http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/ucsd_physics_oer/rss Recent eScholarship items from Open Educational Resources Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:04:55 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m <p> <em>Note: a two-side version optimized for printing is available in Supplemental Materials.</em> </p><p>Where is humanity going? How realistic is a future of fusion and space colonies? What constraints are imposed by physics, by resource availability, and by human psychology?&nbsp; Are default expectations grounded in reality?</p><p>This textbook, written for a general-education audience, aims to address these questions without either the hype or the indifference typical of many books.&nbsp; The message throughout is that humanity faces a broad sweep of foundational problems as we inevitably transition away from fossil fuels and confront planetary limits in a host of unprecedented ways—a shift whose scale and probable rapidity offers little historical guidance.</p><p>Salvaging a decent future requires keen awareness, quantitative assessment, deliberate preventive action, and—above all—recognition that prevailing assumptions about human identity and destiny have been cruelly... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Murphy, Thomas W, Jr