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Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World

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Helen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer at University College London’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. I haven't actually finished reading this book yet but I am so loving it that I can't hold back from telling everyone! Who would have thought that the detailed study of whale's ear wax would show important aspects of their physionlogy? We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. A beautifully written guide to the seas reveals the hidden complexity of their role in moving energy around the Earth.

Timely, elegant and passionately argued, Blue Machine presents a fresh perspective on what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet. In this captivating and urgently needed book, Helen Czerski weaves a wonderful, watery spell, entwining spectacular science with poetic awe as she expertly guides readers through the workings of a vast, unfamiliar world.Some of the stories that she uses to illustrate the text are superb, like the ones dealing with underwater acoustic communicaton and how this relates to whales.

Helen Czerski is a consummate storyteller…In places you’ll drift serenely among corals or dense kelp forests, in others you’ll ride Atlantic breakers or fear for your life in a tropical storm…When you resurface, you will be bursting with enthusiasm and wonder and you’ll understand how the ocean works and more besides. The author of The Blue Machine and Storm in a Teacup, she is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, writing regularly about the physics of everyday life. Czerski argues throughout that to truly see the miraculous oceans, to understand and to feel our connection to them, is vital and integral to our history and our future. By understanding how the ocean works, and its essential role in our global system, we can learn how to protect our blue machine. The book as a whole is a carefully structured treatise on the big topics needed to appreciate what the blue machine does for the planet, delves into the finer points to provide just the right amount of detail to explain everything, and then lovingly intersperses all of that with storytelling that provides context and deeper understanding to the facts.Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale—plankton—and the largest—giant sea turtles, whales, humankind. A scientist’s exploration of the "ocean engine"—the physics behind the ocean’s systems—and why it matters. In The Blue Machine, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski illustrates the mechanisms behind this defining feature of our planet, voyaging from the depths of the ocean floor to tropical coral reefs, estuaries that feed into shallow coastal seas, and Arctic ice floes.

Helen regularly presents BBC programmes on physics, the ocean and the atmosphere – recent series include Colour: The Spectrum of Science, Orbit, Operation Iceberg, Super Senses, Dara O’Briain’s Science Club, as well as programmes on bubbles, the sun and our weather.For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. This beautifully written, sweeping guide shows how the deep movement of the seas have ruled our lives in unexpected ways over millennia.

From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls that all have their place in the ocean’s complex, interlinked system. I was intrigued to learn that the faeces of blue whales, which are rich in iron and also float, contribute to marine growth. All of Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials.Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. The concluding chapter warns about global warming - no doubt the book would not have got past the green girls in the publishing house if it didn't - but in the main body of the book CO2 gets only a couple of paragraphs. THE TIMES BOOK OF THE WEEK: 'This beautifully written, sweeping guide shows how the deep movement of the seas have ruled our lives in unexpected ways over millennia.

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