Science

Planet Earth is f**ked.

Decades of gas-guzzling and plastic parasites have brought the Earth to its knees. Entire species are disappearing, the icecaps are melting and forest fires are raging like never before. Basically, we've really messed the place up.

Packed full of easy-to-digest climate truths and IFLScience's trademark witty humour, How to F**king Save the Planet is your essential handbook to global warming and climate change. Learn how to successfully argue with climate-deniers, why micro-plastic pollution means that polar bears can no longer get boners and why the Paris Climate Agreement is really important.

Written by Jennifer Crouch with global go-to science site IFLScience, let this book guide, infuriate and inspire you into getting up off your arse and actually doing something to save the world!

An award-winning author takes us into the world of DNA, exploring how it encodes our genes and make us unique. This condensed, updated version of How to Code a Human makes this remarkable history succinct and accessible.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick solved one of science’s greatest enigmas—the molecule underlying all life—and changed the face of biology. For the first time, scientists could isolate what makes us human. DNA provides a fascinating guide to the world of the double helix, examining who we are, how we’re wired, and how we repair ourselves. With information on so-called “junk” DNA, how our genes evolved, heritability, the genetics of neuroscience, viruses, disease, and what happens when things go wrong, this takes us on a beautiful, visual journey through the polymer chain.

Get swept up in the beauty of our universe with this collection of spectacular images taken by today’s most powerful telescopes and orbiting probes.

These breathtaking photographs both enthrall and inform as they reveal the many wonders of outer space. Moving from the planets in our own solar system, to the Milky Way, to the far ends of the universe, this stunning volume features images taken by Earth’s largest telescopes—including the Hubble, Herschel, and Keck telescopes in Hawaii—along with those sent back by spacecraft such as Cassini and New Horizons. Gaze at merging galaxies, overlapping galaxies, and galaxies undergoing huge bursts of star formation, as well as the most distant objects we are able to glimpse. The images, which come from agencies such as NASA and the European Southern Observatory in Chile, all include commentary by an expert astronomer who explains what we are looking at and provides technical information on how the photo was achieved.

New in paperback and retitled edition of ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY.

The Witch's Garden describes over 50 of the world's most powerful, harmful, legendary and storied plants – from the screaming mandrake to calming St John's Wort, to predicting the weather with seaweed, the creation of salves for broken hearts, sore heads, protection from evil spirits and to even induce immortality.

Wise women, apothecaries, witches, herbalists: whatever you like to call them, those who cultivate plants for their apparent mystical properties have existed for thousands of years. The Witch's Garden tells the story of our folkloric fascination with these magical specimens, documenting the beliefs and rituals surrounding the natural world. Illustrated with pages from herbals held within the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, along with botanical illustrations and archival images depicting magic and mayhem, The Witch's Garden beautifully evokes the bewitching nature of mysterious plants.

Authoritative, accessible and filled with wonder, this new condensed version of The Elements is the definitive guide to the building blocks of everything in our world.

What links the Taj Mahal and our skeleton? Calcium. The Eiffel Tower and our blood? Iron. Everything in the known universe—from street lamps to salted French fries—is made up of one of the 118 elements. Popular-science writer Jack Challoner takes us on an illustrated tour of the Periodic Table, revealing the mystery of how the material world works. This definitive guide covers every element, providing its vital statistics, main compounds, uses, and fascinating histories.

Where natural occurrences once controlled climate, geology and the genesis and demise of species, humankind now holds the reins.

The Human Age is an intrepid exploration of the new geological epoch in which we now find ourselves: the Anthropocene. Defined as the Age of Man, this is the epoch in which human beings have become the driving forces that mold, transform and destroy Earth.

Bringing together scientific theory, political argument, philosophical questioning and our deepest fears and hopes for the future, The Human Age explores this new age through informative and compelling text, and astounding photographs of the impact of human life on Earth. Powerful graphics depict the changing nature of the landscape and the very bedrock of our planet, and the destruction of ancient systems and environments that is resulting in global upheaval and climate breakdown. Creating a visual and written timeline of the age of human domination, The Human Age reveals how this era was born, the ways in which it is impacting us and our planet now, and the outlook for the future.

