Skip to main content

What if the Earth had two Moons? – Neil F. Comins ***

There is a great idea behind this book. Why not, as a thought experiment, change the parameters of our solar system and see how things would be different, using this to explore cosmology on a wider scale. So, for instance, the book goes through the title scenario, but also what if:
  • the Earth were a moon?
  • The Moon orbited backwards?
  • The Earth’s crust was thicker?
… and so on for a total of 10 scenarios. Along the way we’ll find out more about everything from black holes to the Big Bang, but particularly lots about how planets and solar systems form and function.
In principle this is wonderful, but the execution has three problems.
Firstly there’s the way that the ‘What if’ concept is approached. Although the title specifically says ‘What if the Earth had two Moons?’ the chapter actually describes a planet called Dimaan that’s a bit like the Earth and has two moons. This is frustrating, as I really want to know what the actual Earth would be like, not a planet like Earth. This approach means Neil Comins is always flipping between describing the Earth and Dimaan (etc.), which irritates. I also find the science fictional naming a bit painful – so, for example, the second chapter has a system where the Sun is called the Zon. Why?
Speaking of fiction, the second problem is that each chapter begins with a rather painful bit of fiction set on the world that chapter is dealing with. The people who feature in the stories are human, and sometimes even are real people like Galileo or Columbus. This is both confusing and twee. Some of the storylines are bizarre. In one two children are presenting alternative theories at the Royal Society. Why would children be presenting at the Royal Society? And worse still, there’s an elementary plotting error: the second child doesn’t even get a chance to present her theory because she gets an asthma attack. Why? It doesn’t go anywhere. This is just self-indulgence.
Finally, I have to confess that by about the third chapter it all gets a bit samey. Ok, each of the scenarios have interesting implications and we keep getting extra snippets about the universe as a whole, but in the end we keep reading about how various parameters of the Earth (or rather, the not Earth) would be different, and what started as a fascinating concept ends up as a rather nerdy detailing of information that isn’t of great interest unless you specialize in planetary behaviour. The best science writing can take the mundane and make it exciting. This takes the dramatic and makes it mundane.
There’s no doubt that there is a lot of good stuff in here. Comins knows his astronomical onions and packs in lots of information in his 10 interesting scenarios. It’s a great idea. But even the best ideas don’t always work as you hope – and that’s what I found with What if the Earth had two Moons.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...
Post a Comment
Read more