New Scientist has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is How Numbers Work.
How Numbers Work
Summary
Think of a number between one and 10. No, hang on, let's make this interesting. Between zero and infinity. Even if you stick to the whole numbers, there are a lot to choose from - an infinite number in fact. Throw in decimal fractions, and infinity suddenly gets an awful lot bigger (is that even possible?). And then there are the negative numbers, the imaginary numbers, the irrational numbers like pi which never end. It literally never ends. The world of numbers is indeed strange and beautiful. Among its inhabitants are some really notable characters - pi, e, the 'imaginary' number i and the famous golden ratio to name just a few. Prime numbers occupy a special status. Zero is very odd indeed: is it a number, or isn't it? How Numbers Work takes a tour of this mind-blowing but beautiful realm of numbers and the mathematical rules that connect them. Not only that but take a crash course on the biggest unsolved problems that keep mathematicians up at night, find out about the strange and unexpected ways mathematics influences our everyday lives and discover the incredible connection between numbers and reality itself. About the series New Scientist Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points to the most important subjects in science; subjects that challenge, attract debate, invite controversy and engage the most enquiring minds. Designed for curious listeners who want to know how things work and why, the Instant Expert series explores the topics that really matter and their impact on individuals, society, and the planet, translating the scientific complexities around us into language that's open to everyone and putting new ideas and discoveries into perspective and context. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 New Scientist (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
This Book Will Blow Your Mind
Summary
What's the nature of reality? Does the universe ever end? What is time, and does it even exist? These are the biggest imagination-stretching, brain-staggering questions in the universe - and here are their fascinating answers. From quantum weirdness to freaky cosmology (like white holes - which spew out matter instead of sucking it in), This Book Will Blow Your Mind takes you on an epic journey to the furthest extremes of science, to the things you never thought possible. This book will explain: Why part of the universe is missing (and how scientists finally found it) How time might also flow backwards How human head transplants might be possible (in the very near future) Whether the universe is a hologram And why we are all zombies Filled with counterintuitive stories and factoids you can't wait to share as well as lots of did-you-knows and plenty of how-did-we-ever-not-knows, this will blow your mind - and then put it back together again. You don't need a spaceship to travel to the extremes of science. You just need this audiobook.
©2018 New Scientist (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
New Scientist: The Origin of (Almost) Everything
Summary
Does Anything Eat Wasps? meets Information Is Beautiful: a journey through life, the universe and everything. From what actually happened in the big bang to the accidental discovery of Post-it notes, science is packed with surprising discoveries. Did you know, for instance, that if you were to get too close to a black hole it would suck you up like a noodle (it's called spaghettification), why your keyboard is laid out in QWERTY (it's not to make it easier to type) or whether the invention of the wheel was less important to civilisation than the bag (think about it)? New Scientist does. And now they want to take you on a whistle-stop journey from the start of our universe (through the history of stars, galaxies, meteorites, the moon and dark energy) to our planet (through oceans and weather to oil) and life (through dinosaurs to emotions and sex) to civilisation (from cities to alcohol and cooking) and knowledge (from alphabets to alchemy), ending up with technology (computers to rocket science). Witty essays explore concepts that zoom from how many people have ever lived to showing you how a left-wing brain differs from a right-wing one.
©2017 New Scientist (P)2017 John Murray Press
Your Conscious Mind
Summary
A voyage through the mind to discover what consciousness really is and what we can learn when it goes awry. What is this strange mental world that seems so essential to being human? The conscious mind brings together sensations, perceptions, thoughts and memories to generate the seamless movie of a person's life. It makes us aware of the world around us and our own self. How all this emerges from a kilogram of brain cells is one of the greatest unanswered questions. In Your Conscious Mind, leading brain scientists and New Scientist take you on a journey through the mind to discover what consciousness really is and what we can learn when it goes awry. Find out if we will ever build conscious machines and what animal consciousness can tell us about being human and explore the enigma of free will. New Scientist Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points to the most important subjects in science - subjects that challenge, attract debate, invite controversy and engage the most enquiring minds. Designed for curious listeners who want to know how things work and why, the Instant Expert series explores the topics that really matter and their impact on individuals, society and the planet, translating the scientific complexities around us into language that's open to everyone and putting new ideas and discoveries into perspective and context. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our desktop site.
©2017 New Scientist (P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
The Quantum World
Summary
In The Quantum World, leading physicists and New Scientist take you on a journey through quantum theory, its mind-bending properties and the technologies transforming our world. Forget everything you thought you knew about reality. The world is a seriously bizarre place. Things can exist in two places at once and travel backwards and forwards in time. Waves and particles are one and the same, and objects change their behaviour according to whether they are being watched. This is not some alternative universe but the realm of the very small, where quantum mechanics rules. In this weird world of atoms and their constituents, our commonsense understanding of reality breaks down - yet quantum mechanics has never failed an experimental test. What does it all mean? For all its weirdness, quantum mechanics has given us many practical technologies, including lasers and the transistors that underlie computers and all digital technology. In the future it promises computers more powerful than any built before, the ability to communicate with absolute privacy and even quantum teleportation. The Quantum World explores the past, present and future of quantum science, its applications and its mind-bending implications. Discover how ideas from quantum mechanics are percolating out into the vast scale of the cosmos - perhaps, in the future, to reveal a new understanding of the big bang and the nature of space and time. New Scientist Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points to the most important subjects in science; subjects that challenge, attract debate, invite controversy and engage the most enquiring minds. Designed for curious listeners who want to know how things work and why, the Instant Expert series explores the topics that really matter and their impact on individuals, society and the planet, translating the scientific complexities around us into language that's open to everyone and putting new ideas and discoveries into perspective and context. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 New Scientist (P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
The Brain
Summary
Everything you need to know about your brain: an eye-opening handbook. Congratulations! You're the proud owner of the most complex information processing device in the known universe. The human brain comes equipped with all sorts of useful design features, but also many bugs and weaknesses. Problem is you don't get an owner's manual. You have to just plug and play. As a result, most of us never properly understand how our brains work and what they're truly capable of. We fail get the best out of them, ignore some of their most useful features and struggle to overcome their design faults. Featuring witty essays and fascinating 'try this at home' experiments, New Scientist take you on a journey through intelligence, memory, creativity, the unconscious and beyond. From the strange ways to distort what we think of as 'reality' to the brain hacks that can improve memory, The Brain: A User's Guide will help you understand your brain and show you how to use it to its full potential.
©2018 New Scientist (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited