On 1/5/2021 at 10:15 PM, beecee said:

Best science book I have read? By a long way, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.  Not so much about the making of the bomb, as more a total history of late 19th, to 20th century Physics and Chemistry from Rhoentgen and Bequeral, to Curie and Mitner and through to Fermi, Bohr, Feynman and Einstein. Great read!!

His book, Dark Sun - The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, is also excellent, but is much more a historical story than a scientific one, not that the science is ignored. I notice that his earlier book won Rhodes the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

11 hours ago, Area54 said:

His book, Dark Sun - The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, is also excellent, but is much more a historical story than a scientific one, not that the science is ignored. I notice that his earlier book won Rhodes the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

Sadly I have not had the pleasure of reading his sequel, but just checked on some reviews, which have prompted me to obtain it.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Dark-Sun-Rhodes/dp/0684824140

extract:

A dark tale told with gripping intensity....Chilling and brilliant. [The] authoritative and riveting sequel to [the] Pulitzer Prize-winning saga The Making of the Atomic Bomb.-Marcia Bartusiak, The Washington Post Book World

Rhodes is a meticulous scholar, yet his tale is as riveting as any suspense thriller, replete with fascinating and bizarre characters, exotic locales, and a cliff-hanging plot. And all of it is true.-Paul Preuss, San Jose Mercury News

Hi everyone.

Request for advice:  This is a book talk type thread.  Is there a similar thread for YouTube videos?  I'd like to see someone talking.  I've been stuck in with a covid lockdown too long and I want to see a person talking some science.  (I also have a burning desire to complain about one youtube video I recently watched - but that's another issue).

1 hour ago, Col Not Colin said:

Request for advice:  This is a book talk type thread.  Is there a similar thread for YouTube videos?

Yes

 

@iNow    ty and +1.

Only recently I finished reading the book "The Creation of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, I was very impressed, now, according to the recommendations above, I will read "The Dark Sun - Creation of the H-Bomb".

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History - Stephen Jay Gould

Origin of Species - Darwin

Principles of Geology - Lyell

Elements - Euclid

Introduction to Arithmetic - Nicomachus

The Geometry - Descartes

Complete Archimedes

Treatise on Light - Huygens

Genetics and the Origin of Species - Dobzhansky

Analytical Theory of Heat - Fourier

Complete works of Freud

Science and Hypotheses - Poincare

An Introduction to Mathematics - Whitehead

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory - Einstein

Physics and Philosophy - Heisenberg

 

Southern Rivers by Scot Duncan. Environmentalism and ecology of fresh water systems in southern, mostly southeastern USA. 

Is A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking still a good book? It's from late 1980s, I bought a Polish version in 2018 but never read it, I plan to read it after finishing three books on Soviet history.

29 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Is A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking still a good book? It's from late 1980s, I bought a Polish version in 2018 but never read it, I plan to read it after finishing three books on Soviet history.

This is a much better book.

I think the title was inspired by the Hawking book.

13 minutes ago, studiot said:

This is a much better book.

I think the title was inspired by the Hawking book

The subject matter seems quite different though.

52 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

The subject matter seems quite different though.

Suit yourself.

16 minutes ago, studiot said:

Suit yourself.

So what's your opinion about Hawking's book mentioned by me?

3 hours ago, studiot said:

This is a much better book.

I think the title was inspired by the Hawking book.

I particularly like the Acknowledgments section

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

I particularly like the Acknowledgments section

Is A brief history of time a good pop sci book in your opinion? It was written in 1988 if I recall correctly, understanding of some things in physics might have changed since then.

7 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Is A brief history of time a good pop sci book in your opinion? It was written in 1988 if I recall correctly, understanding of some things in physics might have changed since then.

I read it back then, so I don’t recall much about it, but I doubt the physics involved has changed all that much.

13 minutes ago, swansont said:

I read it back then, so I don’t recall much about it, but I doubt the physics involved has changed all that much.

Surely no @swansont !

In Cosmology the landscape has changed regarding galaxy formation, also Gravitational waves, Dark matter, Dark Energy and the Hubble tension.

Black holes! First one "imaged" in 2019, did they conclusively know they existed then?

I can't remember how much particle physics was in the book but the Higgs was confirmed after publication too.

Not to mention all the crazy deep field images from Hubble in the 90s and it's successor supreme, the JWST.

Not "new" physics per se but a lot of stuff out there that was not expected.

