Skip to main content

Eight Improbable Possibilities - John Gribbin ****

There are broadly two types of short, stylish-looking little hardback science books. Some are all froth and very little content, where others manage to pack in a remarkable amount of information in a readable fashion. The latest from veteran British science writer John Gribbin is very much in the second category.

In this book he presents us with aspects of science (mostly around astronomy and physics) which seem improbable yet appear in our current best theories. These are: 'the mystery of the Moon', 'the universe has a beginning and we know what it was', 'the expansion of the universe is speeding up', 'we can detect ripples in space made by colliding black holes', 'Newton, the bishop, the bucket and the universe', 'simple laws make complicated things, or little things mean a lot', 'all complex life on Earth today is descended from a single cell' and 'ice age rhythms and human evolution'.

These are all interesting topics, but for me some were a lot more engaging than others, in part because some subjects (such as coverage of the big bang, cosmic microwave background radiation and gravitational waves) have been discussed in many other books. However, three of the topics really grabbed my attention. One was that opener about the Moon (an influence that comes back up again in the final chapter) - Gribbin points out just how unusual our moon is in being far bigger than you would otherwise expect, and shows how its formation and gravitational influence have a huge influence on what the Earth is like and how suitable it was for life to develop. We simply wouldn't be here without the Moon.

The second topic, for which I would buy this book alone (I wish, if anything, the whole thing had been on this subject as it deserves a dedicated book) was the one with Newton, the bucket et al. As Gribbin points out, it sounds like the opening of a joke, but in reality it's a crucially important observation that feeds into relativity - the oddity of how something 'knows' that it is rotating. This is the idea that led to Mach's principle -  that this 'awareness' comes from the interaction of the spinning object and the rest of the universe. This concept and what this implied for Einstein's development of the general theory of relativity are beautifully explored. It's both intriguing and philosophically mind-boggling stuff that is usually brushed over without diving into the detail as happens here.

The final topic I want to pick out is the origin of complex life on Earth. It might be well-known, but this exploration of the roots of life is still something that feels remarkably counter-intuitive. It's a useful counter to the petty discoveries of genealogy to realise that we are all related to every living thing (so who cares if you can find royalty in your family tree?) There was one issue here: the assertion that the two most basic types of organisms, archaea and bacteria did not arise from a common ancestor. Gribbin tells us that 'the two forms of life must have arisen separately, but out of the same chemical soup, which explains their similarities.' The biological consensus is that there was a single universal common ancestor, but that archaea and bacteria most likely evolved separately from that same common ancestor, not just a soup.

I do wish there had been more of the less familiar material, but even so, this is a very good addition to the short but beautifully formed genus of popular science book, and would make a great gift or addition to the bookshelf.

Hardback: 
Bookshop.org

  

Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Philip Ball - How Life Works Interview

Philip Ball is one of the most versatile science writers operating today, covering topics from colour and music to modern myths and the new biology. He is also a broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture, including Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct, and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also a presenter of Science Stories, the BBC Radio 4 series on the history of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol. He is also the author of The Modern Myths. He lives in London. His latest title is How Life Works . Your book is about the ’new biology’ - how new is ’new’? Great question – because there might be some dispute about that! Many

Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work - Roger Highfield ****

It is easy to suspect that a biographical book from highly-illustrated publisher Dorling Kindersley would be mostly high level fluff, so I was pleasantly surprised at the depth Roger Highfield has worked into this large-format title. Yes, we get some of the ephemera so beloved of such books, such as a whole page dedicated to Hawking's coxing blazer - but there is plenty on Hawking's scientific life and particularly on his many scientific ideas. I've read a couple of biographies of Hawking, but I still came across aspects of his lesser fields here that I didn't remember, as well as the inevitable topics, ranging from Hawking radiation to his attempts to quell the out-of-control nature of the possible string theory universes. We also get plenty of coverage of what could be classified as Hawking the celebrity, whether it be a photograph with the Obamas in the White House, his appearances on Star Trek TNG and The Big Bang Theory or representations of him in the Simpsons. Ha

The Blind Spot - Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson ****

This is a curate's egg - sections are gripping, others rather dull. Overall the writing could be better... but the central message is fascinating and the book gets four stars despite everything because of this. That central message is that, as the subtitle says, science can't ignore human experience. This is not a cry for 'my truth'. The concept comes from scientists and philosophers of science. Instead it refers to the way that it is very easy to make a handful of mistakes about what we are doing with science, as a result of which most people (including many scientists) totally misunderstand the process and the implications. At the heart of this is confusing mathematical models with reality. It's all too easy when a mathematical model matches observation well to think of that model and its related concepts as factual. What the authors describe as 'the blind spot' is a combination of a number of such errors. These include what the authors call 'the bifur