Bøker av John Gribbin

'Gribbin takes us through the basics with his customary talent for accessibility and clarity' Sunday TimesThe world around us can be a complex, confusing place. Earthquakes happen without warning, stock markets fluctuate, weather forecasters seldom seem to get it right - even other people continue to baffle us. How do we make sense of it all?In fact, John Gribbin reveals, our seemingly random universe is actually built on simple laws of cause and effect that can explain why, for example, just one vehicle braking can cause a traffic jam; why wild storms result from a slight atmospheric change; even how we evolved from the most basic materials. Like a zen painting, a fractal image or the pattern on a butterfly's wings, simple elements form the bedrock of a sophisticated whole.Synthesizing chaos and complexity theory for the perplexed, Deep Simplicity brilliantly illuminates the harmony underlying our existence.

'Gribbin has inspired generations with his popular science writing' Jim Al-KhaliliA scintillating collection of short essays that really does cover 'life, the Universe, and everything'.From the mysteries of the subatomic world to the curious property of water that makes our planet inhabitable, master of popular science John Gribbin delves into the astonishing facts that underlie our existence.Some aspects of the quantum world really do seem impossible to 'common sense', but have been proved correct by experiments. Other features of the Universe appear obvious, such as the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. But this familiarity hides the truly amazing truths underpinning these observations. And some things merely seem improbable but are also hiding a Deep Truth, such as the fact that the Moon and Sun look the same size as viewed from Earth.This book will change forever the way you view the world.

"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that "Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Count Rumford are the greatest minds that America has produced," and indeed, Rumford was a peer of theirs, and arguably contributed more to the scientific canon, and yet is nowhere near as well known. White Knight, Red Heat tells the story of this notable figure in book form for the first time in over twenty years"--

A mind-warping excursion into the wildly improbable truths of science.Echoing Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.' With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science, Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science. For example:We know that the Universe had a beginning, and when it was - and also that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. We can detect ripples in space that are one ten-thousandth the width of a proton, made by colliding black holes billions of light years from Earth.And, most importantly from our perspective, all complex life on Earth today is descended from a single cell - but without the stabilising influence of the Moon, life forms like us could never have evolved.

The revolution is here. In breakthrough after breakthrough, pioneering physicists are unlocking a new quantum universe which provides a better representation of reality than our everyday experiences and common sense ever could. The birth of quantum computers - which, like Schrödinger's famous dead-and-alive cat, rely on entities like electrons existing in a mixture of states - is starting to turn the computing world on its head.In his fascinating study of this cutting-edge technology (first published as Computing with Quantum Cats and now featuring a new foreword), John Gribbin updates his previous views on the nature of quantum reality, arguing for a universe of many parallel worlds where 'everything is real'. Looking back to Alan Turing's work on the Enigma machine and the first electronic computer, Gribbin explains how quantum theory developed to make quantum computers work in practice as well as in principle. He takes us beyond the arena of theoretical physics to explore their practical applications - from machines which learn through 'intuition' and trial and error to unhackable laptops and smartphones. And he investigates the potential for this extraordinary science to allow communication faster than light and even teleportation, as we step into a world of infinite possibility.

The seven fundamental - and surprising - scientific truths of our existence.

The theory of evolution by natural selection did not spring fully formed and unprecedented from the brain of Charles Darwin. The idea of evolution had been around, in various guises, since the time of Ancient Greece. And nor did theorizing about evolution stop with what Daniel Dennett called "Darwin¿s dangerous idea." In this riveting new book, bestselling science writers John and Mary Gribbin explore the history of the idea of evolution, showing how Darwin's theory built on what went before and how it was developed in the twentieth century, through an understanding of genetics and the biochemical basis of evolution, into the so-called "modern synthesis" and beyond. Darwin deserves his recognition as the primary proponent of the idea of natural selection, but as the authors show, his contribution was one link in a chain that extends back into antiquity and is still being forged today.

A short guide to the six theories that try to explain the wild world of the quantum.

In this book, John Gribbin tells the story of the people who made science and the turbulent times they lived in. As well as famous figures such as Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein, there are also the obscure, the eccentric, even the mad. This diversecast includes, among others, Andreas Vesalius, landmark 16th-century anatomist and secret grave-robber; the flamboyant Galileo, accused of heresy for his ideas; the obsessive, competitive Newton, who wrote his rivals out of the history books; GregorMendel, the Moravian monk who founded modern genetics; and Louis Agassiz, so determined to prove the existence of ice ages that he marched his colleagues up a mountain to show them the evidence.

What if Isaac Newton had never lived? Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose place in history has been overshadowed by the giant figure of Newton, were pioneering scientists within their own right, and instrumental in establishing the Royal Society.

Jim Lovelock is an iconic figure in British science, a prophet whose prophecies are coming true. This is his definitive authorised biography. Lovelock is best known as the 'father' of Gaia theory, which isnow established as the most useful way of understanding the dramatic changes happening to the environment of the Earth.But few people know about his early work as a chemist and inventor - work which included inventing the detectors used to search for life on Mars, and blowing the whistle on the depletion of ozone layer. In his personal life, he was a Quaker and conscientious objector in World War Two (later changing his mind in view of the evils of Nazism), supported his family for a time by selling his own blood, and gave up a salary and security to become an independent scientist based in an English village - from which all his best known work emerged.As he approaches his 90th birthday, looking forward to going into space, this book truly reveals an independent, original and inspiring life.

Does one planet really matter among the immensity of the Cosmos? John Gribbin is here to persuade us that it does. In this ground-breaking and provocative new book Gribbin argues that we owe our existence to the impact of a 'supercomet' with Venus 600 million years ago. But this is only part of the story, just one of the astronomical and geophysical reasons why the Earth is special. For the first time, he makes the link between the whole series of cosmic events that have affected the Earth and given rise to our intelligent civilization - a civilization, Gribbin argues, that is unique within our Milky Way Galaxy. Even if other Earths are common, and life itself may be common, the kind of intelligent, technological civilization that has emerged on Earth occurs only here. If humankind can survive the present environmental crises, the whole of the galaxy may become our home. And if not, our demise may be an event of literally universal significance.

The Universe: A Biography makes cosmology accessible to everyone. John Gribbin navigates the latest frontiers of scientific discovery to tell us what we really know about the history of the universe. Along the way, he describes how the universe began; what the early universe looked like; how its structure developed; and what emerged to hold it all together. He describes where the elements came from; how stars and galaxies formed; and the story of how life emerged. He even looks to the future: is the history of the universe going to end with a Big Crunch or a Big Rip?

During the middle and late 1960s, concern about the way the world might be going began to move out of the arena of academic debate amongst specialists, and became a topic of almost everyday interest to millions of people.

Erwin Schroedinger was an Austrian physicist famous for his contribution to quantum physics. He won the Nobel Prize in 1933 and is best known for his thought experiment of a cat in a box, both alive and dead at the same time, which revealed the seemingly paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics.

Seventeenth-century England was racked by civil war, plague, and fire. A series of meetings of natural philosophers' in Oxford and London saw the beginning of a method of thinking based on proof and experiment. This is account of this unparalleled time of discovery explores the impact of the Royal Society.

Accessible exploration of one of the most exciting areas of scientific inquiry - the nature of light.