Instability Rules: The Ten Most Amazing Ideas of Modern Science - Hardcover

by Charles Flowers (Author)

World-altering discoveries that reveal a universe of uncertainty and constant change
Whether probing the farthest reaches of the vast universe or exploring the microscopic world of genetics and the subatomic world of quantum mechanics, Instability Rules is a remarkably informative and engaging look at ten milestone discoveries and their discoverers-a wide range of very human personalities whose insights have dramatically altered our most basic assumptions about human existence during the last century. The stories include Edwin Hubble and the expanding universe, Alfred Wegener and continental drift, Neils Bohr and quantum mechanics, Alan Turing and artificial intelligence, and James Watson and Francis Crick and DNA. Also covering discoveries of the twenty-first century that are already refining these and other ideas, Instability Rules is an exhilarating, sometimes amusing encounter with the defining scientific discoveries of our age.

Front Jacket

Atomic particles that defy the rules of classical physics, giant landmasses that continually jostle one another, entire galaxies created and consumed in far-off space: The great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century transformed our view of nature. What was once an ideal of harmony and permanence became a churning sea of uncertainty and change. Instability Rules takes a remarkably accessible and engaging look at ten of these milestones, explains their significance, and reveals how they have changed our lives.
You'll meet the brilliant, eccentric, and insufferable Edwin Hubble, who first demonstrated that the universe was expanding, and you'll discover how Einstein came to think of time as the fourth dimension. You'll join Watson, Crick, and others in their unrelenting search for the structure of DNA, and you'll share Alfred Wegener's frustration as his theory of continental drift is ridiculed by the leading geologists of his day.
From the mysteries of the human mind to the humanity of artificial intelligence, from bouncing electrons to fuzzy math, Instability Rules gives you a well-grounded understanding of the defining scientific discoveries of our age. It also reveals the humor, pathos, and adventure that go hand in hand with every great scientific achievement.

Back Jacket

a century of remarkable scientific discovery
"We learned that the continents are forever slipping and sliding around the globe, like clothing on a teenager, and the mountains are forever rising, the oceans widening, the volcanoes stoking their furnaces for the next blast. "
"Our bodies are a fever of change as our minds perpetually rewire themselves and our genes make uncountable decisions, renewing or growing or misfiring to produce the runaway cancers that may kill us, initiating the instability of mortal decay. . . . "
"Within tiny atomic universes, particles pop in and out of being, impossible as that may be to conceive, while atoms collide and meld, buzzing continually in their electrically charged states. "
"This, then, was the truth behind many of the defining discoveries of the twentieth century: existence is constant activity."
-from the Preface

Author Biography

CHARLES FLOWERS is an award-winning author or coauthor of fifty-eight books, most recently Mapping the Stars, The Big Bang (with David Appel), and A Science Odyssey: 100 Years of Discovery, the companion book to the PBS series.