Escaping Gravity

A former NASA deputy administrator recounts how she battled greed and corruption to revolutionize the agency and usher in a new space age. Escaping Gravity is former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver’s firsthand account of how a handful of revolutionaries overcame the political patronage and bureaucracy that threatened the space agency. The success of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and countless other commercial space efforts were preceded by decades of work by a group of people Garver calls “space pirates.” Their quest to transform NASA put Garver in the crosshairs of Congress, the aerospace industry, and hero-astronauts trying to protect their own profits and mythology within a system that had held power since the 1950s. As the head of the NASA transition team for President-elect Barack Obama and second-in-command of the agency, Garver drove policies and funding that enabled commercial competition just as the capabilities and resources of the private sector began to mature. She was determined to deliver more valuable programs, which required breaking the self-interested space-industrial cycle that, like the military, preferred to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on programs aimed to sustain jobs and contracts in key congressional districts. The result: more efficiency and greater progress. Including insider NASA conversations and insights on how the US space industry has been transformed to become the envy of the world and is ushering in a new space age, Escaping Gravity offers a blueprint for how to drive productive and meaningful change. Praise for Escaping Gravity “Former NASA official Lori Garver offers a front-row seat to the decades-long struggles within and among space bureaucrats and space billionaires. Bring popcorn, as you bear witness to an untold slice of space history.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist and author of Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier “We are living at the most exciting time in space exploration since the Apollo era, in part because the world’s largest space agency, NASA, got around to trying something new, the funding of commercial crews. Lori Garver tells it like it is . . . or was for a woman effecting change at NASA despite men of the military industrial complex—and their cost-plus contracts. It wasn’t rocket science, it was much harder than that. Don’t take my word(s) for it; read this book.” —Bill Nye, CEO, The Planetary Society “A scathing memoir that shows the ugly side of NASA while offering hope for a better future for the space agency.” —Kirkus Reviews

Festival of television and video images, computer generated images, video animation, scanned images, images on CD-ROM and the Internet which are presented in installations, performances, screened works, on CD-ROM and as Web sites

The Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience is the first one-volume, A-to-Z reference that identifies, defines, and explains all of the terms and ideas dealing with the somewhat murky world of the "almost sciences". Truly interdisciplinary and multicultural in scope, the Encyclopedia examines how fringe or marginal sciences have affected people throughout history, as well as how they continue to exert an influence on our lives today. This comprehensive reference brings together: superstitions and fads that are part of popular culture, such as fortune telling; healing practices once thought marginal that are now become increasingly accepted, such as homeopathy and acupuncture; frauds and hoaxes that have occurred throughout history, such as UFOs; mistaken theories first put forward as serious science, but later discarded as false, such as phrenology and racial typing, etc. More than 2000 extensively cross-referenced and illustrated entries cover prominent phenomena, major figures, events topics, places and associations.

This book is a compilation of enlightening tutorial essays, showcasing the forefront of research by exceptional female scientists. This invaluable collection provides graduate students and researchers in the field with an engaging and pedagogical introduction to a wide range of compelling topics. Delve into the depths of theoretical and observational realms, exploring intriguing subjects including modified gravity models, quantum gravity, fields in curved space-time, particle dynamics, gravitational waves, and enigmatic black holes. Embracing both the theoretical foundations and the practical applications, this comprehensive edited volume offers an accessible and all-encompassing panorama of gravity and cosmology. Moreover, it shines a much-needed spotlight on the significant contributions made by remarkable women across the globe, fostering recognition and admiration for their indispensable role in shaping this ever-evolving field.

We show that the mathematical proof of the four colour theorem directly implies the existence of the standard model together with quantum gravity in its physical interpretation. Conversely, the experimentally observable standard model and quantum gravity show that nature applies the mathematical proof of the four colour theorem at the most fundamental level. We preserve all the established working theories of physics: Quantum Mechanics, Special and General Relativity, Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), the Electroweak model and Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). We build upon these theories, unifying all of them with Einstein's law of gravity. Quantum gravity is a direct and unavoidable consequence of the theory. The main construction of the Steiner system in the proof of the four colour theorem already defines the gravitational fields of all the particles of the standard model. Our first goal is to construct all the particles constituting the classic standard model, in exact agreement with 't Hooft's table. We are able to predict the exact mass of the Higgs particle and the CP violation and mixing angle of weak interactions. Our second goal is to construct the gauge groups and explicitly calculate the gauge coupling constants of the force fields. We show how the gauge groups are embedded in a sequence along the cosmological timeline in the grand unification. Finally, we calculate the mass ratios of the particles of the standard model. Thus, the mathematical proof of the four colour theorem shows that the grand unification of the standard model with quantum gravity is complete, and rules out the possibility of finding any other kinds of particles. We show how to calculate Einstein's cosmological constant using the grand unified theory. Using the topological properties of the gauge, we calculate the exact percentages of ordinary baryonic matter, dark matter and dark energy in the universe. These values are in perfect agreement with the seven-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Thus dark matter, dark energy and the cosmological constant are intrinsic properties of the gauge in the grand unified theory.

Conscientious Science is a simplified yet in-depth look into the intricacies of our universe through the fascinating world of theoretical physics. The science of theoretical physics is one of great speculation and hypotheses which rely on proven facts, the results of new and not publicly available experiments, as well as both direct and indirect evidence. Conscientious Science explains complex scientific phenomena in such a way that anyone can understand it. It uses reasonable and plausible explanations to convey and effectively support the theories it explores, while always providing answers to the questions of How? and Why? Conscientious Science is an encounter with forces that no one on this Earth really understands. You may find it shocking, impossible, but it is never the less evidence of the universe beyond the power of our five senses.

Vols. for 1963- include as pt. 2 of the Jan. issue: Medical subject headings.

A world-renowned physicist seeks gravity’s true nature and finds wisdom in embracing its force in her life Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body’s buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate, dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth’s pull. And as a physicist, discovering new sides to gravity’s irresistible personality by exploring the limits of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In The Beauty of Falling, de Rham shares captivating stories about her quest to gain intimacy with gravity, to understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. Her life’s pursuit led her from a twist of fate that snatched away her dream of becoming an astronaut to an exhilarating breakthrough at the very frontiers of gravitational physics. While many of us presume to know gravity quite well, the brightest scientists in history have yet to fully answer the simple question: what exactly is gravity? De Rham reveals how great minds—from Newton and Einstein to Stephen Hawking, Andrea Ghez, and Roger Penrose—led her to the edge of knowledge about this fundamental force. She found hints of a hidden side to gravity at the particle level where Einstein’s theory breaks down, leading her to develop a new theory of “massive gravity.” De Rham shares how her life’s path turned from a precipitous fall to an exquisite flight toward the discovery of something entirely new about our surprising, gravity-driven universe.