Skip to main content

Intraterrestrials - Karen Lloyd ****

Apparently the biogeochemist (who even knew there was such a thing) Karsten Pedersen 'coined the term "intraterrestrials" to describe the abundant life within Earth's crust.' The idea of this book is boldly go and explore new life that is found below the surface and of which we have historically known very little.

I must admit I winced a bit when the introduction yet again featured a diary entry from an author about to set off an expedition of discovery, in this case about to start a deep sea dive. This has become a cliché, which I hope we'll move on from soon. But that doesn't stop the actual content being fascinating. Inevitably we get plenty on extremophiles (living in everything from water well over boiling point to strong acids and alkalis) and the origins of life, something anyone reading this kind of popular science is likely to have come across, but there is plenty more, particularly around life dependent on volcanoes, that was new to me.

Karen Lloyd gives us the basics of DNA that will be necessary to understand the findings, plus an introduction to the view of life from thermodynamics, as a system that is kept away from equilibrium. She finishes by asking 'What can intraterrestrials do for us?' This ranges from keeping oxygen free for use to detoxifying waste. We get a picture of the impact these bacteria may have on climate change and their potential relevance to both carbon capture and storage and deep sea mining.

I don't think I'm a natural audience for this book as for me it veers a little too much into the memoir side of popular science. I'm less interested in experiences and more in the science - but I know for many this kind of approach makes the science more engaging, and as such it's recommended.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more