The year’s best science writing for 2012

Get this  book for a peek at the best online science writing going on right now.  It is a selection of science articles from 2011, but even if a few years have passed, the writing is still excellent and the articles are still important.

 

Nomenclature Rule

In Life: An Unauthorized Biography, Richard Fortey documented a biologists’ rule:

The most primitive of  bacteria are known by the most wondrous jargon, mastery of which is guaranteed to cause jaws to drop at social functions, for the correct designation of many of them is ‘chemolithoautotrophic hyperthermophiles.’ Since these bacteria are only a thousandth of a millimetre long — minute rods, discs, or cocci (spheres), this affords an example of a rule well known to biologists: that the length of the description is inversely proportional to the size of the organism.

No doubt Fortey is an accomplished raconteur, but I find his written work almost unbearably wordy and have to take it in small doses.

More science blogs: Scientopia

Many bloggers who left Scienceblogs have gathered together at a new site. Check out Scientopia blogs to see what these science bloggers are up to.

Hat tip: The Dread Tomato Addiction.

“Stephen Hawking’s Universe” web site and books

Stephen Hawking's Universe, PBS science series

A Brief History of Time by  Stephen Hawking explained, in the great physicist’s own words, the theory of the Big Bang and its implications. The book Stephen Hawking’s Universe by John Boslough (1989) was written as an introduction to A Brief History of Time and its ideas. There was tremendous popular interest in Hawking’s book and the revolutionary progress that Hawking brought to theoretical physics and cosmology. That encouraged PBS Television to create a series of six programs about those ideas. The project spawned a Stephen Hawking’s Universe web site to complement the programs. And that led to a spin-off book, Stephen Hawking’s Universe by David Filkin. Also, Hawking wisely teamed up with a writer who created a more readable version of his famous book.

A Briefer History of Time, with Leonard Mlodinow

Stephen Hawking’s popular science books:

• A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988)
• Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)
  [in Spanish, Agujeros negros y pequenos/ Dark and Small Holes?]
• The Illustrated A Brief History of Time (1996)
• A Brief History of Time Expanded and Updated (1998)
• The Nature of Space and Time, lectures by Stephen Hawking and by Roger Penrose (1996)
• The Universe in a Nutshell (2001)
• One essay in Future of Spacetime by Richard Price (2002)
• Computer Resources for People with Disabilities: A Guide to Assistive Technologies, Tools and Resources for People of All Ages with Alliance for Technology Access (2004)
• A Briefer History of Time (2005) with Leonard Mlodinow
• God Created the Integers, about mathematics (2005)
• A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein (2007)
• The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe: New Edition (2007) <– a rip-off: old lectures reprinted; not endorsed by Hawking.
• The Dreams that Stuff is Made of: The Most Astounding Papers of Quantum Physics–and How They Shook the Scientific World (due out in 2011)
• The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (due out in 2011)

George's Secret of the Universe, French edition

Books for children, with his daughter, Lucy Hawking:

• George’s Secret Key to the Universe (2009)
• George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt (2009)

Cosmos

He has provided forwards for these books:

• Apollo: Through the Eyes of the Astronauts (2009)
• Cosmos: Images from Here to the Edge of the Universe (2007)
• What’s Out There: Images from Here to the Edge of the Universe (2006)

On the Shoulders of Giants

He has edited and provided commentary for the works of other scientists:

• The Illustrated On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy (2005)
• Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences by Galileo Galilei (2005)
• On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus (2005)
• Harmonies of the World by Johannes Kepler (2005)
• Principia by Sir Isaac Newton (2005)
• On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy (2002)

Technical books:

• Hawking on the Big Bang and Black Holes: Advanced Series on Astrophysics and Cosmology, Vol. 8 (1993). Scientific papers.
• Euclidean Quantum Gravity by G. W. Gibbons and Stephen W. Hawking (1993). At $160, it’s not popular science!

“…This is a collection of survey lectures and reprints of some important lectures on the Euclidean approach to quantum gravity in which one expresses the Feynman path integral as a sum over Riemannian metrics. As well as papers on the basic formalism there are sections on black holes, quantum cosmology, wormholes and gravitational instantons.”

• Supersymmetry and its Applications: Superstrings, Anomalies and Supergravity edited by G. W. Gibbons, Stephen W. Hawking, and P. K. Townsend (1986)

“This volume contains papers presented at the Nuffield Workshop of supersymmetry and its applications held at Cambridge in the summer of 1985 and attended by many of the leading experts in the field. In physical terms, supersymmetry is a symmetry or gauge invariance which connects bosons (particles with integer spin) with fermions (particles with half integer spin). The study of supersymmetry has led to the construction of Yang-Mills theories, which are the first field theories to be free of the divergences that usually occur in quantum theories, with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. It has also led to the construction of supergravity and superstring theories…”

Reading…

Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer. It’s a history of medical and scientific thought about the brain and consciousness.

more funny cats

Tangled Bank #118 at Submitted to a Candid World

The Tangled Bank is a fortnightly collection of science writing by bloggers. Tangled Bank 118 is at Submitted to a Candid World. It’s the Yes We Did edition.

Tangled Bank #117 at the Neural Gourmet

The Tangled Bank is a fortnightly collection of science writing by bloggers. Tangled Bank 117 is at the Neural Gourmet.

Neural Gourmet–-does that mean they eat brains?

Tangled Bank #115 at Evolved and Rational

The Tangled Bank is a fortnightly collection of blog articles on topics scientific and medical, loosely defined. The current issue is online at Evolved and Rational blog: “Tangled Bank 115: The Awesome Level is Over 9000!“