Project Orion

Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship

by George B. Dyson

It was the late 1950s. The Cold War was raging. Sputnik had made its voyage and the space race was on. In America, it was the age of tail fins and "duck and cover," but it was also a time of big ideas and dreams. On his way to school one day, George Dyson learned of a truly fantastical idea: massive space vehicles that would be powered by explosions of multiple hydrogen bombs. Among the brilliant minds behind this project was George's father, the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson.

Project Orion brought together a cadre of brilliant physicists, the first such assemblage since the Manhattan Project of fifteen years earlier. In an idyllic seaside community in southern California-the very picture of 1950s suburban prosperity-a handful of scientists, tackled a massive project that required the ingenuity of an engineer and the vision of a great theoretician.

Their ambitious work, although ultimately futile, took place against the political and cultural backdrop of the Cold War, when nuclear technology spelled both promise and terror. Dyson's prodigious historical and scientific research, combined with his personal reminiscences and connections, make for a lively, richly detailed narrative.

The story of the first attempt to use nuclear power for manned star flight.

NASA has just released a new video of its next deep space rocket, to see it click Here.

TB

Does Time Flow?

The Fabric of the Cosmos : Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
by Greene, Brian

In 1999, Greene, one of the world's leading physicists, published The Elegant Universe, a
popular presentation of string theory that became a major bestseller and, last fall, a highly rated PBS/Nova series. The strength of the book resided in Greene's unparalleled (among contemporary science writers) ability to translate higher mathematics (the language of physics) and its findings into everyday language and images, through adept use of metaphor and analogy, and crisp, witty prose. The same virtues adhere to this new book, which offers a lively view of human understanding of space and time, an understanding of which string theory is an as-yet unproven advance. To do this, Greene takes a roughly chronological approach, beginning with Newton, moving through Einstein and quantum physics, and on to string theory and its hypotheses (that there are 11 dimensions, ten of space and one of time; that there may be an abundance of parallel universes; that time travel may be possible, and so on) and imminent experiments that may test some of its tenets. None of this is easy reading, mostly because the concepts are tough to grasp and Greene never seems to compromise on accuracy. Eighty-five line drawings ease the task, however, as does Greene's felicitous narration; most importantly, though, Greene not only makes concepts clear but explains why they matter.
Publishers Weekly

This wonderful book will make you think and challenge your perceptions of time and space. Throughout Greene will describe the experiments which back up his facts but will also give the reader the option to skip ahead if the experiment detail is too much. Lots of Simpson and Star Wars examples help explain complicated physics. As to the question does time flow? The answer is on page 139.
TB