Cover image for The zoomable universe : an epic tour through cosmic scale, from almost everything to nearly nothing / Caleb Scharf ; illustrations by Ron Miller ; and 5W Infographics.
The zoomable universe : an epic tour through cosmic scale, from almost everything to nearly nothing / Caleb Scharf ; illustrations by Ron Miller ; and 5W Infographics.
TITLE:
The zoomable universe : an epic tour through cosmic scale, from almost everything to nearly nothing / Caleb Scharf ; illustrations by Ron Miller ; and 5W Infographics.
Publication Date:
2017
Publication Information:
New York : Scientific American/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
Physical Description:
xi, 206 p. : col. ill.
Additional Contributors:
Bibliography Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-204).
Summary:
Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf and artist Ron Miller take us on an epic tour through all known scales of reality, from the largest possible magnitude to the smallest. They begin at the limits of the observable universe, a scale spanning 10 to the power 27 meters - about 93 billion light-years. And they end in the subatomic realm, at 10 to the power minus 35 meters, where the fabric of space-time itself confounds all known rules of physics. In between are galaxies, stars and planets, oceans and continents, plants and animals, microorganisms, atoms, and much, much more. Stops along the way - all enlivened by Scharf's sparkling prose and his insights into the nature of our universe - include the brilliant core of the Milky Way, the surface of a rogue planet, the back of an elephant and a sea of jostling quarks. Caleb Scharf is the author of The Copernicus Complex and Gravity's Engines and the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center. Ron Miller is an illustrator and author whose work has appeared in National Geographic and Scientific American.
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780374715717