Four Way Interview - Marcus Chown

Image courtesy Sunday Brunch, C4

Marcus Chown graduated from the University of London in 1980 with a first class degree in physics. He also earned a Master of Science in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology. Currently the cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine, Chown has written a string of successful popular science books. His latest title is The Ascent of Gravity.

Why science?

Good question. When I was 8, my dad bought me 'Dr H. C. King's Book of Astronomy.' I don't know why he bought me that book. But it caught my imagination. Later, he bought me a small telescope. I used to poke it out of the window of our North London flat and observe the stars above the orange glow of the North Circular Road. I saw Jupiter's moons and the rings of Saturn. I began to realise I was living on a tiny mote of matter lost in a mind-bogglingly huge universe. And it awakened in me a desire, which I have never lost, to find out more and more about where it all came from and our place in it.

Why this book?

I was fascinated by the paradoxes of gravity. It was the first force to be discovered, yet today it is the least understood. It is a 'force' that keeps your feet on the ground yet, according to Einstein, no such force actually exists. It is the weakest force in the everyday world, yet it controls the ate of stars and galaxies and the universe as a whole. Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.' And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: What is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?

What’s next?

I have just been asked to write a Ladybird book. If you remember, Ladybird used to produce those distinctive books for children on topics like 'Going to the dentist' or 'How aeroplanes work.' Well, Penguin revived the imprint a few years ago. They did a range of spoof books for adults [after copying the idea from an artist they sued for doing the same thing - Ed.], which were a publishing phenomenon. So, they have now decided to do an 'expert' series. Prince Charles did one on climate change. I'm chuffed to be doing one of the big bang.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

The fact that nothing fits. We have a model of the universe in which 95% of its mass is invisible - so-called dark matter and dark energy - and we have no idea what it is. We have two incredibly successful theories of physics - quantum theory and Einstein's theory of gravity - and they appear incompatible. All this makes it an incredible time to be alive. We are on the verge of a revolution in our picture of the universe. Someone is going to pull it all together. Someone whose name will become as well-known as Newton and Einstein. At least, I think so!

Comments

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically? Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...

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 ...

Search This Blog