When the amphibious Duplex Drive (DD) Sherman tanks of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (QMO) touched down on the sand of Sword Beach as the vanguard of the D-Day invasion, ahead of the infantry and Commandos, it was the culmination of an evolution spanning several years. Switching roles from a mounted regiment in India, into a mechanized, armored cavalry regiment, they fought in France in 1940, then faced an uncertain future, after evacuating through Dunkirk. However, the 13th/18th would subse...

Over 50 years ago, astronomers launched the world's first orbiting telescope to gaze further into outer space to examine anything that appears in the sky above our heads, from comets and planets to galaxy clusters and stars. Since then, almost 100 space telescopes have been launched from Earth and are orbiting our planet, with 26 still active and relaying information back to us.As a result of these space-based instruments, such as NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope, we know much ...

**Dreams, schemes and opportunity as space opens for tourism and commerce.Twentieth century space exploration may have belonged to state-funded giants such as NASA, but there is a parallel history which has set the template for the future.**Even before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, private companies were exploiting space via communication satellites - a sector that is seeing exponential growth in the internet age. In human spaceflight, too, commercialisation is making itsel...

Extraterrestrial life is a common theme inscience fiction, but is it a serious prospect in the real world? Astrobiologyis the emerging field of science that seeks to answer this question.The possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmosis one of the most profound subjects that human beings can ponder. AstrophysicistAndrew May gives an expert overview of our current state of knowledge, lookingat how life started on Earth, the tell-tale 'signatures' it...

As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with anasteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only inthe last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs hadbeen wiped out by just such an impact.Now the science community is making up for lost time, withworldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earthobjects, and plans for high-tech hardwar...

Horrors of the caves! The ghastly true story of the Cheddar cannibals! Twilight of the Empire! Romans, Saxons and the legends of King Arthur! Swords against the Vikings! The Somerset heroes who defied the Norse hordes! Martyrs, murderers, pirates and mad scientists – Somerset's strangest residents revealed! Death storm! The terrible toll of the Great Storm of 1703! Spies in Somerset! Containing more than two thousand years of Somerset history, thrill to stunning true stori...

Mars is back. Suddenly everyone – from Elon Musk to Ridley Scott to Donald Trump – is talking about going to the Red Planet.When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However NASA's Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot. The much-anticipated crewed mission failed to materialise, defeated by a combination of technological and political challenges.Four decades after Viking and almost half a century after Apollo tec...

Isaac Newton had an extraordinary idea. He believed the physical universe and everything in it could be described in exact detail using mathematical relationships. He formulated a law of gravity that explained why objects fall downwards, how the moon causes the tides, and why planets and comets orbit the sun.While Newton's work has been added to over the years, his basic approach remains at the heart of the scientific worldview. Yet Newton's own had little...

Everyone has heard of Albert Einstein and everyone knows that he was a genius. Yet only a few people understand his work. In fact, he was just one of many brilliant scientists grappling with the deepest problems of theoretical physics during the first half of the twentieth century. He may not have been the most important or influential of them – the point is arguable – but there is no doubt he was the most revolutionary. Almost single-handed, he transformed the way the wor...

From magic carpets to hoverboards and space drives, the human imagination has always seen antigravity as the ultimate aspirational symbol of power over nature. It featured prominently in the technologically optimistic science fiction of the mid-20th century, and remains popular with amateur theorists hoping to make a world-shaking breakthrough, and those seeking to explain UFO sightings in terms of alien technology. Yet the whole concept of antigravity is often derided by professional scie...

There is a huge gulf between the real physics of space travel and the way it is commonly portrayed in movies and TV shows. That’s not because space physics is difficult or obscure – most of the details were understood by the end of the 18th century – but because it can often be bafflingly counter-intuitive for a general audience. The purpose of this book isn’t to criticize or debunk popular sci-fi depictions, which can be very entertaining, but to focus on how space physics really works. T...

The 20th century saw radical changes in the way serious music is composed and produced, including the advent of electronic instruments and novel compositional methods such as serialism and stochastic music. Unlike previous artistic revolutions, this one took its cues from the world of science.Creating electronic sounds, in the early days, required a well-equipped laboratory and an understanding of acoustic theory. Composition became increasingly “algorithmic”, with many composers e...