What's Eating the Universe - Paul Davies ***

This collection of short pieces on aspects of astronomy and particularly cosmology is not bad, but didn't quite work for me. It didn't help to read the over-inflated sense of the importance of what's in here, referring to the new stuff being 'more disruptive' than anything since we moved from an Earth-centred model of the universe is, frankly, hype.

The 30 bite-size chapterettes range from 'Why is it dark at night?' and 'Where is the Centre of the Universe?' to 'Can the Universe come from Nothing?' and 'Why am I living now?' These mini-essays make the book easy to read, but the haste that is employed to get through what can be quite a meaty topic in a handful of pages means a lot of the joy of storytelling is missing. Many interesting stories in the history of astronomy and cosmology are flagged up without revealing any of the fascinating detail. So, for example, Penzias and Wilson, the discoverers of cosmic microwave background radiation aren't even named, while the infamous pigeon droppings get such a passing mention that doing so doesn't add anything to the story.

Sometimes this condensation of content is so extreme that we loose a considerable amount of accuracy. So, for example, dark matter is stated as if its existence were a known fact, with no consideration of all the problems attached to it, nor a single mention of modified gravity theories. Similarly, quantum spin is described as if it were literally a matter of particles spinning around, apart from the need to do two turns to restore the direction to the same way up. Unfortunately the folksy little openings that Davies gives to many of his mini-chapters are allowed to take up space that could have been put to good use as content.

As I mentioned at the start, this isn't a bad book and may well be of interest to someone who wants a very light touch picture of cosmology, but it could have been so much better with just a little work.

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Review by Brian Clegg

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