Unsolved Mysteries of Science

John Malone

Description

A LIVELY EXPLORATION OF THE BIGGEST QUESTIONS IN SCIENCE

How Did the Universe Begin?
The Big Bang has been the accepted theory for decades, but does it explain everything?

How Did Life on Earth Get Started?
What triggered the cell division that started the evolutionary chain? Did life come from outer space, buried in a chunk of rock?

What is Gravity?
Newton's apple just got the arguments started, Einstein made things more complicated. Just how does gravity fit in with quantum theory?

What Is the Inside of the Earth Like?
What exactly is happening beneath our feet, and can we learn enough to help predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?

How Do We Learn Language?
Is language acquisition an inborn biological ability, or does every child have to start from scratch?

Is There a Missing Link?
The story of human evolution is not complete. In addition to hoaxes such as "Piltdown Man" and extraordinary finds such as "Lucy," many puzzles remain. What, in the end, do we mean by a "missing link"?
Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

How Did the Universe Begin?

How Did Life on Earth Get Started?

What Causes Mass Extinctions?

What Is the Inside of the Earth Like?

What Causes Ice Ages?

Were Dinosaurs Warm-blooded?

Is There a Missing Link?

What Caused the "Big Bang" in Human Culture?

How Do We Learn Language?

Are Dolphins As Smart As We Are?

How Do Birds Migrate?

What Is Red?

How Did Mayan Astronomers Know So Much?

What Is Gravity?

What Is Light?

Why Is There So Much Quantum Frustration?

What Are Black Holes Really Like?

How Old Is the Universe?

Are There Multiple Universes?

How Many Dimensions Are There?

How Will the Universe End?

Index.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Teoría del Big Bang
• Physics
• Big Bang
• Science
• Physique
• Physical attractiveness

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470355855
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unsolved Mysteries of Science
Unsolved Mysteries of Science

A Mind-Expanding Journey through a Universe of Big Bangs, Particle Waves, and Other Perplexing Concepts

