Decoding the Heavens – Jo Marchant *****

Just occasionally, as a science writer, I come across a subject that makes me think ‘Wow, that’s brilliant, it would make a great book! I must write it.’ About five seconds later I realize that it’s so obviously a good story that someone else will have beaten me to it. And sure enough, there’s the book. In this case I did think it, Jo Marchant has written it, and the result is excellent.

The subject is not, as you might think from the title, astronomy, but the Antikythera (anti-kith-era) Mechanism. Even that name is redolent with excitement – it’s like something Indiana Jones or Lara Croft might search for – and there were certainly some interesting characters involved in its decoding. Even Arthur C. Clarke and Richard Feynman were fascinated by this ancient puzzle. The Mechanism is a device found in 1900 amongst the wreckage of a Greek ship from the first century BC. It’s a complex geared structure, built hundreds of years before anyone knew such gearing was used.

Without giving too much away, the device has proved neither a clock nor an astrolabe (two of the early ideas) but a calculator that predicted the motion of bodies in the solar system and even seems to have acted as a combined calendar and Greek games locator. It was, in essence, an early computer – not a programmable computer, but one specifically designed around astronomical data. Marchant weaves an elegant tale of the gradual uncovering of the Mechanism’s function, drawing in many associated developments, from the use of diving equipment to the use of X-rays in uncovering details of the hidden mechanism.

If I have one slight complaint it’s that Marchant likes starting a chapter with a historical dramatization and this doesn’t always work. For instance, the first couple of pages of chapter 3 begin with a description of a historical ship setting sail. But we’ve already been introduced to the Mechanism, and I wanted to get on with that. Okay, this turns out to be a description of the ship the Mechanism was sunk with , but continuity was shattered. She also has a confusing tendency to switch in and out of the historical present tense mid-paragraph.

That’s a minor moan, though. It’s a wonderful subject and an entrancing book. Recommended.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...

In Seach of Sea Dragons - Matthew Myerscough ****

It's common advice to would-be authors of narrative non-fiction to open with something dramatic - Matthew Myerscough certainly does this with the story of his being trapped under an avalanche on Snowdon (while his girlfriend, also carried away remains on top of the snow unhurt). It certainly is dramatic, but seemed entirely disconnected from the reason I got the book, which was to read about fossil collecting. Luckily, though, in the second chapter we get into a more conventional 'how I got interested in fossils as a boy'. Having recently reviewed Patrick Moore's autobiography and noting that astronomy was one of the few sciences where amateurs can still make a contribution, it came to mind that palaeontology is another - Myerscough is a civil engineer by trade, but just as amateur astronomers can find new details in the skies, so amateur fossil hunters have been searching for these relics for centuries. When I give talks in junior schools, the two topics that guarant...

Robot-Proof - Vivienne Ming ****

As Vivienne Ming makes apparent, there seem largely to be two views of AI's pros and cons, both of which are almost certainly wrong. It's either doom-saying 'It'll destroy life as we know it' or Pollyanna-ish 'It'll do all the boring work and we can all be wonderfully creative and live lives of leisure.' Instead, Ming gives us a clear analysis of the likely trajectory for the workplace, particularly for the IT industry. She describes three 'equally flawed, intellectually lazy strategies' to deal with the impact of AI. The first is substitution and deprofessionalisation, using AI to allow cheaper 'AI-augmented technicians' to replace more expensive professionals, producing more low wage jobs and fewer mid-range. This does save money but leaves a company at risk of being easily outcompeted. The second is what Ming describes as the '"A-Player" Hunger Games', the approach favoured by Silicon Valley. This sees the growing rif...

Search This Blog