Book cover of Hot Carbon: Carbon-14 and a Revolution in Science

Book description

There are few fields of science that carbon-14 has not touched. A radioactive isotope of carbon, it stands out for its unusually long half-life. Best known for its application to estimating the age of artifacts-carbon dating-carbon-14 helped reveal new chronologies of human civilization and geological time. Everything containing carbon, the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Hot Carbon as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I almost put this book down when Marra started to describe what happened one early morning off the coast of Iceland, where he was trying to measure photosynthesis by marine microbes. A day earlier, he had filled bottles with seawater spiked with a radioactive form of carbon, carbon-14, and thrown the bottles overboard to incubate in the ocean. Now he had to retrieve them. As Marra recounted how the ship rolled in huge waves whipped up by 55-knot winds, my stomach churned as I remembered similar experiences on other vessels, in other seas.

Luckily for me and perhaps other seasick-prone…

From David's list on microbes and the environment.

If you love Hot Carbon...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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