Cosmic Impact - Andrew May ****

There's something beguilingly attractive about end-of-the-world scenarios. In Cosmic Impact, Andrew May takes on the granddaddy of them all - an asteroid or comet hitting the Earth. We're familiar with the idea that the dinosaurs were wiped out by the fallout of such an impact (with some volcanic help), but there's a much bigger picture to be had, and May puts it across well.

This short book is ideal to get a good overview of the subject without having to delve into too much technical detail - and May makes it approachable by giving the subject context from the many science fiction and popular culture scenarios (the Simpsons feature on page 1) where something hits the Earth from outer space. In fact it's arguable that the science fiction examples of attempts to predict and divert future impactors have had a direct influence on what has happened in reality in setting up early warning detection of incoming potential impactors.

As well as the science of bodies hitting the Earth - which is rather more complex than you might think, given the Earth is moving as well, and involves four different types of possible orbit with the exotic names Amor, Apollo, Atira and Aten - we also see what has been done in recent years to spot potential near misses and how, in principle, we might be able to do something to avoid a collision. Unlike Hollywood's usual approach, this is unlikely to involve blasting an asteroid to pieces (which then might all impact on us), and is more likely to involve changing the asteroid's approach speed so that it simply misses where we're going to be when it gets near.

Of course we also get plenty on the history of the discovery of what's out there, the distinction between asteroids and comets and even the unlikely thesis that the path of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was influenced by dark matter. I don't always get much out of pure astronomy books - I usually prefer physics - but there was enough context here (along with that nagging implied threat to humanity's future) to keep me engaged throughout.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Beyond Belief - Helen Pearson *****

Apparently it comes as a surprise to many that medicine was not particularly scientific until the end of the twentieth century (to be honest, it's no surprise to me - we had a GP who used homeopathy in the 90s). Instead it was based on anecdotal guidance - the kind of thing that appeared to work. Evidence-based medicine has since improved the field, trying where possible to base decisions on evidence, ideally based on randomised controlled trials. The first part of Helen Pearson's book covers this well - though I think it's by far the least interesting part of what we discover. Instead what's truly fascinating is the rest of it, looking at a wide range of other fields where evidence was rarely properly used and that are only now starting to dip a toe in the water. These include social policy, policing, conservation, business and education. The main part of the book gives us examples of how bad these areas have been in terms of basing decisions on what's always been ...

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...

Search This Blog