Richard Panek

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes-and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing. Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. Award-winning science writer Richard Panek stands us shoulder to shoulder with senior scientists as they conceive the mission, meet decades-long challenges to bring it to fruition, and, now, use its unprecedented technology to yield new discoveries about the origins of our solar system, to search for life on planets around other suns, and to trace the growth of hundreds of billions of galaxies all the way back to the birth of the first stars. The Webb telescope has captured the world's imagination, and Pillars of Creation shows how and why-including through sixteen pages of awe-inspiring, full-color photos. At once a testament to human ingenuity and a celebration of mankind's biggest leap yet into the cosmos, Panek's eye-opening book reveals our universe as we've never seen it before-through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope, a marvel that is itself a pillar of creation.

Nobody knows - and just about nobody knows that nobody knows. How something so pervasive can also be so mysterious, and how that mystery can be so wholly unrecognised outside the field of physics, is one of the greatest conundrums in modern science. But as award-winning author Richard Panek shows in this ground breaking, mind-bending book, gravity is a cold case that’s beginning to heat up. In The Trouble with Gravity, Panek invites the reader to experience this ubiquitous yet elusive force in a breathtakingly new way. Gravity, Panek explains, structures not only our bodies and our physical world, but also our minds and culture. From our very beginnings, humans’ conceptions of gravity have been inextricably bound to our understanding of existence itself. As we get closer and closer to solving the riddle of gravity, it is not only physics that is becoming clearer. We are also getting to know ourselves as never before.

Temple Grandin may be the most famous person with autism, a condition that affects 1 in 88 children. Since her birth in 1947, our understanding of it has undergone a great transformation, leading to more hope than ever before that we may finally learn the causes of and treatments for autism. Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the advances in neuroimaging and genetic research that link brain science to behavior, even sharing her own brain scan to show which anomalies might explain common symptoms. Most excitingly, she argues that raising and educating kids on the autism spectrum must focus on their long-overlooked strengths to foster their unique contributions. The Autistic Brain brings Grandin's singular perspective into the heart of the autism revolution.

In The Autistic Brain, New York Times bestselling author Temple Grandin "has reached a stunning level of sophistication about herself and the science of autism" (The New York Review of Books). Winner of a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Nonfiction BookTemple Grandin may be the most famous person with autism, a condition that affects 1 in 88 children. Since her birth in 1947, our understanding of it has undergone a great transformation, leading to more hope than ever before that we may finally learn the causes of and treatments for autism. Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the advances in neuroimaging and genetic research that link brain science to behavior, even sharing her own brain scan to show which anomalies might explain common symptoms. Most excitingly, she argues that raising and educating kids on the autism spectrum must focus on their long-overlooked strengths to foster their unique contributions. The Autistic Brain brings Grandin's singular perspective into the heart of the autism revolution.

Offers author's own experience as an autistic person alongside remarkable new discoveries about the autistic brain, as well as genetic research. This book highlights long-ignored sensory problems as well as the need to treat autism symptom by symptom, rather than with an umbrella diagnosis.

It is one of the most disturbing aspects of our universe: only four per cent of it consists of the matter that makes up every star, planet, and every book. The rest is completely unknown. Acclaimed science writer Richard Panek tells the story of the handful of scientists who have spent the past few decades on a quest to unlock the secrets of “dark matter” and the even stranger substance called “dark energy”. These are perhaps the greatest mysteries in science,and solving them will reshape our understanding of the universe and our place in it. The stakes could not be higher. Panek’s fast-paced narrative, filled with original, in-depth reporting and intimate, behind-the-scenes details, brings this epic story to life for the very first time.

"Fascinating . . . One of the most important stories in the history of science."-- Washington Post In recent years, a handful of scientists has been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of how scientists reached this cosmos-shattering conclusion. In vivid detail, he narrates the quest to find the "dark" matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy that make up 96 percent of the universe. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize. Based on hundreds of interviews and in-depth, on-site reporting, the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations, the eureka moments and blind alleys, that have redefined science and reinvented the universe. "A lively new account of twentieth-century (plus a little twenty-first-century) cosmology . . . The book is as much about how the science got done as about the science itself."--Salon