Search results for ""author michael wall""

We've all asked ourselves the question. It's impossible to look up at the stars and NOT think about it: Are we alone in the universe? Books, movies and television shows proliferate that attempt to answer this question and explore it. In OUT THERE Space.com senior writer Dr. Michael Wall treats that question as merely the beginning, touching off a wild ride of exploration into the final frontier. He considers, for instance, the myriad of questions that would arise once we do discover life beyond Earth (an eventuality which, top NASA officials told Wall, is only drawing closer). What would the first aliens we meet look like? Would they be little green men or mere microbes? Would they be found on a planet in our own solar system or orbiting a star far, far away? Would they intend to harm us, and if so, how might they do it? And might they already have visited?OUT THERE is arranged in a simple question-and-answer format. The answers are delivered in Dr. Wall's informal but informative style, which mixes in a healthy dose of humor and pop culture to make big ideas easier to swallow. Dr. Wall covers questions far beyond alien life, venturing into astronomy, physics, and the practical realities of what long-term life might be like for we mere humans in outer space, such as the idea of lunar colonies, and even economic implications. Readers won't just be hearing from Dr. Wall. As a longtime science journalist--whose work at Space.com is syndicated in outlets from Scientific American to Fox News--he has assembled an impressive array of contacts to provide expert commentary. From a former NASA chief scientist to leading science educators like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye to would-be space traveler Elon Musk, Dr. Wall shares the insights of some of the leading lights in space exploration today, and shows how the next space age might be brighter than ever.

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Get up to speed on Apache Accumulo, the flexible, high-performance key/value store created by the National Security Agency (NSA) and based on Google's BigTable data storage system. Written by former NSA team members, this comprehensive tutorial and reference covers Accumulo architecture, application development, table design, and cell-level security. With clear information on system administration, performance tuning, and best practices, this book is ideal for developers seeking to write Accumulo applications, administrators charged with installing and maintaining Accumulo, and other professionals interested in what Accumulo has to offer. You will find everything you need to use this system fully. Get a high-level introduction to Accumulo's architecture and data model Take a rapid tour through single- and multiple-node installations, data ingest, and query Learn how to write Accumulo applications for several use cases, based on examples Dive into Accumulo internals, including information not available in the documentation Get detailed information for installing, administering, tuning, and measuring performance Learn best practices based on successful implementations in the field Find answers to common questions that every new Accumulo user asks

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