Neurologist Restak explores the brain's age-old mysteries in light of computer-assisted technologies. Stephen S. Hall ponders the new biology's challenges, from gene mapping and engineering to the ethical consequences such innovations entail. Robert Friedel tours the realm of superconductors, high-tech ceramics, composites, and other new materials wrought by modern-day alchemists. Carole Douglis takes on climate's intensely complicated and volatile processes, while Dava Sobel charts the otherworldly wilderness of outer space, where white dwarfs, black holes, and neutron stars coexist with other immensities of the universe.