The Year Science Changed Everything: 1957's International Geophysical Year and the Future of Our Planet...

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Mark O'Connell

The Year Science Changed Everything

1957's International Geophysical Year and the Future of Our Planet

Mark O'Connell

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Hardback

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English

Globe Pequot Press
06 May 2025

Social discrimination; Political activism; Global warming; Environmental science, engineering & technology

In 1957, 60,000 scientists from sixty-six countries around the world temporarily erased Earth’s artificial borders and joined forces for eighteen months to unlock the mysteries of our home planet. Their shared mission: to explore, measure, map, and study the Earth’s geology, oceans, volcanos, and atmosphere, to study the impact of the sun on the Earth's climate, to explore the many ways that human activity affects the health of our planet, and to apply every branch of geophysical science for the first time ever as ""a potent force in international affairs."" It was The International Geophysical Year (IGY), and the discoveries made during that year established a new foundation for science that affects our lives nearly every day.

In The Year Science Changed Everything, author Mark O’Connell charts the struggles and successes of 1957’s International Geophysical Year alongside interviews with today’s leading environmental scientists to show that the time is right for another global environmental initiative. The IGY lit the fuse to the space race, produced a historic international treaty to protect Antarctica, led to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts circling our planet, produced the first map of the underwater Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and spearheaded scientific breakthroughs that have proven foundational to our understanding of the planet. More than a half century later, top climate experts and activists illustrate the political, financial, and media-centered obstacles they face working as individual researchers and fighting against rampant disinformation spread by sectors of the public and even of the scientific community, from Christiana FigueresandTom Rivett-Carnac, who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015, former vice-president and climate activist Al Gore, marine biologist and climate researcher Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, and Sameh Shoukry, President of the 27th session of the Conference of Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The idea of global collaboration is as valid now as it was in 1957, and perhaps more necessary than ever to stave off the harmful effects of a deteriorating climate. The Year Science Changed Everything reframes the climate change discussion in a positive way through IGY’s example of how to unite scientists, and what we can achieve when we come together for the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

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By: Mark O'Connell
Imprint: Globe Pequot Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 485g
ISBN: 9781493084906
ISBN 10: 1493084909
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 06 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mark O’Connell is an author, screenwriter, featured television commentator, and university lecturer. He got his start in television, writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. O’Connell was Co-Executive Producer and on-camera expert on the reality show UFO Witness, a recurring guest on the TV show Fright Club, and Co-Producer of a Discovery+ documentary about best-selling author Whitley Strieber. O’Connell is the author of The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOS, a biography of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the famed astrophysicist, science educator, and UFO researcher and inspiration behind Steven Spielberg’s epic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Currently, O’Connell is a featured commentator discussing the science and history of UFOs in UFOs: Investigating the Unknown, a documentary mini-series for the National Geographic Channel, now streaming on Hulu, and soon on VICE and Disney +. He is also on the screenwriting faculty of the College of Computing & Digital Media at DePaul University.

Reviews for The Year Science Changed Everything: 1957's International Geophysical Year and the Future of Our Planet

""The Year Science Changed Everything is a treat. Delving into the work and results of the IGY, O'Connell shows that international cooperation in science is possible on a grand scale. O'Connell is enough of a storyteller that the chapters flow by quickly, but the main lessons of the book will stay with the reader for a long time to come.... a must-read for anyone interested in the history of science in the 20th century.""--E. Kirsten Peters, PhD, geologist and author of The Whole Science of Climate ""The Year Science Changed Everything takes readers on a tour of the world we live in and how the scientific community has come to better understand it in the decades since 1957. While covering topics from the northern lights to tectonics to the science of climate, O'Connell neatly intersperses interviews with currently active scientists, showing how and why the International Geophysical Year continues to be relevant to our daily lives.""--Peter Kelly-Detwiler, author of The Energy Switch