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Comet (book)
''Comet'' is a 1985 popular-science book by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. The authors describe the scientific nature of comets, as well as their varying roles and perceptions throughout history. The evolution of human understanding of comets is also detailed, and thinkers and astronomers such as Edmond Halley, Immanuel Kant, and William Huggins are discussed. The publication of the first edition was months ahead of the 1986 appearance of Halley's Comet Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the o .... A 1997 edition includes additional material. References 1985 non-fiction books American non-fiction books English-language books Popular physics books Random House books Works by Carl Sagan Astronomy books Comets {{astronomy-book-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect.Extract of page 14 Initially an assistant professor at [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the only naked-eye comet that can appear twice in a human lifetime. Halley last appeared in the inner parts of the Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. Halley's periodic returns to the inner Solar System have been observed and recorded by astronomers around the world since at least 240 BC. But it was not until 1705 that the English astronomer Edmond Halley understood that these appearances were reappearances of the same comet. As a result of this discovery, the comet is named after Halley. During its 1986 visit to the inner Solar System, Halley's Comet became the first comet to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Works By Carl Sagan
Works may refer to: People * Caddy Works (1896–1982), American college sports coach * Samuel Works (c. 1781–1868), New York politician Albums * '' ''Works'' (Pink Floyd album)'', a Pink Floyd album from 1983 * ''Works'', a Gary Burton album from 1972 * ''Works'', a Status Quo album from 1983 * ''Works'', a John Abercrombie album from 1991 * ''Works'', a Pat Metheny album from 1994 * ''Works'', an Alan Parson Project album from 2002 * ''Works Volume 1'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * ''Works Volume 2'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * '' The Works'', a 1984 Queen album Other uses * Microsoft Works, a collection of office productivity programs created by Microsoft * IBM Works, an office suite for the IBM OS/2 operating system * Mount Works, Victoria Land, Antarctica See also * The Works (other) * Work (other) Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House Books
In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual random events are, by definition, unpredictable, but if the probability distribution is known, the frequency of different outcomes over repeated events (or "trials") is predictable.Strictly speaking, the frequency of an outcome will converge almost surely to a predictable value as the number of trials becomes arbitrarily large. Non-convergence or convergence to a different value is possible, but has probability zero. For example, when throwing two dice, the outcome of any particular roll is unpredictable, but a sum of 7 will tend to occur twice as often as 4. In this view, randomness is not haphazardness; it is a measure of uncertainty of an outcome. Randomness applies to concepts of chance, probability, and information entropy. The fields o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Popular Physics Books
Popularity or social status is the quality of being well liked, admired or well known to a particular group. Popular may also refer to: In sociology * Popular culture * Popular fiction * Popular music * Popular science * Populace, the total population of a certain place ** Populism, a political philosophy, based on the idea that the common people are being exploited. * Informal usage or custom, as in popular names, as opposed to formal or scientific nomenclature Companies * Popular, Inc., also known as ''Banco Popular'', a financial services company * Popular Holdings, a Singapore-based educational book company * The Popular (department store), a chain of department stores in El Paso, Texas, from 1902 to 1995 * ''The Popular Magazine'', an American literary magazine that ran for 612 issues from November 1903 to October 1931 Media Music * "Popular" (Darren Hayes song) (2004), on the album ''The Tension and the Spark'' * "Popular" (Eric Saade song) (2011), on the album ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English-language Books
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots language, Scots, and then closest related to the Low German, Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is Genetic relationship (linguistics), genealogically West Germanic language, West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by Langues d'oïl, dialects of France (about List of English words of French origin, 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Non-fiction Books
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1985 Non-fiction Books
The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a new agreement on fishing rights. * January 7 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches ''Sakigake'', Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union. * January 15 – Tancredo Neves is elected president of Brazil by the Congress, ending the 21-year military rule. * January 20 – Ronald Reagan is privately sworn in for a second term as President of the United States. * January 27 – The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is formed, in Tehran. * January 28 – The charity single record "We Are the World" is recorded by USA for Africa. February * February 4 – The border between Gibraltar and Spain reopen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Huggins
Sir William Huggins (7 February 1824 – 12 May 1910) was an English astronomer best known for his pioneering work in astronomical spectroscopy together with his wife, Margaret. Biography William Huggins was born at Cornhill, Middlesex, in 1824. In 1875, he married Margaret Lindsay, daughter of John Murray of Dublin, who also had an interest in astronomy and scientific research. She encouraged her husband's photography and helped to put their research on a systematic footing. Huggins built a private observatory at 90 Upper Tulse Hill, London, from where he and his wife carried out extensive observations of the spectral emission lines and absorption lines of various celestial objects. On 29 August 1864, Huggins was the first to take the spectrum of a planetary nebula when he analysed NGC 6543. He was also the first to distinguish between nebulae and galaxies by showing that some (like the Orion Nebula) had pure emission spectra characteristic of gas, while others ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan ( ; born June 13, 1949) is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning American documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series ''Cosmos'', hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, '' Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey'' and its sequel series, '' Cosmos: Possible Worlds'', as well as the book of the same name. She directed episodes of both series. In the late 1970s, she became the Creative Director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which produced the golden discs affixed to both the ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2'' spacecraft. She also published a novel, ''A Famous Broken Heart'', in 1977, and later co-wrote several best selling non-fiction books with Sagan. Early life Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. () and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitwear firm. Druyan's early interest in math a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy. In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that, while " things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmond Halley
Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, Halley catalogued the southern celestial hemisphere and recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised that a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the distances between Earth, Venus, and the Sun. Upon his return to England, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and with the help of King Charles II, was granted a master's degree from Oxford. Halley encouraged and helped fund the publication of Isaac Newton's influential ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687). From observations Halley made in September 1682, he used Newton's laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 ''Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets''. It was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
