#science books

[stone-cold-groove]

This beautiful North American bird once existed in such large numbers that its flocks darkened the sky with their passing.

[mothlingmeg]

Currently reading:

Quest for Comets

David H. Levy

[a-typical]

The universe is not empty. We are very aware that we are bound to the Earth. The Earth is bound to the Sun and the Sun to the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is bound to the neighboring galaxy Andromeda, both residing in the Virgo supercluster of galaxies. And the Virgo supercluster senses all the other galaxies and all the accumulated energy in our observable universe. So we don’t live in a flat, empty spacetime.

Astronauts also don’t float in empty space. They can see the Earth spin and the Sun roll along. They are falling and weightless, but on a path we’ve been accustomed to calling an orbit, an orbit around the Earth in orbit around the Sun in a glacially long orbit around the galaxy. Their paths aren’t straight. Their paths are curved into a circle around the Earth sewn into the circle around the Sun sewn into the path around the galaxy, because free-fall paths are curved when the sky isn’t empty. Because space is curved by the presence of matter and energy.

Black Hole Survival Guide — Janna Levin

[littly-starry-andy]

Credit to the original post

25 days of agere moodboard

Day 3: Your Favourite Kid’s Book: I love DK's Eyewitness series since I was actually little. Now I want to own the updated version again.

[nympho-scene-boy]

ME AND MY FRIENDS GOT BOOKS SO NOW JUDGE US ON OUR CHOICES ♡♡♡

☆▪︎ME▪︎☆

~ANA~

♤SAM♤

[whilereadingandwalking]

If you read The Overstory by Richard Powers, I recommend Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard, a memoir by the actual woman who discovered that trees communicate.

[cryingoflot49]

[darthjess-book-reviews]

REVIEW: Your Inner Fish: a Journey Into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

SUMMARY (Provided by Goodreads)

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik-the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006-tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.

Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest-enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

MY REVIEW: 4/5 Stars

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin was an amazing chronicle about how bodies have evolved over time and how we can trace the human body plan back to that of fish. This book was utterly fascinating, and I loved how Shubin talked about his experiences as a paleontologist. I also thought it was so cool how the human predisposition for hernias as well as getting hiccups comes from our fish and amphibian ancestors.

The one thing I didn't like about this book was the outdated use of the word "primitive" when referring to animals in contrast to humans. While this book was published over ten years ago, more recent books about biology, anthropology, and nature make the point that all animals have been evolving just as long as humans and are built to fit well into their respective habitats. Everything alive today is no more or less "primitive" than everything else currently alive. I think that this book is very informative and very important for people wanting to understand evolution, however I do think it is important to keep my previous comment in mind, along with the fact that the use of the word "primitive" in reference to animals (and other humans) has lead to grave misunderstandings. Calling other creatures "primitive" allows people to justify hunting creatures to extinction and the destruction of whole ecosystems in exchange for human benefit. If you've read other biology books, his use of "primitive" can be easily dismissed (as it was for me) but I just think it could be misleading if you don't know much about the subject.

[bugthebard]

do you have any reading recs for someone who wants to learn about bugs?

Oh absolutely! There are so many lovely popular science entomology books. I'll name a few, but there are tons more for specific bugs you might be interested in if you search around! I've got four in mind that I've read that I think provide some nice variety.

Buzz, Sting, Bite by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

I so enjoyed this book. It's not about any specific insect, but it's a delightful tour of a bunch of cool adaptations and the like in the arthropod world. I think it'd be a good choice if you're new to the whole thing as it's fun, light, and has lots of different groups represented. I learned about a wild interaction between ground-nesting bees and blister beetles from this one that I ended up making a little video on.

Never Home Alone by Rob Dunn

I love the household ecosystem! This book isn't just arthropods — it also covers bacteria and other organisms you might find in your home. But it's so neat! And tonally it's refreshing because it doesn't attempt to scare you about what's in your house. Rather, it invites you to engage with your fellow home inhabitants.

Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

This is such an interesting deep dive into honey bee behavior. I think a lot of people know bees are smart but don't quite realize how complex their social behavior gets. I also am charmed by any book that includes a chapter on incorporating another animal's behavior as a lesson to our own human society (the last chapter is basically "what can we learn from the voting system of honey bees?", an adorable thought).

The Sting of the Wild by Justin O. Schmidt

The Schmidt pain scale is a bit infamous. Dr. Schmidt made a whole collection of insects sting him, and rated them on a scale based on the pain he felt. With descriptions like "someone has fired a staple into your cheek," it's definitely not the most objective, but it is a good time. And following his journey getting stung by everything (including his grad students that followed in his footsteps in some very funny ways) is entertaining.

[scienceysideblog]

borrowed this from the library yesterday, there's still a couple of things before it on my to be read but I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping it might be similar to my favourite science book Rutherford and Fry's guide to absolutely everything (which I still need to make a post about)

[rachel-sylvan-author]

"And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic" by Randy Shilts

Thank you @dr.bookmom for the intense, enlightening read ❤️

[stone-cold-groove]

Atoms the Core of all Matter - 1959.

[mothlingmeg]

Jupiter - Fith planet from the sun

[a-typical]

The classic setting for the idea of free fall is an elevator. You are high up in an apartment building in an elevator. You feel a force against your feet. That force is between your feet and the elevator floor and keeps you in the cab. It’s a force between matter. Now, if you are interested in pure gravity, without the interference of interactions between matter, you must get rid of the elevator cab somehow. So you enlist someone to cut the cable. The elevator falls and you with it. During the descent, since you and the floor fall at the same rate, you would float in the elevator. You don’t fall to the floor, because the floor is falling too. You can push off the walls and tumble in the air. You seem weightless, as though you were an astronaut in the space station. You can pour water out of your water bottle and drink the droplets from the air, like astronauts do. You can release a pen, a phone, a rock in front of you, and these float too. Einstein called this profoundly simple observation—that we experience weightlessness when we fall—the happiest thought of his life.

The spoiler is that your atoms interact with the atoms in the Earth’s surface, and that would ensure an unhappy end to your free fall when you hit the ground. But that’s not gravity’s fault. The shattering of your bones would be due to other forces, like forces between atoms. (If you were made of dark matter, you could fall right through the Earth’s crust and sail on down.)

Black Hole Survival Guide — Janna Levin

[thomthinks]

A few years ago I was having a hot cocoa nightcap at a desert shop in Pasadena, California. Ordered it with whipped cream, of course. When it arrived at the table, I saw no trace of the stuff. After I told the waiter that my cocoa had no whipped cream, he asserted that I couldn't see it because it had sank to the bottom. But whipped cream has low density, and floats on all liquids that humans consume. So I offered the waiter two possible explanation: either somebody forgot to add the whipped cream to my hot cocoa or the universal laws of physics were different in his restaurant. Unconvinced, he defiantly brought over a dollop of whipped cream to demonstrate his claim. After bobbing once or twice the whipped cream rose to the top, safely afloat. What better proof do you need of the universality of physical laws?

– Neil deGrasse Tyson "Astrophysics for people in a hurry"

[intothestacks]

Book Reqs for Fans of Space & Physics

George’s Secret Key to the Universe

Written by Stephen Hawking and his daughter to explain Hawking’s kind of work in language kids (and the average layperson like myself) would understand, the book has received all times of critical acclaim from all over the place.

There is also a sequel available which explains further theories and concepts they didn’t have space/time for (haha) in the first book.