Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the spider's web
Over 130 articles, from...
ALCOHOL: Genetic revelations of when yeast invented booze
ALTRUISM AND AGGRESSION: Looking for the origins of those human alternatives
ANTIMATTER: Does the coat that Sakharov made really explain its absence?
ARABIDOPSIS: The modest weed that gave plant scientists the big picture
ASTRONAUTICS: Will interstellar pioneers be overtaken by their grandchildren?
BERNAL'S LADDER: Pointers
BIG BANG: The inflationary Universe's sleight-of-hand
BIODIVERSITY: The mathematics of co-existence
BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS: Molecular machinery that governs life's routines
BIOSPHERE FROM SPACE: 'I want to do the whole world'
BITS AND QUBITS: The digital world and its looming quantum shadow
BLACK HOLES: The awesome engines of quasars and active galaxies
BRAIN IMAGES: What do all the vivid movies really mean?
BRAIN RHYTHMS: The mathematics of the beat we think to
BRAIN WIRING: How do all those nerve connections know where to go?
BUCKYBALLS AND NANOTUBES: Doing very much more with very much less
...to...
SMALLPOX: The dairymaid's blessing and the general's curse
SOLAR WIND: How it creates the heliosphere in which we live
SPACE WEATHER: Why it is now more troublesome than in the old days
SPARTICLES: A wished-for superworld of exotic matter and forces
SPEECH: A gene that makes us more eloquent than chimpanzees
STARBURSTS: Galactic traffic accidents and stellar baby booms
STARS: Hearing them sing and sizing them up
STEM CELLS: Tissue engineering, natural and medical
SUN'S INTERIOR: How sound waves made our mother star transparent
SUPERATOMS, SUPERFLUIDS AND SUPERCONDUCTORS: The march of the boson armies
SUPERSTRINGS: Retuning the cosmic imagination
TIME MACHINES: The biggest issue in contemporary physics?
TRANSGENIC CROPS: For better or worse, a planetary experiment has begun
TREE OF LIFE: Promiscuous bacteria and the course of evolution
UNIVERSE: 'It must have known we were coming'
VOLCANIC EXPLOSIONS: Where will the next big one be?

About the Author

Nigel Calder is a long-established and widely known science writer, and a former Editor of lNew Scientist.

Reviews

'probably the broadest sweep of current science in one book... Each essayis excellently written in a style which is both entertaining and informative. Magic Universe takes us on an amazing tour through the length and breadth of science. The reader can open the book anywhere and find some fascinating facts, historical insights or just a good story. Once picked up, this book is difficult tp put down, and readers will find themselves returning to it time after time for well-written science at its interdisciplinary best. David Chamberlain, Chemistry World It's this truly immense feat of multi-disciplinary conciliation, as much as the essays themselves, which explains the sublime nature of existence. Calder's own trick is that in a mere instant he can apparently transform the general reader into a superbrain. His dispatches from some of the farthest outreaches of contemporary science are concise and precise, as opposed to simple, but he has a gift for making the conceptually baffling seem approachable. 'Magic Universe' may be a little unwieldly to hold, it is exceedingly difficult to put down. Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday