Category Archives: Rating **

TimeOne – Colin Gillespie **(*)

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I have always said that there is a real opportunity if anyone can write fiction that manages to entertain but also to educate about science at the same time. It is certainly possible, Screenshot_12_05_2013_13_03but fiercely difficult to do well. As we saw with something like Pythagoras’ Revenge, the result almost inevitably is either bad fiction with a slew of science or readable fiction where the science really doesn’t come across well. So I was excited when I saw the publicity for Colin Gillespie’s TimeOne, intriguingly subtitled ‘discover how the universe began.’

The idea of this work of fiction with a strong science content is to explore the nature of the big bang using the unusual concept of having a detective examine the ‘clues’ to see if they can work out how it all began. I’ve given it an extra bracketed star for ingenuity and effort, but I have to say that the outcome did not give me any joy.

There is plenty of reasonable science in here (along with an awful lot of philosophy and waffle), but the problem is that as a story it is nothing short of awful. There are three main characters, the employer, a mysterious woman who keeps popping into the office then flying off to mysterious destinations, the narrator, who is employed as a researcher to dig up the facts and history of the science, and an ex-cop detective who seems mostly there as a foil for the researcher. Three hours into reading all that had happened was that the employer came and went, the researcher VERY gradually dug out bits of information about relativity, quantum theory and the like, and the detective slobbed about. There was no story, no suspense, no real characters, no development, no plot.

Add to this an incredibly slow laying out of the facts, with a huge slab of philosophising and I really could not keep reading. It was extremely hard work with no real reward. I did try skipping forward to see how it would all turn out, but I couldn’t find any deviation from this formula (nor any great revelation about the big bang).

As I said at the start, I admire the intent and the work that has gone into this – I just don’t think that anyone is going to learn much science, or have any enjoyment from it as fiction.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Unraveling the Universe’s Mysteries – Louis A. Del Monte **

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As I have mentioned before, we are distinctly fussy about taking on self-published books, but made an exception in this case. ‘Unraveling’ combines an exploration of the currently accepted cosmology with some speculative alternative physics ideas and even a quick delmontediscussion of the existence of God.

Although I was prepared to set aside an aversion to self-publication, it does show through quite strongly in this book, and I ought in all fairness to mention the bad side of this first. Like almost all self-published books, the print layout on the page looks wrong – more like a Word document than a book. This isn’t insuperable, but mildly irritating. What’s worse is that it is very clear that the book hasn’t been professionally edited (or if it has, the author should get his money back). There are far too many errors. So, for instance, when talking about string theory, at one point it is sting theory, and at another spring theory. Professor Ronald Mallett, who is discussed at some length, quite often only had one ‘t’ in his name. And so it goes on.

Putting that aside, what we get here is a combination of a quite reasonable introduction to the big bang and string/M theory with some personal speculation from Mr Del Monte and an interesting exploration of some ‘mysteries that still baffle modern science.’ I ought to divide this into three: how well Del Monte does at explaining the basic science, how readable the book is, and what to think of Del Monte’s original theories.

Most of the basic science is good and some is reasonably well explained. The author is a lot better on cosmology than he is on quantum theory and relativity, which can be rather confusing in the way they are covered, but overall it’s a workmanlike job. What is slightly worrying is that the author doesn’t seem to understand special relativity, as he suggests that the ‘twins paradox’ is presented as only being an illusion, because the effect is symmetrical. This runs counter to even undergraduate level physics – in any special relativity textbook it is clearly explained why the twins paradox is real and not an illusion because the symmetry is broken – one twin is accelerated and the other isn’t. That’s worrying.

As for the readability, the book starts off pretty well in an approachable, quite chatty fashion, but it suffers from not having any clear structure, jumping episodically from chapter to chapter, and there is no evidence that the author has any great expertise in science communication. There’s nothing particularly new in the basic science here, and there are plenty of other books on cosmology and string/M-theory that do the job of getting them across better.

We are left with the author’s own theories. I have a problem here. I have no issue with a working scientist with academic standing presenting their own, speculative theories. However when someone without appropriate credentials does so, it is worrying. Del Monte has a masters in physics and then spent his working life as an engineer. Nothing wrong with this, but it does not make him a ‘physicist’ as he is described, and it does not give a great deal of weight to his theories. To be fair I am not saying that they are in the typical ‘Einstein was wrong, my new theory shows why’ fruit-loopery class. There is some interesting reasoning here – but I am not qualified to say if there is anything of interest, and neither, really is Del Monte.

Taking all this into account, this isn’t a bad book, but the combination of self published, poorly edited, not brilliantly written, and combining nothing that isn’t done better elsewhere on standard cosmology with some pet personal theories does not make it one I can recommend either.

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Review by Brian Clegg

The Islands of Benoit Mandelbrot – Nina Samuel (Ed.) **

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Benoit Mandelbrot was the poster-boy of chaos and fractals, in a sense literally as the graphic version of his Mandelbrot set occupied many an arty poster in its time. There’s no doubt Mandelbrot himself did lots of marvellous work from his analysis of cotton production to his ‘how far is at around the coastline of the UK’ and, yes, his remarkable set. But the trouble with the arty associations of that image means he tends to get dragged into a lot of stuff that is peripheral and verges on pseudo-science.