Meltdown investigates and recreates the dramatic events behind the most notorious nuclear accidents in history, as well as those shrouded in secrecy.

Combining human tragedy with intriguing science, each account reveals new aspects of humanity's complex relationship with nuclear power and the ongoing struggle to harness and control it. From the pioneers of Los Alamos who got up close and personal with the cores of atomic bombs, to the hapless engineers in Soviet fuel-processing plants who unwittingly mixed up a disaster in a bucket, and from the terrifying impact of a tsunami at Fukushima to the mystery of the recent Russian incident, Meltdown explores the past and future of this extraordinary and potentially lethal source of infinite power.

Everything in the universe is made up of the elements – including us.

Forged in the Big Bang, the elements and their resulting compounds created the solar system, planet Earth, the air we breathe, the water we rely on and the proteins that would become life. In fact, everything in the known Universe is made up of one of the 118 elements of the periodic table – so we really should know something about them! This little book is the perfect guide, listing all the elements' vital stats, and exploring their astonishing histories and usages in an accessible and easy-to-understand way.

Expert science writer Giles Sparrow guides you through 21 stars you can see in the night sky and what they can teach us about our universe.

On a clear evening, if you look up you can see thousands of stars shining in the dark sky, each with a story of their own. Taking 21 stars (and three imposters, that cheekily aren’t technically stars), expert science writer Giles Sparrow offers a complete introduction to what is happening up in the night sky. Sparrow draws ‘star maps' to help you easily identify the celestial bodies and then explains (for anyone not an astronomer themselves) what this particular pinprick of light can tell us about the birth, life and death of our universe.

From red giants, quasars and supernovae to black holes, multiple stars and even our own Sun, this fascinating book tells the intriguing, inspiring and sometimes incredible story of how we came to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, and what we learnt along the way. So look up at the sky and marvel at its wonders with this exciting new book.

Deep time is the timescale of the geological events that have shaped our planet. Whilst so immense as to challenge human understanding, its evidence is nonetheless visible all around us.

Through explanations of the latest research and over 200 fascinating images, Deep Time explores this evidence, from the visible layers in ancient rock to the hiss of static on the radio, and from fossilized shark’s teeth to underwater forests. These relics of ancient epochs, many of which we can see and touch today, connect our present to the distant past and answer broader questions about our place in the timeline of the Earth.

Charting 4.5 billion years of geological history, this is the story of our world, from its birth to the dawn of civilization.

With unparalleled access to NASA’s archives, this stunning volume pays tribute to 50 years of Mars exploration.

Thanks to the latest exhilarating Mars expeditions, all eyes have turned to the once-mysterious red planet. This illuminating book traces our history of Mars exploration, from the earliest telescopic viewings, through NASA’s first flybys in the 1960s, to the landers in the 1970s, and the increasingly sophisticated rovers and orbiters now exploring every region of the planet. 

The elaborate plans for the human exploration of Mars are also shown in exquisite detail, including NASA’s ambitious designs for crewed missions and some compelling alternative mission plans by experts such as Buzz Aldrin. With breathtaking photographs and rare images of plans, maps, schematics, and more, including insider documents from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the story of mankind’s fascination with Mars jumps off the page.

In 2004 a rock star, a TV astronomer and a young research astronomer sat down to write the story of the Universe in the order in which it happened, from its birth at the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, through to its ultimate demise in the infinitely far future.

The aim of this book is to explain the Big Bang and everything that followed in a way that made sense, in the strict order in which events occurred, and without using maths, so it would be understandable to everyone, regardless of educational background. The original edition of Bang! was a bestseller, and a go-to for anyone wanting to understand the story of the origins and evolution of our Universe that did not duck the science.

Since the first edition, thousands of planets have been discovered, the 'habitable zone' has expanded and a flotilla of new satellites has explored our own solar system, bringing back fresh images and new science. In this book all the latest findings about the evolution of stars and galaxies are included, and the current thinking about our ultimate origins. The latest ideas about Dark Matter and Dark Energy are explained, all illustrated with new images from the world's largest telescopes and space missions.

This is the new, updated, popular guide to 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' – The Complete History of the Universe.