JOHN MALONE

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
New York Chichester Weinheim Brisbane Toronto Singapore
Copyright 2001 by John Malone. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 How Did the Universe Begin?
The Big Bang has been the accepted theory for two decades, but does it explain everything?
2 How Did Life on Earth Get Started?
What triggered the cell division that started the evolutionary chain? Did life come from outer space, buried in a chunk of rock?
3 What Causes Mass Extinctions?
Five mass extinctions have rocked the planet, each altering the shape of life on Earth. Volcanic eruptions, continental drift, asteroid impacts-all have been suggested as causes.
4 What Is the Inside of the Earth Like?
What exactly is happening beneath our feet, and can we learn enough to help predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?
5 What Causes Ice Ages?
Are ice ages brought about by changes on the Earth or in the solar system? Is another one due?
6 Were Dinosaurs Warm-blooded?
Instead, were they cold-blooded, or perhaps both? The answer could solve many mysteries surrounding evolution during the past 65 million years.
7 Is There a Missing Link?
The story of human evolution is not complete. In addition to hoaxes such as Piltdown Man and extraordinary finds such as Lucy, many puzzles remain. What, in the end, do we mean by a missing link ?
8 What Caused the Big Bang in Human Culture?
Where did what we call culture come from, and how did it seemingly spring up overnight?
9 How Do We Learn Language?
Is language acquisition an inborn biological ability, or does every child have to start from scratch?
10 Are Dolphins As Smart As We Are?
According to brain-size rankings, they are very close to us in intelligence, but is there any chance of communicating with them?
11 How Do Birds Migrate?
Some bird species travel 6,000 miles (9,600 kilometers) round trip on their yearly migrations. How can they possibly find their way?
12 What Is Red?
Does color exist in nature, or is it all in our heads? If we study how the color-blind see, as well as many animals, we find that a sense of color is located in our brains.
13 How Did Mayan Astronomers Know So Much?
They knew more than their European counterparts at the time, but how did they come by such knowledge?
14 What Is Gravity?
Newton s apple just got the arguments started. Einstein made things more complicated. Just how does gravity fit in with quantum theory?
15 What Is Light?
The debate has raged for decades: Is light a wave, a particle, or both?
16 Why Is There So Much Quantum Frustration?
Quantum physics works, but it is so bizarre that even Nobel Prize winners have trouble understanding it-why is that?
17 What Are Black Holes Really Like?
Do black holes destroy everything that enters them, or could they be a tunnel to another universe?
18 How Old Is the Universe?
Measurements keep coming up with a universe younger than its oldest stars. What s wrong here?
19 Are There Multiple Universes?
There have to be, say some quantum physicists. Could we pay them a visit?
20 How Many Dimensions Are There?
Einstein s spacetime continuum brought us up to 4; computers can visualize 10; and some scientists would be happier with 11, or even 26. Which way is up?
21 How Will the Universe End?
Will it be with a bang or a whimper? Recent findings have further clouded the issue.
Index
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my editor, Jeff Golick, for his encouragement, helpfulness, and patience throughout the writing of this book, and my agent, Bert Holtje, for bringing us together in the first place. My thanks to Paul Baldwin, Rob Brock, Dan Tepper, and Carole Monferdini for their willingness to listen to me talk endlessly about quarks, dinosaurs, and multiple universes. I am indebted to Tom Tirado for his expertise in many matters, from computers to Mayan civilization. Finally, I would like to pay tribute to John W. Campbell, whose magazine Astounding Science Fiction opened my eyes to whole new universes when I was a teenager in the 1950s and sparked an interest in science, which ultimately led to this book.
Introduction
Scientists, from Aristotle onward, have always seen it as their job to explain the world, to unravel its mysteries. It often seems that for every mystery solved, however, a new one is created. What s more, even the greatest scientists are capable of dealing only with some aspects of any given puzzle, and the solutions they arrive at quite often eventually turn out to have been wrong, for that very reason. Aristotle virtually created the scientific method in Western thought, but his concept of the heavens, with its crystal spheres revolving around the Earth, was about as wrong as it is possible to be. Sir Isaac Newton, who was the first to explain gravity and light in ways that truly worked in terms of the observable world, had his apple cart driven into a temporary ditch when Albert Einstein s Relativity Express roared by at the beginning of the twentieth century. Newton has had a kind of revenge, however-his demonstrable gravitational effects have resisted all attempts to integrate them into quantum physics.
Throughout most of the history of science, there had been a tendency to regard the latest theoretical triumph or technical breakthrough as the last word on the subject. At the end of the nineteenth century, there was a widespread feeling, even among scientists, that just about everything that could be discovered and explained had been addressed. Then, in the first five years of the twentieth century, human beings finally managed to get off the ground in a motorized flying machine, and Einstein opened the door to an unseen universe we are still trying to come to terms with. The scientific giants of the twentieth century extended the boundaries of human knowledge to a degree that dimmed the brilliance of all previous discoveries in human history. That dramatic expansion brought about a change in the way people regarded science. By the year 2000, the general public had begun to take scientific breakthroughs for granted and hardly blinked at some of the outrageous predictions for the near future offered up by self-proclaimed futurists beating their own drums.
There seems little doubt that the twenty-first century will indeed provide extraordinary advances in computer technology and biotechnology, although we should always keep in mind the so-called law of unintended consequences. Pesticides, for example, which were supposed to be the answer to our planet s ever-growing need for more food, have ended up having almost catastrophic effects. We must also recognize that few things, including science, move forward at a steady pace in neat straight lines. Dead ends are everywhere, and quantum jumps are as common as step-by-step progress.
For all the wondrous developments of the twentieth century, a great many important mysteries remain unsolved. Some of those mysteries have tantalized the human race for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Aristotle, for example, was the first to give real thought to the migration of birds. He understood some things but got others completely wrong, and what he got wrong stifled further investigation for almost 2,000 years. We still have only partial answers to that mystery. In other cases, great breakthroughs of modern science have created problems of unprecedented scope and difficulty. The more we learn about the origins of the universe, for example, the more abstract the explanations become-to the point that many physicists have begun to regard them as closer to theology than science.
A hundred years ago we had no idea that the continents of the world not only move but have reshaped the face of the planet several times over-yet we still cannot accurately predict the earthquakes that those movements create. Eighty years ago no one was even asking how children acquire language, and although theories abound, we still don t know the answer. Just over 60 years ago, the possible existence of black holes was first suggested. We have now managed to confirm their existence, by inference, but in some ways their nature is more perplexing than ever.
We have failed to answer some ancient questions, and we have created deep new questions out of the need to find answers to long-standing ones. Sometimes it seems that the more we learn, the gre