Details the achievements of creating a desert civilization and projects on the future problems of limited groundwater reserves, silting up of reservoirs, and contamination of soil

Tiny pieces of space rock called micrometeorites are everywhere on Earth. In Search of Stardust shows you how to find them! The solar system is a dusty place. Every day approximately 100 metric tons of cosmic dust collides with Earth, mainly in the form of micrometeorites. Most of these mineral particles (iron, nickel, etc.) are smaller than grains of sand, and they are falling down on us all the time and all over the globe. Still, little is known about these exotic extraterrestrials. In Search of Stardust is the first comprehensive popular science book about micrometeorites. It's also a photo documentary comprising more than 1,500 previously unpublished images: the first atlas of micrometeorites, hundreds of which are depicted here in high-resolution color microscopic photography and in scanning electron microscope imagery. Author Jon Larsen shows readers how and where to look for micrometeorites, explains the history of micrometeoritics, and offers chapters about micrometeorite formation, classification, and analysis. Thanks to Larsen's work, for the first time it is now possible for anyone to find these amazing tiny stones from space. For more than a century it was believed these incredible space objects could be found only in pristine, unsullied environs like Antarctica and ocean floors. Larsen became the first to break the code and find micrometeorites in populated areas -- in fact, they can be found in the nearest rain gutter. In the book Larsen explains how anyone with a bit of inexpensive equipment can find their own micrometeorites. It was recently discovered that King Tut's dagger was forged from a chunk of a meteorite. What else is made of extraterrestrial rock? Join the hunt!

"A compelling portrait of one of the most interesting "forgotten" women of the twentieth century, the scientist who mapped, for the first time, the ocean floorUntil Marie Tharp's groundbreaking work in the 1950s, the floor of the ocean was a mystery--then, as now, we knew less about the ocean than we did about outer space. In a time when women in the scientific community were routinely dismissed, Tharp's work changed our understanding of the earth's geologic evolution. While her partner, Bruce Heezen, went on expeditions to collect soundings (records of sonar pings measuring the ocean's depth across its entire expanse), Tharp turned this data into beautiful and controversial maps that laid the groundwork for proving the theory of continental drift. Tharp's maps showed for the first time that the continents were moving and had always been moving and that what had happened over eons under the sea was as "visible" now as looking at the same phenomenon on land. Her maps have been called some of "the most remarkable achievements in modern cartography" and yet no one knows her name. The brilliant young writer Hali Felt captures the romance of scientific discovery and brings to vivid life this pioneering scientist who changed the way we view the earth"--

A renowned particle physicist draws on original research into dark matter to illuminate the surprising connections between deep space and life on Earth.

"Radioactivity is like a clock that never needs adjusting," writes Doug Macdougall. "It would be hard to design a more reliable timekeeper." In Nature's Clocks, Macdougall tells how scientists who were seeking to understand the past arrived at the ingenious techniques they now use to determine the age of objects and organisms. By examining radiocarbon (C-14) dating--the best known of these methods--and several other techniques that geologists use to decode the distant past, Macdougall unwraps the last century's advances, explaining how they reveal the age of our fossil ancestors such as "Lucy," the timing of the dinosaurs' extinction, and the precise ages of tiny mineral grains that date from the beginning of the earth's history. In lively and accessible prose, he describes how the science of geochronology has developed and flourished. Relating these advances through the stories of the scientists themselves--James Hutton, William Smith, Arthur Holmes, Ernest Rutherford, Willard Libby, and Clair Patterson--Macdougall shows how they used ingenuity and inspiration to construct one of modern science's most significant accomplishments: a timescale for the earth's evolution and human prehistory.

The Lake Superior region is nationally known as a rock hound’s paradise, and agates are its most cherished treasures. This field guide spotlights each type of agate and provides you with the information you need for locating and identifying them. The easy-to-use format and full-color photos make this a must-have for rock collectors.

Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all -- in view of today's new political climate -- the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere. Krakatoa gives us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

From the speed of light to moving mountains--and everything in between--ZOOM explores how the universe and its objects move. If you sit as still as you can in a quiet room, you might be able to convince yourself that nothing is moving. But air currents are still wafting around you. Blood rushes through your veins. The atoms in your chair jiggle furiously. In fact, the planet you are sitting on is whizzing through space thirty-five times faster than the speed of sound. Natural motion dominates our lives and the intricate mechanics of the world around us. In ZOOM, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an entertaining style and a gift for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the Earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone. For readers who love to get smarter without realizing it, ZOOM bursts with science writing at its best.

A science historian describes seven famous ancestral fossils that have become known around the world, including the three-foot tall "hobbit" from Flores, the Neanderthal of La Chapelle, the Taung Child, the Piltdown Man hoax, Peking Man, Australopithecussediba, and Lucy.

The poor quality of water, as well as its restricted supply and availability, is one of the biggest challenges of our time, with presently two-fifth's of the world's population unable to find adequate fresh water for essential usage. Over 40 years' research has been carried out on the positive effects that rhythms and specific water flow has on water's capacity to support life. Energizing Water presents research to the general and professional reader at a time when interest in finding solutions to water's huge worldwide problems is growing rapidly. Three aspects determine water quality: its chemical constituents (including its oxygen levels); its organic aspects (with the danger of contamination by effluent, pathogens and algae); and its 'energetic' nature. The latter facet has been recognized from time immemorial by traditional societies, who have developed their own sciences in relation to water quality, using terms such as prana and chi for energy. Now, through the introduction of quantum physics into the life sciences, modern science is beginning to accept this concept, measuring energy as light emission. Research into energetic water quality - and particularly into the creation of molded surfaces that support biological purification of the chemical and organic elements, as well as enlivening the energetic attributes - goes back to George Adams' and John Wilkes' pioneering work in the 1960's. The invention of Flowform technology in 1970 carried this research further, providing the world with one of the first modern-day, biomimicry eco-technologies. This creative technology applies nature's best methods to produce extraordinary results, and this book outlines the background story on research and application of the Flowform method today.