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#2261725 in Books Ball Philip 2016-02-25 2015-04-08Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .90 x 6.00l, .0 #File Name: 022637825X322 pagesInvisible The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen | File size: 58.Mb

Philip Ball : Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen:

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. It appears this book was published by the Department of Redundancy DepartmentBy Robert A. AdamsI stopped reading after a couple chapters. This book needs an editor. ... BADLY.I lost count of how many times I was told the formula for an . Most included the eye of some critter or person and some required the recitation of the names of . But I did not need each and every formula. One called for the eye of a bat, another for the eye of a criminal, etc. OK! OK! I get it! I'm going to need some creature's eye and a list of names. But I really don't need every recipe known to mankind. What's next?0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Now You See It, ....By Rob HardyEveryone has, at sometime or other, imagined what it would be like to be invisible. The possibility of being able to observe, and possibly act, when no one else can tell you are doing so is a thrill that, despite its impossibility, has fired imaginations for millennia. We have been able to come to understanding of some previously invisible realms; we still canrsquo;t see ghosts with any reliability, but microbes are no longer invisible to us. The fascination with things we cannot see is detailed in _Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen_ (University of Chicago Press) by science writer Philip Ball. He has a huge topic, which he treats mostly chronologically, with impressive detail and a good deal of humor. Invisibility, from legends to camouflage to Hollywood to current technological tricks, is all here.The first pages have to do with the moral challenge of invisibility: ldquo;If you could be invisible, what would _you_ do? The chances are that it will have something to do with power, wealth or sex. Perhaps all three, given the opportunity.rdquo; Even way back in Platorsquo;s _Republic_ the moral problem of this imaginary power was considered. Plato acknowledged that none of us would be up to the task of staying moral if we could select invisibility. Turning invisible was such a desirable skill that procuring it was included in every good grimoire. During the Renaissance, understanding meant understanding natural magic, and anyone could realize that there were invisible forces at work in nature. Ball writes, ldquo;Mastery of the framework of natural magic was nothing more than a question of acquiring a deep understanding of nature: the objective today claimed by science.rdquo; Much of _Invisible_ involves a push and pull between legends and magic on the one hand and science on the other, and Ball shows how ancient dreams of invisibility inform scientific efforts to investigate it, just as science has built on other fantasies about time travel, space travel, or immortality. A most interesting section of the book deals with the spiritualists who insisted that they were doing a scientific investigation of the invisible realm to which the dead had passed, and who from time to time got scientists to investigate and to ally with them. Ball explains that we think that we can see the world and universe around us, but we are fooling ourselves. Take into account the relatively new concepts of dark energy and dark matter, and the universe is overwhelmingly dark, leaving just five percent of all energy and matter that we can actually see. To contemplate all these invisibilities is to realize how we are swimming in a sea of ignorance, and how little even Carl Saganrsquo;s candle in the dark can avail us.After a tour of invisibility that takes in the fright wig used on the stage by David Garrick (seeing Hamletrsquo;s fatherrsquo;s ghost), the dazzle stripes used to make ships look unshiplike, Rosicrucianism, stage magic, spirit photography, and much more, Ballrsquo;s final chapter takes us to what we really want to, well, not see: the real cloak of invisibility. There are scientific efforts that are trying to make effective what is theoretically possible by fooling around with such things as lightrsquo;s (best seen in objects appearing bent when put into water). It ought to be possible to bend waves and then bend them back, so that they emerge on their original trajectory without being blocked by the cloaked object. So far, only cloaking from microwaves, in two dimensions, has been done, so we are pretty far from a cloak of invisibility. Maybe we will get there someday, and we will have to worry realistically about how invisible humans will behave, as Plato theorized long ago.1 of 8 people found the following review helpful. I have been looking for sg like this. ThxBy MarabuClever. I have been looking for sg like this. Thx.

If offered the chancemdash;by cloak, spell, or superpowermdash;to be invisible, who wouldnrsquo;t want to give it a try? We are drawn to the idea of stealthy voyeurism and the ability to conceal our own acts, but as desirable as it may seem, invisibility is also dangerous. It is not just an optical phenomenon, but a condition full of ethical questions. As esteemed science writer Philip Ball reveals in this book, the story of invisibility is not so much a matter of how it might be achieved but of why we want it and what we would do with it. In this lively look at a timeless idea, Ball provides the first comprehensive history of our fascination with the unseen. This sweeping narrative moves from medieval spell books to the latest nanotechnology, from fairy tales to telecommunications, from camouflage to ghosts to the dawn of nuclear physics and the discovery of dark energy. Along the way, Invisible tells little-known stories about medieval priests who blamed their misdeeds on spirits; the Cock Lane ghost, which intrigued both Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens; the attempts by Victorian scientist William Crookes to detect forces using tiny windmills; novelist Edward Bulwer-Lyttonrsquo;s belief that he was unseen when in his dressing gown; and military efforts to enlist magicians to hide tanks and ships during WWII. Bringing in such voices as Plato and Shakespeare, Ball provides not only a scientific history but a cultural onemdash;showing how our simultaneous desire for and suspicion of the invisible has fueled invention and the imagination for centuries. In this unusual and clever book, Ball shows that our fantasies about being unseenmdash;and seeing the unseenmdash;reveal surprising truths about who we are. ldquo;A former editor at Nature and the author of nineteen previous books (he should write about that superpower), Ball leads us on a very fun, largely chronological journey through invisibility, beginning with myth and early magicians, ending with quantum physics, and stopping along the way at Newton, Leibniz, microscopy, photography, , B movies, and science fiction. He is lucid and interesting on every topic he touches, from the ghost in lsquo;Hamletrsquo; to those unseen extra dimensions posited by string theory.rdquo;

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