Introduction: The ruler, the clock, and the thermometer -- 98.6. Constant temperature -- Into the Sahara -- Into the Antarctic -- When things go wrong -- Shocks from heat -- Measure for measure. First sparks -- Thermometer's four inventors -- Count from Massachusetts -- Steam power -- Thermodynamics' three laws -- Entropy and life -- Reading the earth. Copernicus's harmony -- Minister, the lawyer, and the fossil fish expert -- Cycles of ice -- Tundra's bloom -- El Nino, old and new -- Greenhouse effect : the basic science -- Greenhouse effect : the history -- Greenhouse effect : the politics -- Life in the extremes. Barton and Beebe's bathysphere -- Clambake I : hydrothermal vents -- Some like it hot -- Snowball earth -- Third branch of life -- Melting the earth -- Extraterrestrial life -- Life under two miles of ice -- Messages from the sun. At the core -- Cosmic gall -- Thermal aside : Gamow, Rutherford, and nuclear barriers -- Star is born -- Black holes and little green men -- Founding elements : hydrogen and helium -- Three-degree photons, two-degree neutrinos -- Big bang and the big crunch -- Quantum leap. Faraday's perfect gases -- Last liquid -- Superconductivity -- Duality, exclusion, and uncertainty -- Low-temperature world -- Einstein's refrigerator -- Chandra's journey -- Into the future.
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