The Borderlands Of Science

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ISBN: 9780671578367 | 0671578367
Cover: Hardcover
Copyright: 1/1/1999

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Summary

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The renowned science fiction writer explores the territories that science is just beginning to penetrate, in a compelling and prescient book about the future of scientific inquiry.

Introduction	p. 1
The Borderlands of Science
What you are reading	p. 5
Defining science fiction	p. 7
The good, the bad, and the simply awful	p. 7
What kind of writer?	p. 12
Three times ten to the fourteenth furlongs per fortnight	p. 18
The Realm of Physics
The small world: atoms and down	p. 22
Quantum paradoxes	p. 25
Quantum teleportation	p. 27
Relativity	p. 29
Special relativity	p. 29
General relativity	p. 33
Beyond the atom	p. 34
Strange physics: superconductivity	p. 39
Super properties	p. 43
Meanwhile, electricity	p. 46
Superconductivity and statistics	p. 49
High-temperature superconductors	p. 52
Making it work	p. 54
Physics in the Large
Stars	p. 59
Stellar endings	p. 64
Black holes	p. 67
Physics in the Very Large
Galaxies	p. 75
The age of the universe	p. 76
Early days	p. 78
All the way back	p. 81
The missing matter	p. 84
The end of the universe	p. 87
The Big Crunch	p. 89
At the eschaton	p. 90
Expansion forever	p. 91
Life in the far future	p. 93
Complications from the cosmological constant	p. 96
The Constraints of Chemistry
Isaac Asimov and the Timonium engine	p. 101
The limits of strength	p. 106
The production of energy	p. 107
Organic and inorganic: building an alien	p. 111
Building a horse	p. 115
Fullerenes: a chemical surprise	p. 117
A burning home: the oxygen planet	p. 120
The Limits of Biology
The miracle molecule	p. 123
The mystery of sex	p. 128
Viruses, RNA, prions, and the origin of life	p. 133
Local, or universal? Life elsewhere	p. 138
Aging and immortality	p. 140
Aging: a second look	p. 143
Tissue engineering	p. 145
New Worlds for Old
Mercury	p. 151
Venus	p. 153
Earth	p. 156
The Moon	p. 157
Mars	p. 159
The moons of Mars	p. 161
The asteroid belt	p. 162
Jupiter	p. 163
Saturn	p. 168
Uranus	p. 171
Neptune	p. 173
Pluto and the limits of the solar system	p. 176
Planets around other stars	p. 178
Spaceflight
The ways to space	p. 191
Rocket spaceships	p. 192
Measures of performance	p. 195
Mass drivers	p. 197
Ion rockets	p. 198
Nuclear reactor rockets	p. 198
Pulsed fission rockets	p. 199
Pulsed fusion	p. 200
Antimatter rockets	p. 202
Photon rockets	p. 204
Space travel without reaction mass	p. 205
Gravity swingbys	p. 205
Solar sails	p. 207
Laser beam propulsion	p. 208
The Bussard Ramjet	p. 209
Hybrids	p. 211
Laser-powered rockets	p. 211
Ram Augmented Interstellar Rocket (RAIR)	p. 212
The vacuum energy drive	p. 212
Launch without rockets	p. 213
The beanstalk	p. 214
Theme and variations	p. 219
The launch loop	p. 220
Space colonies	p. 221
Solar power satellites	p. 223
Far-out Alternatives
Problems of interstellar travel	p. 229
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence	p. 230
The choice of signal carrier	p. 232
Beam me up	p. 238
A helping hand from relativity	p. 240
Faster than light	p. 241
Wormholes and loopholes	p. 243
Deus ex Machina
Computer limits	p. 247
Biological computers	p. 251
Quantum computers: making a virtue of necessity	p. 258
Where are the robots?	p. 260
Nanotechnology: the anything machine	p. 262
Artificial life and assisted thought	p. 264
Chaos: The Unlicked Bear-Whelp
Chaos: new, or old?	p. 267
How to become famous	p. 268
Building models	p. 270
Iterated functions	p. 273
Sick curves and fractals	p. 280
Strange attractors	p. 284
Future War
The Invisible Man	p. 288
Death rays	p. 290
The ultimate personal weapon	p. 292
Cyborgs	p. 295
Cleaning up after nuclear war	p. 296
Beyond Science
Scientific heresies	p. 301
Dinosaur doom	p. 302
Gaia: the Whole Earth Mother	p. 305
Dr. Pauling and Vitamin C	p. 308
Minds and machines	p. 311
Diseases from space	p. 315
Cold fusion	p. 318
No Big Bang	p. 322
Free energy	p. 325
Wild powers	p. 327
Beyond the edge of the world	p. 329
One last heresy	p. 331
The End of Science	p. 339
References	p. 345
Index	p. 351
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Borderlands Of Science

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials