Oliver Morton

First published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2015.

The Planet Remade

The Economist

An intimate, profound portrait of the Earth's closest neighbor from an award-winning science writer and Economist senior editor Every generation has looked towards the heavens and wondered at the beauty of the Moon. Fifty years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse---and Earth-bound audiences shared their view of their own planet hanging in the sky instead. In this short but wide-ranging book, Oliver Morton explores the history and future of humankind's relationship with the Moon from the earliest astronomers such as van Eyck and Galileo through the first space flights and anticipating next phase of our interaction with the Moon, as a portal and stepping stone to further space exploration. The Moon's gentle light has spoken of love and loneliness; its battered surface of death and the cosmic. For some, it is a future on which humankind has turned its back. For others, an adventure yet to begin. Advanced technologies, new ambitions and old dreams mean that men, women and robots now seem certain to return to the Moon. What will they learn there about the universe, the Earth-and themselves? And, this time, will they stay?

A History for the Future

The Moon

A story of a world in crisis and the importance of plants, the history of the earth, and the feuds and fantasies of warring scientists—this is not your fourth-grade science class's take on photosynthesis. From acclaimed science journalist Oliver Morton comes this fascinating, lively, profound look at photosynthesis, nature's greatest miracle. Wherever there is greenery, photosynthesis isworking to make oxygen, release energy, and create living matter from the raw material of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. Without photosynthesis, there would be an empty world, an empty sky, and a sun that does nothing more than warm the rocks and reflect off the sea. With photosynthesis, we have a living world with three billion years of sunlight-fed history to relish. Eating the Sun is a bottom-up account of our planet, a celebration of how the smallest things, enzymes and pigments, influence the largest things­­—the oceans, the rainforests, and the fossil fuel economy. From the physics, chemistry, and cellular biology that make photosynthesis possible, to the quirky and competitive scientists who first discovered the beautifully honed mechanisms of photosynthesis, to the modern energy crisis we face today, Oliver Morton offers a complete biography of the earth through the lens of this mundane and most important of processes. More than this, Eating the Sun is a call to arms. Only by understanding photosynthesis and the flows of energy it causes can we hope to understand the depth and subtlety of the current crisis in the planet's climate. What's more, nature's greatest energy technology may yet inspire the breakthroughs we need to flourish without such climatic chaos in the century to come. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and deeply illuminating, Eating the Sun reveals that photosynthesis is not only the key to humanity's history; it is also vital to confronting and understanding contemporary realities like climate change and the global food shortage. This book will give you a new and perhaps troubling way of seeing the world, but it also explains how we can change our situation—for the better or the worse.

How Plants Power the Planet

Eating the Sun

Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World

Mapping Mars

Moon

This is a narrative history of the men and women who have explored Mars and mapped its surface from afar, and in so doing conditioned our understanding of our nearest planetary neighbour. The maps of Mars are detailed representations of a land as large as all the continents of the earth combined, yet they are being drawn before any human eye has seen the wonders they contain.

Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World

Wherever there is greenery, photosynthesis is working to make oxygen, release energy, and create living matter from the raw material of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. Without photosynthesis, there would be an empty world, an empty sky, and a sun that does nothing more than warm the rocks and reflect off the sea. Eating the Sun is the story of a world in crisis; an appreciation of the importance of plants; a history of the earth and the feuds and fantasies of warring scientists; a celebration of how the smallest things, enzymes and pigments, influence the largest things, the oceans, the rainforests, and the fossil fuel economy. Oliver Morton offers a fascinating, lively, profound look at nature's greatest miracle and sounds a much-needed call to arms—illuminating a potential crisis of climatic chaos and explaining how we can change our situation, for better or for worse.

Una flotta di aerei che raggiunge la stratosfera per formare un «velo» di solfati intorno al mondo e riflettere la luce del sole. Navi fabbrica-nubi che seminano nuclei di condensazione sopra gli oceani per ispessire e imbiancare le nuvole, rendendole più riflettenti. Fertilizzanti a base di ferro sparsi nei mari per rinfoltire la presenza di alghe avide di anidride carbonica. Speciali «lenzuola» plastiche che ricoprono i ghiacciai a rischio di scioglimento e i deserti troppo caldi. Tecniche per catturare l’anidride carbonica emessa dagli impianti a energia fossile e immagazzinarla sotto terra. È la geoingegneria climatica: non è fantascienza, ma una possibilità concreta. Che forse si rivelerà inevitabile.I rischi del cambiamento climatico sono accertati e potenzialmente catastrofici, ma gli sforzi per ridurre le emissioni di anidride carbonica nell’atmosfera faticano a produrre risultati, o anche solo a essere avviati. La riconversione da un modello di sviluppo alimentato dai combustibili fossili a una società fondata sulle energie rinnovabili sta incontrando forti ostacoli politici, economici e tecnici: ecco perché bisogna rivolgersi alla geoingegneria, non come alternativa salvifica, ma come opzione complementare. In questo libro Oliver Morton, con sensibilità e appassionata competenza, esamina i pro e i contro, i dubbi e le certezze scientifiche, i dilemmi morali e sociali di tale opportunità.Intervenire in modo così deliberato e diretto sul clima globale è un’ipotesi che spaventa molti. Ma è da secoli che gli esseri umani interferiscono più o meno involontariamente con gli equilibri del pianeta che li ospita: le trasformazioni subite dai mari, dai venti, dai suoli, dai grandi cicli dell’azoto e del carbonio sono molto maggiori di quanto si pensi. E allora perché rinunciare al tentativo di sfruttare le grandi conquiste della scienza e della tecnologia per un’azione volontaria, volta a ristabilire un migliore equilibrio tra il mondo umano e il sistema Terra? Il pianeta nuovo non descrive un pianeta ideale, ma un futuro prossimo in cui l’ingegno umano sarà chiamato a prendersi cura del pianeta.

Il pianeta nuovo

Eating the Sun is the story of the discovery of a miracle: the source of life itself. This book explains how biologists discovered photosynthesis and through it found a new understanding of the history of our planet and how life is inconceivable without it. Photosynthesis is the most mundane of miracles. It surrounds us in our gardens and parks and countryside; even our cityscapes are shot through with trees. It makes the sky blue and nature green. That greenery is the signature of the pigments with which plants harvest the sun; wherever nature offers us greenery, the molecular machinery of photosynthesis is making oxygen, energy and organic matter from the raw material of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. We rarely give the green machinery that brings about this transformation much thought, and few of us understand its beautifully honed mechanisms. But we are dimly aware that those photosynthetic mechanisms are the basis of our lives twice over: the ultimate source of all our food and the ultimate source of all our breaths. Eating the Sun will foster and enrich that awareness. the crucial role its molecular mechanisms have played through more than two billion years of the earth's history, Eating the Sun will change the way the reader sees the world.

Evan Ratliff

Martha Baer

Katrina Heron

If our society is the most technologically sophisticated on Earth, then why can't we protect ourselves from terrorists and other threats to our safety and security? This is the question that frustrates—and scares—all of us today, and the answers have proved maddeningly elusive. Until now. Through dramatic, enlightening, and often entertaining narratives, SAFE makes visible—and understandable—the high-stakes work being done by some of the most ingenious problem-solvers across the country and around the world, people committed to creating real and dependable security in the twenty-first century. The characters in these pages, from scientists and engineers to academics, entrepreneurs, and emergency workers, take us into a fascinating world of inquiry and discovery. Their stories reveal where our greatest vulnerabilities lie and where our best hope deservedly shines through. They show why the systems we rely on to protect ourselves can also be exploited by others to create catastrophe—and what we can do to outsmart the terrorists. We have ample proof that terrorists will go to great lengths to understand how our technologies can be put to destructive use. Now it's time to ask ourselves a question: Are we willing to let them keep beating us at our own game? For the brilliant and colorful innovators in these pages, the answer is no. Among them are Eric Thompson, an expert digital code breaker instrumental in deciphering hidden Al Qaeda messages; Mike Stein, a New York City firefighter turned technologist who is working to overcome the numerous communications failures of 9/11; Eve Hinman, who conducts structural autopsies at the scene of explosions, including the Oklahoma City bombing, in order to develop more blast-resistant designs; Ken Alibek, the infamous architect of the former Soviet bioweapons program and now an American entrepreneur working in the business of defending his adopted country from bioterrorism; Kris Pister and Michael Sailor, university researchers developing sensors no larger than a speck of dust; Rafi Ron, former head of security for Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and now a leading strategist on U.S. airport security; Tara O'Toole, who stages doomsday bioterror scenarios in order to craft better biodefense systems; and Jeff Jonas, a high-rolling Las Vegas software entrepreneur whose methods for spotting casino cheats might just have uncovered the 9/11 plot. Readers of SAFE will come away understanding the unique challenges posed by technological progress in a networked, and newly dangerous, world. Witnessing the work of this gathering force of innovators up close, they'll be inspired by the power of the human intellect and spirit—and realize how important the contributions of individual citizens and communities can be.

Oliver Morton

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