandwich sandwich, and how to create infinite cookies from a finite ball of dough.

On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built, was launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Since then, Chandra has given us a view of the universe that is largely hidden from telescopes sensitive only to visible light. In Chandra's Cosmos, Wallace H. Tucker uses a series of short, connected stories to describe the telescope's exploration of the hot, high-energy face of the universe.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA - was established on July 29, 1958. Ever since that day, NASA has been at the forefront of efforts to explore outer space, resulting in the Apollo missions to the moon, the Skylab space-station, and today's space shuttle. But behind the open face of NASA, there is a much more mysterious world. NASA has been linked to a wealth of high-level cover-ups.

Gamma rays are the most intense form of radiation. As the Cold War focused on the spread of nuclear war, a U.S. spy satellite searching for clandestine nuclear weapons tests detected frequent, but brief, bursts of powerful gamma-rays, a possible signal of a hydrogen bomb explosion. Interviewing some of the original researchers of this phenomenon, Producer David Barrett Wilson takes us from that starting point through the beginning of scientific research into these bizarre surges of energy.

Much of the U.S. and international space program in the early years looked at the biomedical consequences of space travel on the human body. Bone loss, muscular atrophy and the impact on the cardiovascular system were of special concern as astronauts came and went from outer space. Then researchers began to make connections between the impact of extreme conditions and natural aging here on Earth.

Losing your balance and feeling dizzy? It happens as we grow older, and astronauts are trying to help us figure out why. Producer Judith Kampfner takes a look at how health researchers use the experience of weightlessness to better understand the bodies' equilibrium. The effects of motion sickness —disorientation, maladjustment to environment, and human flexibility to adapt — are the same effects experienced by astronauts in outer space.

Earth and its neighboring planets Venus and Mars all began with similar temperatures, mineral compositions, and atmospheric gases that could have led to the formation of life. Earth was the only planet to pull off that trick, while climate change took Venus and Mars in less hospitable directions. It was much like the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"; Mars was too cold, Venus was too hot, but Earth was just right.

Anyone sending a space shuttle into orbit, building a skyscraper, or even studying bone density owes a debt of gratitude to Isaac Newton and his theory of gravitation and laws of motion. Yet, the role of gravity in life’s processes, from cell structure to the human cardiovascular system remains unclear.

Anyone sending a space shuttle into orbit, building a skyscraper, or even studying bone density owes a debt of gratitude to Isaac Newton and his theory of gravitation and laws of motion. Yet, the role of gravity in life’s processes, from cell structure to the human cardiovascular system remains unclear. Judith Kampfner explores the enigma force by starting in an eight grade science class, following a high school physics class as they perform some experiments on NASA’s vomit comet.

In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.

Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world, yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognised and described, yet it is the least understood. It is a 'force' that keeps your feet on the ground, yet no such force actually exists. Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?

Mars, the red planet, is ingrained in our culture, from David Bowie's extra-terrestrial spiders to Captain Scarlet to War of the Worlds. It has inspired hundreds of authors, scientists and science-fiction writers - but why? What is it about this particular planet that makes it so intriguing? Ancient mythologies defined Mars as a violent harbinger of war, star-gazers puzzled over its peculiar motion, and astrologers defined human personalities by its position and bizarre dance through the sky.

Ever since the dawn of civilization, we have been driven by a desire to know - to understand the physical world and the laws of nature. But are there limits to human knowledge? Are some things simply beyond the predictive powers of science? Or are those challenges the next big discovery waiting to happen?

In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.

A day in the life of Carla Valentine - curator, pathology technician and 'death professional' - is not your average day. She spent 10 years training and working as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist: where the mortuary slab was her desk and that day's corpses her task list. Past Mortems tells Carla's stories of those years and investigates the body alongside our attitudes towards death - shedding light on what the living can learn from the dead and the toll the work can take on the living souls who carry it out.

Medicine in the early 1800s was a brutal business. Operations were performed without anaesthesia while conventional treatment relied on leeches, cupping and toxic potions. It was said of one surgeon, 'His surgical acquirements were very small, his operations generally very badly performed and accompanied with much bungling, if not worse.' It was lucky, for the doctor at least, that his deafness made him immune to his patients' dying groans. Into this milieu came John Elliotson, the dazzling new hope of the medical world.

It is concisely proved that time travel is not possible.

What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in digestible chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.

It is proved that time travel is impossible.

Imagine what it would be like to one day wake up and find that you were suddenly completely blind. This is what happened to Vanessa Potter. Her condition is unique. It has no name. Over the course of the next six months, Vanessa slowly recovered her vision. This mesmerising account tells the story of Patient H69 in her own words, based on these detailed diaries she kept during her time of blindness and through the scientific research that was to follow.