Air-borne

A fascinating and original look at the transparent ocean of life in the air around us, tracing the history of its study and revealing what scientists are still learning about airborne life today. Since the Ancient Greeks, the air has been thought of as a carrier of disease. What the Greeks called ''corruption'', medieval Arab and European scholars would later term ''miasma''. But it wasn''t until the last century that microbes in the air, rather than the air itself, were identified as causes of disease. In Air-borne , Carl Zimmer, Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author of She Has Her Mother''s Laugh and science columnist for The New York Times , traces the history and pre-history of the young science of aerobiology, from Antonie van Leeuwenhoek''s discovery of microbes under his hand-made microscopes in the seventeenth century to Darwin''s revelation, while aboard the Beagle in the middle of the Atlantic, that this invisible life can soar across the planet - he found sixty-seven different North African species that had travelled thousands of miles from the Sahara. Zimmer speaks to the modern-day aerobiologists who travel to the troposphere to get a clearer picture of life in the air, and to the NASA scientists who send balloons even higher, to search for life in the stratosphere. Weather satellites and supercomputers are revealing so-called highways in the sky that can deliver organisms hundreds or thousands of miles before dropping it back down to Earth, while the ability of microbes to endure in the upper reaches of the atmosphere has led a number of aerobiologists to consider a possibility that once would have sounded like pure science fiction: perhaps life is thriving in the atmospheres of other planets . . . Through compelling narrative and thought-provoking analysis, Air-borne makes visible an invisible world - one teeming with marvels - and shines a light on the vital work being done to further understand the potentially deadly threats it harbours. ...

Auteur

Carl Zimmer writes the "Origins" column for The New York Times and has frequently contributed to The Atlantic, National Geographic, Time, and Scientific American. His journalism has earned numerous awards, including ones from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. Zimmer is professor adjunct at Yale, where he teaches writing. He is the author of fourteen books about science, including She Has Her Mother's Laugh, which was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, and, most recently, Air-Borne.

Texte du rabat

From the Baillie Gifford-shortlisted **New York Times science columnist, the hidden biology of the air we breathe, from pollen to viruses such as COVID-19.

Résumé

Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life.

In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments, and meet NASA scientists who send balloons even higher, to search for life in the stratosphere.

Zimmer chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of biological weapons designed to spread anthrax and smallpox. Air-Borne prompts us to look at the world with new eyes as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.

Weaving together spellbinding history with the latest reporting on airborne threats to global health, this masterwork makes visible an invisible world.