The astronomer who inadvertently triggered the "demotion" of Pluto in his effort to officially recognize the solar system's tenth planet describes the ensuing debates and public outcry while revealing the behind-the-scenes story of his discovery.

Medicine is as old as humankind. To ward off death; to cure sickness and injury; to relieve pain; to improve life while doing no harm: these are the goals of shaman and physician, Eastern and Western medicine,Stone Age tooth extractions and high-tech DNA-based cancer treatments. Whe we're not making war, we humans are seeking to heal. Often we do both at once. In A History of Medicine in 50 Discoveries, the never-ending search for better treatments...

Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: the Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists has been found. Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event. We only discovered the electron just over a hundred years ago and considering where that took us-- from nuclear energy to quantum computing-- the inventions...

Describes how a wide variety of things such as nursery rhymes, the national anthem, anesthesia, cellophane, raisins, and dynamite came into being.

"July 25th, 2234: The crew of the Adamura discovers the Anomaly. On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII: a circular pit, 50 kilometers wide. Its curve not of nature, but design. Now, a small team must land and journey on foot across the surface to learn who built the hole and why. But they all carry the burdens of lives carved out on disparate colonies in the cruel cold of space. For some the mission is the dream of the lifetime, for others...

The Boxcar children investigate the disappearance of a student's research paper from an observatory, and the subsequent disappearance of another student.

"The bestselling author of Free Radicals takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the most controversial areas of modern science. The atom. The Big Bang. DNA. Natural selection. All are ideas that have revolutionized science -- and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping...

For more than half a century, physicists and astronomers engaged in heated dispute over the possibility of black holes in the universe. The strange notion of a space-time abyss from which not even light escapes seemed to confound all logic. Now Marcia Bartusiak, author of Einstein's Unfinished Symphony and The Day We Found the Universe, recounts the frustrating, exhilarating, and at times humorous battles over one of history's most dazzling ideas. Bartusiak...