Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World

Product Information

Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read Water'Blue Machine is quite simply one of the best books I have ever read. All of Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials. From vast currents and tides to the smallest creatures that inhabit our oceans she reveals the spellbinding wonder of the oceans. Helen regularly presents BBC programmes on physics, the ocean and the atmosphere – recent series include Colour: The Spectrum of Science, Orbit, Operation Iceberg, Super Senses, Dara O’Briain’s Science Club, as well as programmes on bubbles, the sun and our weather.

THE TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR: 'This beautifully written, sweeping guide shows how the deep movement of the seas have ruled our lives in unexpected ways over millennia.

This beautifully written, sweeping guide shows how the deep movement of the seas have ruled our lives in unexpected ways over millennia. Reading this book has made me realise just how much the oceans do to keep our planet at the right temperature for life to exist and function.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.Helen Czerski is a consummate storyteller…In places you’ll drift serenely among corals or dense kelp forests, in others you’ll ride Atlantic breakers or fear for your life in a tropical storm…When you resurface, you will be bursting with enthusiasm and wonder and you’ll understand how the ocean works and more besides. The book as a whole is a carefully structured treatise on the big topics needed to appreciate what the blue machine does for the planet, delves into the finer points to provide just the right amount of detail to explain everything, and then lovingly intersperses all of that with storytelling that provides context and deeper understanding to the facts. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. Helen Czerski, urging us to see the ocean as a presence, not an absence, has done a remarkable job of shoehorning an overview of the whole shebang into a single, very readable volume.

Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale—plankton—and the largest—giant sea turtles, whales, humankind. All of the Earth's ocean, from the equator to the poles, is a single engine powered by sunlight - a blue machine. She also hosts the Ocean Matters podcast, is part of the Cosmic Shambles network, and is one of the presenters for the Fully Charged Show.As a physicist she studies the bubbles underneath breaking waves in the open ocean to understand their effects on weather and climate.