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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.

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Review by Brian Clegg
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