Accessory to War

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In this fascinating foray into the millennia-long relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist and the world's best science communicator (Times Literary Supplement) Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions , say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a curiously complicit alliance. The universe is both the ultimate frontier and the highest of high grounds , they write. Shared by both space scientists and space warriors, it's a laboratory for one and a battlefield for the other. The explorer wants to understand it, the soldier wants to dominate it. But without the right technology-which is more or less...

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