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Astronomy is known as the oldest of the sciences, and it will be the longest-lived because it will always have arcana that have not been penetrated.-Excerpt from the Preface of Curiosities of the Sky by Garrett Serviss...

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Science

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In 1907 Wallace wrote the short book Is Mars Habitable? to criticize the claims made by Percival Lowell that there were Martian canals built by intelligent beings. Wallace did months of research, consulted various experts, and produced his own scientific analysis of the martian climate and atmospheric conditions. Among other things Wallace pointed out that spectroscopic analysis had shown no signs of water vapour in the Martian atmosphere, that Lowell's analysis of Mars's climate was seriously flawed and badly overestimated the surface temperature, and that low atmospheric pressure would make liquid water, let alone a planet girding irrigation system, impossible. (from Wikipedia)...

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Science, Essay/Short nonfiction

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While many scientific men now understand our place in the universe, we electrons are anxious that every person should know the very important part which we play in the workaday world. It was for this reason that my fellow-electrons urged me to write my own biography. I am pleased to say that my relationship with the scribe who has put down my story in the following pages has been of the most friendly description. I have allowed him to place what he calls The Scribe's Note at the beginning of each chapter, but it will be understood clearly that these are merely convenient embellishments, and that I am responsible for the story of my own experiences. (Introduction adapted from the text)...

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Children, Science

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Weather Explained: Fog, clouds, rain, haze, thunder, cyclones, dew point and how to count dust motes are just a few of the 35 topics covered in short, easy to read and understand chapters in this book published in 1905. (Summary by phil chenevert)...

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Instruction, Science

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This book takes its origin in a course of lectures on the history and progress of Astronomy arranged for Sir Oliver Lodge in the year 1887. The first part of this book is devoted to the biographies and discoveries of well known astronomers like Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. In the second part, the biographies take a back seat, while scientific discoveries are discussed more extensively, like the discovery of Asteroids and Neptune, a treatise on the tides and others. (Summary by Availle)...

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Science, Essay/Short nonfiction

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The Outline of Science, Volume 1 was written specifically with the man-on-the-street in mind as the target audience. Covering scientific subjects ranging from astronomy to biology to elementary physics in clear, concise and easily understood prose, this popular science work is largely as relevant today as when first published in 1922. Special emphasis is given to the principles of biological adaptation and evolution, especially how they relate to the rise of the human species from lower orders. Also included are the basics of the (then) fairly new concept of relativity and its impact on emerging scientific theories. Since first posted at Project Gutenberg in 2006, the text of The Outline of Science, Volume 1 has consistently ranked in the Top 100 EBooks category. (Summary by James Christopher)...

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Science

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Jules Henri Poincaré (1854 – 1912) was one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science. As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics and celestial mechanics. He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology. Poincaré introduced the modern principle of relativity and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. He discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Lorentz in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Science

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If this book were written today, it would be called The Story of the World's Rubbish. That may not sound a promising subject for a book, but we are taken on a journey all over the world (and beyond) to explain the many varieties of dust and refuse - animal, vegetable and mineral - how it is made both by man and by nature, what happens to it, and why we need it. We find that recycling is nothing new: man has been doing it for centuries, and nature has been doing it for billions of years. As every schoolboy knows, 'matter is neither created nor destroyed', so it stands to reason that every particle of it must be somewhere. This study of our knowledge of the earth was written for the layman before most of the -ologies were even a twinkle in a professor's eye. Geology, meteorology, hydrology, biology, glaciology and even sociology and anthropology all have their place in this readable and enjoyable tour of the earth's 'lumber room'. Though some of the science is out of date - it was written, for instance, 80 years before the theory of plate tectonics was understood - the author admits candidly when the science of the day does not yet pr...

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Nature, Science

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In The Outline of Science, Thomson gives us a window into scientific thinking as it stood in 1922 on the big, the little, and the biological. With straightforward language intended for a general audience, this book covers astronomy from the Solar System to the Milky Way, the submicroscopic makeup of matter from protons and electrons, and the evolution of simple living beings into the varied fauna of the world today. Thomson cites many examples that would have been familiar to his readers of the day and notes where scientific understanding leaves off and conjecture begins. He clearly shows how the accumulation of observation and experiment stacked up to form the body of knowledge reported in the book. For even the scientifically well-versed, there will be interesting nuggets, for investigation into how the world came to be as it was, was both wide and deep. To a modern listener, what was not known may be as interesting as what was. With the 100-inch Mt. Wilson reflector the largest telescope in the world, the existence of galaxies outside the Milky Way was suspected but not confirmed. Neutrons, soon to become important in the field o...

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Nature, Science