Blue: The Science and Secrets of Nature's Rarest Color - Softcover

Kai Kupferschmidt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1615199063 ISBN 13: 9781615199068

Publisher: The Experiment, 2022

Synopsis

Now in paperback: a vivid exploration of this uniquely captivating color, which behaves like no other wavelength

Blue is the most widely beloved color—but in nature, it’s the rarest hue of all. True, physics paints the sea and sky blue, but we can’t bottle this trick of the light. And blue pigment requires such complex chemistry that blue creatures, plants, and minerals are few indeed. Artists and kings have treasured blue dye like precious gold since the time of the pharoahs—and who today can help but marvel at a morpho butterfly in the rain forest or a blue jay at the window?

Science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt has been enraptured by blue since childhood. In his quest to understand the mysteries of his favorite color, he takes readers on a vivid journey—from a biotech lab in Japan and a volcanic lake in Oregon to his native Germany, home of the last blue-feathered Spix’s macaws. Deep underground where blue crystals grow, and miles overhead where astronauts gaze at our “blue marble” planet—wherever he finds this alluring color, it always has a story to tell.
 

About this title

About the Author

Kai Kupferschmidt is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine, where he writes about infectious diseases as well as drug development, biotechnology, evolution, and science policy, and where his intrepid coverage of the coronavirus pandemic has gained international attention. When not doing these things, he is usually thinking about the color blue. He holds a degree in molecular biomedicine from the University of Bonn and lives in Berlin.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Experiment
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1615199063
• ISBN 13: 9781615199068
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224