Placebo cures. Global warming. Extraterrestrial life. Psychokinesis. In a time when scientific claims can sound as strange as science fiction--and can have a profound effect on individual life or...

Much of the evolutionary biology that has grabbed headlines in recent years has sprung from the efforts of sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists to explain sexual features and behavior--even...

For over 40 years, satellites have been orbiting the Earth quietly monitoring the state of our planet. Unseen by most of us, they are providing information on the many changes taking place, from...

AIDS is not caused by HIV. Coal and oil are not fossil fuels. Radiation exposure is good for you. Distributing more guns reduces crime. These ideas make headlines, but most educated people scoff at...

Since it was first published in 1987, Galactic Dynamics has become the most widely used advanced textbook on the structure and dynamics of galaxies and one of the most cited references in...

From controlling disease outbreaks to predicting heart attacks, dynamic models are increasingly crucial for understanding biological processes. Many universities are starting undergraduate programs...

An engaging exploration of beauty in physics, with a foreword by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger PenroseThe concept of symmetry has widespread manifestations and many diverse applications―from...

Conventional wisdom has it that the sciences, properly pursued, constitute a pure, value-free method of obtaining knowledge about the natural world. In light of the social and normative dimensions of...

Here, one of the world's leading astrophysicists provides the first comprehensive and logically structured overview of the many ideas and discoveries pertaining to the supermassive black hole at the...

The past century has seen fantastic advances in physics, from the discovery of the electron, x-rays, and radioactivity, to the era of incredible solid state devices, computers, quarks and leptons,...

Good graphs make complex problems clear. From the weather forecast to the Dow Jones average, graphs are so ubiquitous today that it is hard to imagine a world without them. Yet they are a modern...

This book provides an understanding of the theoretical foundations for the calculation of electromagnetic processes. Photon production processes are particularly important in astrophysics, since...