It's been a while but I remember getting lost on the boundary/no boundary part and the initial configuration.

He mentions Weinberg's book, "The first three minutes," I read that at the time and the nuclear chemistry made sense. In a pop science kind of way! I'm under no illusions.

Worth reading both again now.

Budding physics students. The Leonard Susskind "Theoretical minimum series."

Covers Classical Mechanics, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Physics guys on here what do you think?

57 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Is A brief history of time a good pop sci book in your opinion? It was written in 1988 if I recall correctly, understanding of some things in physics might have changed since then.

So has the book.

Wikipedia

Editions

• 1988: The first edition included an introduction by Carl Sagan that tells the following story: Sagan was in London for a scientific conference in 1974, and between sessions he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. "I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton ... Stephen Hawking was a legend even then." In his introduction, Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the "worthy successor" to Newton and Paul Dirac, both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics.^[10]

The introduction was removed after the first edition, as it was copyrighted by Sagan, rather than by Hawking or the publisher, and the publisher did not have the right to reprint it in perpetuity. Hawking wrote his own introduction for later editions.

• 1994, A brief history of time – An interactive adventure. A CD-Rom with interactive video material created by S. W. Hawking, Jim Mervis, and Robit Hairman (available for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows XP).^[11]

• 1996, Illustrated, updated and expanded edition: This hardcover edition contained full-color illustrations and photographs to help further explain the text, as well as the addition of topics that were not included in the original book.

• 1998, Tenth-anniversary edition: It features the same text as the one published in 1996, but was also released in paperback and has only a few diagrams included. ISBN 0553109537

• 2005, A Briefer History of Time: a collaboration with Leonard Mlodinow of an abridged version of the original book. It was updated again to address new issues that had arisen due to further scientific development. ISBN 0-553-80436-7

4 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

The subject matter seems quite different though.

Note quite, but different yes.

Orzel's book is a lot more up to date and tells you a lot more about clocks and time itself, and a lot less about cosmology.

But relativity, QM, the double slit, Pound Rebka, are all well explained.

Human Evolution -The Origin of our Species. Chris Stringer 2014

Dawkins on the same subject. "The ancestors tale" is fantastic, you will need a note book.

All his books stand up today. The Blind Watchmaker, Selfish Gene, Climbing mount Improbable.

Abiogenesis and a few other things about life. Nick Lane. "Life Ascending."

2 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

Surely no @swansont !

In Cosmology the landscape has changed regarding galaxy formation, also Gravitational waves, Dark matter, Dark Energy and the Hubble tension.

Black holes! First one "imaged" in 2019, did they conclusively know they existed then?

I can't remember how much particle physics was in the book but the Higgs was confirmed after publication too.

Not to mention all the crazy deep field images from Hubble in the 90s and it's successor supreme, the JWST.

Not "new" physics per se but a lot of stuff out there that was not expected.

It's been a while but I remember getting lost on the boundary/no boundary part and the initial configuration.

He mentions Weinberg's book, "The first three minutes," I read that at the time and the nuclear chemistry made sense. In a pop science kind of way! I'm under no illusions.

Worth reading both again now.

Budding physics students. The Leonard Susskind "Theoretical minimum series."

Covers Classical Mechanics, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Physics guys on here what do you think?

I should clarify - I doubt little that’s covered in the book has changed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time

A part of the book is historical, so surely nothing about that has changed. The rest is written at a popular level (the only equation is E=mc^2), so there wouldn’t be a lot of detail that corresponds to advancements since the mid-80’s. New discoveries, sure, so while Hubble showing galaxies is breathtaking and allows us to refine cosmology, the basics given in the book are the same.

37 minutes ago, swansont said:

I should clarify - I doubt little that’s covered in the book has changed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time

A part of the book is historical, so surely nothing about that has changed. The rest is written at a popular level (the only equation is E=mc^2), so there wouldn’t be a lot of detail that corresponds to advancements since the mid-80’s. New discoveries, sure, so while Hubble showing galaxies is breathtaking and allows us to refine cosmology, the basics given in the book are the same.

Ok. I remember him saying that for every equation included, the sales suffer? Or have a negative correlation (guessing here)

Clearly I need to read what he covered.

34 minutes ago, pinball1970 said:

Ok. I remember him saying that for every equation included, the sales suffer? Or have a negative correlation (guessing here)

Clearly I need to read what he covered.

Yes, it was something like every equation drops the readership in half