Subjects

With orbits increasingly crowded with satellites, debris and space junk, the use of circum-terrestrial space is in danger of becoming the Wild West of the new millennium.

The overbearing entry of private entrepreneurs into the world of space has multiplied the number of services provided by in-orbit instruments, causing the space economy to grow tumultuously. Orbits are filling up alarmingly, and we are only at the beginning of the proliferation of mega constellations created to provide planet-wide Internet connections. There are no laws to manage the number of satellites in orbit, which are growing at such a dizzying rate that there are fears of real orbital bottlenecks that could cause catastrophic collisions.

We need to extend the concept of sustainable use to the space around us, but also to the other bodies in the solar system, so as not to repeat the same mistakes we have made on the Earth’s surface. Looking further afield, to the Moon and Mars, human settlements will have to respect the ecosystem of celestial bodies. Particular attention must be paid to the risks of biological pollution. Explorers (both human and robotic) risk transporting terrestrial material. Likewise, our handling of extraterrestrial samples requires well-equipped laboratories and continuous surveillance.

Ecological consciousness was also born thanks to images of the Earth from space. Thus we have discovered the beauty and fragility of our planet; now it is time to think about a new space ecology.

A traitorous translation, a capital work in the history of thought and two great scientists: these are the ingredients of Mazzarello’s new book.

The work in question is Darwin’s Origin of Species. The translation is the French one, published in 1862, by Clémence Royer, a liberal and progressive philosopher, which came into the hands of a young Lombroso, a military doctor about to join the expedition to repress banditry in Calabria.

In contact with a harsh and savage world, the scientist was among the first - if not the first - to concretely apply Darwin’s theory to the study of nature in Italy. Having become a professor in Pavia and then in Turin, Lombroso never stopped using evolution as a cognitive tool. From a distant source sprang racial hierarchies, populations, abnormal and criminal behaviour, and the mental inferiority of women.

It is on this basis that Paolo Mazzarello re-reads Lombroso’s anthropological vision, offering an evocative and original interpretation, which also allows him to shed new light on the early spread of Darwinian theories in Europe.

Questions about the Earth and the sky, the stars and the Universe, seemingly trivial, but the answer is not at all.

We all had a head full of questions and curiosity as children. As we grow up, many are answered, but some are simply forgotten. For example, how many really know why the sky is blue during the day and black at night? Or why the Earth spins, or why it is colder in the mountains than by the sea?

Each question is a pretext to make us reflect on what we have always taken for granted but which is not, to look at everyday phenomena with a different, more attentive and aware eye. The answers are designed for an adult audience that has retained the curiosity of children and wants to satisfy it in a serious and mature way.

The book is structured in a series of self-contained chapters, progressively zooming out from the more human and terrestrial questions to the larger ones about the Universe and the highest systems of reality.

A scientific and ethical approach to the preservation of some completely virgin patches of nature, to safeguard the future of humankind.

The book addresses the problem of the extinction of wildlife and plants by proposing solutions to mitigate the collapse in Anthropocene. For example, a deal to ensure the natural processes that guarantee the survival of biodiversity on just a small fraction (10%) of our planet.

From Linnaeus to Alexander von Humboldt and Darwin, the history of nature and of evolution is described, also passing through the disappearance of species or the replacement of some species with others, in a constant adaptation process to keep life on Earth.

The author ranges from the geometry of soccer balls to the combinatorics of tournament calendars, going through the physics of goal shots, the mathematics of sports betting, and the theory of games in penalty kicks.

The book is structured along the lines of a soccer match, with a pre-match stage, a first half, half-time, a second half, extra time, penalty kicks and the after match. That’s not all, since a lot of mathematics is embedded in the game of soccer: numbers, statistics and technology are now rapidly acquiring an important role on the pitches, as evidenced by the increasing significance of systems such as VAR or match analysis.

Every chapter starts with a soccer anecdote, which paves the way to questions where mathematics plays the main role.

This is a guide to the exploration of the heavens and to the discoveries made thanks to powerful new telescopes, which have revealed a universe very different from the one we were used to.

For thousands of years, astronomy relied on the human eye to observe the sky. But the stars do not just emit visible light: they also produce and radiate other types of light, from radio waves to gamma rays.

Here, the author shows us a much more energetic, violent, variable and unpredictable cosmos, where neutron stars pack more mass than the Sun into a 10-km-radius sphere. He explains how infrared rays can be used to observe the birth of a star and the formation of a planet.

This is a book to learn more about waste, ultra-safe reactors and attempts at energy efficiency, up to the search for Helium-3 on the Moon.

After decades of testing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was able to produce more energy than the amount used to trigger the reaction, giving concrete evidence of a breakthrough in energy production.

This book explains all the background to the discovery and its effects. Above all, it calls for transparency in the communication of a chequered news story. After showing how energy is produced by fusing deuterium and tritium nuclei, the author explains the myth of the Q-factor and presents the results of other ongoing experiments around the world.

This slim book is a reader-friendly overview of the predictability of various systems – physical, biological, economic or weather-related – and explains why it is often simply impossible to expect “certain” scientific forecasts.

Formulating predictions about how a given phenomenon is going to evolve is something everyone falls for: from top-tier media to pub chat, as soon as an event manifests itself it is engulfed in a deluge of predictions, many of them unfounded.

Can scientifically grounded predictions really be made, though? Well, it depends on the system we are considering. Indeed, very few systems can be predicted with a high degree of reliability; for the most part, any prediction is necessarily limited to a probabilistic estimate of multiple possible evolutions.

In addition to the objective difficulties inherent in these systems, there are also subjective unconscious psychological mechanisms that make one a bad predictor. Finally, some systems are unpredictable by their very nature. This is why, very often, simply acknowledging “I don’t know" is the most honest and scientifically grounded answer to the question “What’s going to happen?”.

These adventure-packed, stunning and sometimes even dramatic stories show us how astounding and underrated the abilities, intelligence and social skills of so many animals we share our earthly existence with are.

Paul the octopus predicted the outcome of football World Cup matches; Hachikō the dog was the symbol of loyalty to his master; Jumbo the elephant was the undisputed star of the Barnum Circus; Keiko the orca became an international celebrity after starring in the family film Free Willy.

These and many other stories in Lucifredi’s book remind us that animals have often been veritable stars in human history, society and entertainment, helping us to better understand them and boosting our respect for them.

This is the fascinating story of ten instruments that changed medicine and our lives forever.

How did Sherlock Holmes single out a doctor in the crowd? What links an eclectic French professor armed with a strange rifle without bullets, running horses and the measurement of blood pressure? What is the relationship between a Pink Floyd album and the development of the pulse oximeter, or between the Beatles and the invention of the CT scan? How do smart watches directly perform an electrocardiogram from the wearer’s wrist?

Page after page of historical anecdotes, scientific curiosities, outstanding discoveries and bizarre experiments, we discover the extraordinary journey behind every medical instrument. Art, science and culture merged in the lives of creative and tenacious women and men who revolutionised their ages and laid the foundations of modern medicine.