The Cosmic Computer [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Download

Author: H. Beam Piper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546450146
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Conn Maxwell told them: "There are incredible things still undiscovered; most of the important installations were built in duplicate as a precaution against space attack. I know where all of them are. "But I could find nothing, not one single word, about any giant strategic planning computer called Merlin!" Nevertheless the leading men of the planet didn't believe him. They couldn't, for the search for Merlin had become their abiding obsession. Merlin meant everything to them: power, pleasures, and profits unlimited. Conn had known they'd never believe him, and so he had a trick or two up his space-trained sleeve that might outwit even their fabled Cosmic Computer ... if they dared accept his challenge.

Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780547415765
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Cosmic Jackpot is Paul Davies’s eagerly awaited return to cosmology, the successor to his critically acclaimed bestseller The Mind of God. Here he tackles all the "big questions," including the biggest of them all: Why does the universe seem so well adapted for life? In his characteristically clear and elegant style, Davies shows how recent scientific discoveries point to a perplexing fact: many different aspects of the cosmos, from the properties of the humble carbon atom to the speed of light, seem tailor-made to produce life. A radical new theory says it’s because our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes, each one slightly different. Our universe is bio-friendly by accident -- we just happened to win the cosmic jackpot. While this "multiverse" theory is compelling, it has bizarre implications, such as the existence of infinite copies of each of us and Matrix-like simulated universes. And it still leaves a lot unexplained. Davies believes there’s a more satisfying solution to the problem of existence: the observations we make today could help shape the nature of reality in the remote past. If this is true, then life -- and, ultimately, consciousness -- aren’t just incidental byproducts of nature, but central players in the evolution of the universe. Whether he’s elucidating dark matter or dark energy, M-theory or the multiverse, Davies brings the leading edge of science into sharp focus, provoking us to think about the cosmos and our place within it in new and thrilling ways.

Author: Tal Brooke
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781507697306
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The "Riders of the Cosmic Circuit" are those who emerge from that rare explosion into superconsciousness called enlightenment, an exalted state attained by a mere fraction down the ages. Family and friends no longer recognize them, as they have changed on a fundamental level. Claiming Godhood, they operate behind an unreadable mask, manipulating those around them who believe their claims to deity. To onlookers they have an unknowable intelligence. If enlightenment is like a black hole in deep space whose event horizon descends into blackness, what measuring stick can the normal mind use to judge those who claim to be enlightened and "One with God." How can anyone judge those who claim to be as above ordinary human consciousness as it is above the awareness level of the ant? RIDERS OF THE COSMIC CIRCUIT explores this deepest of conundrums. Something seems to possess the human hosts who have willfully abandoned the controls of their souls, wills and minds in this all out quest for Godhood. Is there a dark side to this superconsciousness and does it have motives beyond the reach of most people? Is it capable of deception and evil, and is there a pattern or map we can use to understand this alien terrain? A powerful source suggests that superconsciousness in reality is a state of perfect possession-a figure-ground reversal of all claims to Godhood. Some disturbing patterns emerge as the present quest examines some enigmatic and shrouded aspects of three of the most famous and powerful Riders of our era who have been at work in India and beyond, magnetizing followers and capturing lives.

Author: Greg Egan
Publisher: Greg Egan
ISBN: 1922240044
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In 2975, the orphan Yatima is grown from a randomly mutated digital mind seed in the conceptory of Konishi polis. Yatima explores the Coalition of Polises, the network of computers where most life in the solar system now resides, and joins a friend, Inoshiro, to borrow an abandoned robot body and meet a thriving community of “fleshers” in the enclave of Atlanta. Twenty-one years later, news arrives from a lunar observatory: gravitational waves from Lac G-1, a nearby pair of neutron stars, show that the Earth is about to be bathed in a gamma-ray flash created by the stars’ collision — an event that was not expected to take place for seven million years. Yatima and Inoshiro return to Atlanta to try to warn the fleshers, but meet suspicion and disbelief. Some lives are saved, but the Earth is ravaged. In the aftermath of the disaster, the survivors resolve to discover the cause of the neutron stars’ premature collision, and they launch a thousand polises into interstellar space in search of answers. This diaspora eventually reaches a planet subtly transformed to encode a message from an older group of travellers: a greater danger than Lac G-1 is imminent, and the only escape route leads beyond the visible universe.

Author: Kenyon College
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780316151467
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously' How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion' The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

Author: Ian Tregillis
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466810203
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas's vision of Heaven. It's a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God. Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a con job one billion years in the making. Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has decided to break out of heaven, but they need a human patsy to make their plan work. Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss, a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip Marlowe. The yarn he spins follows the progression of a Marlowe novel—the mysterious dame who needs his help, getting grilled by the bulls, finding a stiff, getting slipped a mickey. Angels and gunsels, dames with eyes like fire, and a grand maguffin, Something More Than Night is a murder mystery for the cosmos. A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013 At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448181984
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Three book editors, jaded by reading far too many crackpot manuscripts on the mystic and the occult, are inspired by an extraordinary conspiracy story told to them by a strange colonel to have some fun. They start feeding random bits of information into a powerful computer capable of inventing connections between the entries, thinking they are creating nothing more than an amusing game, but then their game starts to take over, the deaths start mounting, and they are forced into a frantic search for the truth

Author: Carl Sagan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 150117231X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and astronomer Carl Sagan imagines the greatest adventure of all—the discovery of an advanced civilization in the depths of space. In December of 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who—or what—is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future—and our own.

Author: Vladimir V. Uchaikin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642339115
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The first derivative of a particle coordinate means its velocity, the second means its acceleration, but what does a fractional order derivative mean? Where does it come from, how does it work, where does it lead to? The two-volume book written on high didactic level answers these questions. Fractional Derivatives for Physicists and Engineers— The first volume contains a clear introduction into such a modern branch of analysis as the fractional calculus. The second develops a wide panorama of applications of the fractional calculus to various physical problems. This book recovers new perspectives in front of the reader dealing with turbulence and semiconductors, plasma and thermodynamics, mechanics and quantum optics, nanophysics and astrophysics. The book is addressed to students, engineers and physicists, specialists in theory of probability and statistics, in mathematical modeling and numerical simulations, to everybody who doesn't wish to stay apart from the new mathematical methods becoming more and more popular. Prof. Vladimir V. UCHAIKIN is a known Russian scientist and pedagogue, a Honored Worker of Russian High School, a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He is the author of about three hundreds articles and more than a dozen books (mostly in Russian) in Cosmic ray physics, Mathematical physics, Levy stable statistics, Monte Carlo methods with applications to anomalous processes in complex systems of various levels: from quantum dots to the Milky Way galaxy.

Author: Greg Pincus
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338108867
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Gregory K., overwhelmed by homework, decides to make a stand -- but the stand takes on momentum of its own and Gregory has to live with the consequences. Gregory K. has too much homework.Middle school is hard work, and Gregory tries to be a good student. He participates in class, he studies for his tests -- he and his friends even help each other with their assignments. But no matter what he does, there's never enough time to finish all his homework. It just isn't fair.So Gregory goes on a total, complete homework strike. No worksheets, no essays, no projects. His friends think he's crazy. His parents are worried about his grades. And his principal just wants him to stop making trouble. Can Gregory rally his fellow students, make his voice heard, and still pass seventh grade?Find out in this book for anyone who thinks school is stressful, gets headaches from homework, or just wants to be heard.