Since Luna and Lunar Orbiter photographed the far side of the Moon, the mysterious dichotomy between the face of the Moon as we see it from Earth and the side of the Moon that is hidden has puzzled lunar scientists. As we learned more from the Apollo sample return missions and later robotic satellites, the puzzle literally deepened, showing...

The technological marvel that facilitated the Apollo missions to the Moon was the on-board computer. In the 1960s most computers filled an entire room, but the spacecraft’s computer was required to be compact and low power. Although people today find it difficult to accept that it was possible to control a spacecraft using such a...

As a team of veteran travel writers, Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince have produced various titles for Frommer’s, including guides to Italy, France, England, and Germany. A film critic, columnist, and broadcaster, Porter is also a Hollywood biographer. His recent releases include Brando Unzipped, documenting the private life of Marlon...

The Earth is a dynamic system. Internal processes, together with external gravitational forces of the Sun, Moon and planets, displace the Earth's mass, impacting on its shape, rotation and gravitational field. Doug Smylie provides a rigorous overview of the dynamical behaviour of the solid Earth, explaining the theory and presenting...

In the past half-century we have gone from a world where computers were science fiction to a world where computers are everyday fact. Just thirty years ago the computer that flew with the first astronauts to the moon had less computing power than the computer on the average student’s desk today. Computers have grown in popularity,...

“Newton’s Gravity” conveys the power of simple mathematics to tell the fundamental truth about nature. Many people, for example, know the tides are caused by the pull of the Moon and to a lesser extent the Sun. But very few can explain exactly how and why that happens. Fewer still can calculate the  actual pulls of the...

The decade of the 80's saw the dramatic expansion of high performance computer graphics into domains previously able only to irt with the technology. Among the most dramatic has been the incorporation of real-time interactive manipulation and display for human gures. Though actively pur- sued by several research groups, the...