The antennae were raised by the subtitle of this book: ‘Fractals, chaos and the materiality of thinking.’ Is ‘materiality’ even a word?

It also doesn’t help that this book is a collection of articles. There is no narrative thrust – it’s not going anywhere. Allegedly the book shows how ‘images actually further knowledge.’ There is an element of truth in that idea, though it sounds rather like wishful thinking on the part of arty people who want to be scientific. But the approach taken – to use images found in the late Dr Mandelbrot’s office smacks of opportunism with no great interest in imparting wisdom.

One or two of the pieces are worth dipping into , particularly the one on ‘Nature in Mandelbrot’s Geometry’, but many of them are not worth wasting time on. Overall this is certainly not popular science. In fact it’s hard to see what it is, except self-indulgant.

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Review by Peter Spitz

Space Chronicles – Neil de Grasse Tyson **

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I really struggled with this book. I love space and space travel – I have lived through and been thrilled by the entire space race and the development of space science. I expected to love a book by a great astronomer and science populariser, but instead I pretty well had to give up, part way through.

There are two problems. The lesser one is the structure of the book. It consists of a collection of articles, interviews and such that Tyson has produced on the subject of space exploration. This inevitably means there is repetition. A lot of repetition. It’s not that what he is saying is not interesting, but after you’ve heard it for the tenth time it loses its novelty. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the way Tyson is so obviously pulled in two directions. On the one hand he appreciates how superior unmanned satellites and explorers are from a bang-per-buck science viewpoint. On the other hand he believes manned missions are essential to raise interest levels. But of course manned missions are very expensive and almost purely political/military in role, so he really does have to go through some entertaining gymnastics to defend them.

But the thing that made me give up was the sheer jingoism of the book. If you aren’t an American, I can guarantee this book will irritate you. Here’s one example, the words of an interviewer speaking to Tyson (who Tyson doesn’t argue with): ‘If we land on Mars, how are we going to know if USA is number one if an American astronaut is standing next to a French guy? Are we going to say, “Go Earth!”? No, we’re going to say, “Go USA!” Right?’ So basically international cooperation like CERN is a waste of time and money – all that’s important, all that space science is about, is knowing that USA is number one.

An even better example, as it is purely Tyson’s own remarks is when he is talking about the aerospace industry, bemoaning the loss of US control. He says ‘In the fifties, sixties, seventies, part of the eighties, every plane that landed in your city was made in America. From Aerolineas Argentinas to Zambian Airways, everybody flew Boeings.’ I’m sorry? I worked for an airline in the 1970s, and I can tell you this is total baloney (which is apparently American for bilge). Remind me, for example, who built the Comet, the first jet airliner. Which American company? Oh, no, it was British. Of course Boeing was the biggest player in the period he describes, but there were plenty of others. (There were even a couple of other US manufacturers. Remember Lockheed?) Could I just point out also who made the only supersonic airliner flying back then. And come to think of it, the only one to fly ever since. The UK and France. And what did the US contribute to this amazing advance? They tied it up with red tape and objections so it was almost impossible to fly it.

This really made me angry, I’m afraid. In another article, Tyson tells off a judge for inaccuracy because he referred to 1,700 milligrams rather than 1.7 grams. Okay, it wasn’t a particularly sensible convention, but at least it wasn’t wrong. Saying ‘all planes were (US) Boeings’ is just factual inaccuracy to put across your political position. A book on space travel must cover politics, but once it is so hugely politically biased towards one country, however significant it may have been to the aerospace business, it loses credibility. This isn’t a book about space science, it’s a rallying cry for Americans. That’s something that has its place. I’m not knocking America, and it’s good that Tyson is proud of his country. But a science book isn’t the place for such sentiments.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Simplexity – Alain Berthoz **

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I am at a loss after attempting to read this book. The experience was not unlike reading a pseudo-science book, where there are lots of sciency-sounding terms flung about with dramatic disregard for the science behind them. But this isn’t a pseudo-science book. There’s plenty of real science in there from a professor of physiology. I don’t know whether it’s the fact it’s a translation from the French or what – but this book was almost unreadable.

To take a simple point – what is the book about? What does this irritating compound word ‘simplexity’ mean? Although the word is used throughout, I never found a satisfactory definition. Alain Berthoz gives us plenty of examples of biological processes he considers to be ‘simplex’ but the examples of themselves don’t define the term. I’m lucky. I have a press release. So I know, according to that, that simplexity means

‘the set of solutions that living organisms find that enable them to deal with information and situations, while taking into account past experiences and anticipating future ones. Such solutions are new ways of addressing problems so that actions may be taken more quickly, more elegantly, and more efficiently.’

That’s okay, then. But I really haven’t a clue what this book was saying. It was impossible to get much from it. The subtitle is ‘simplifying principles for a complex world’ which makes it sound really practical and useful. Sorry. Baffled. I need some complicity.

(Please note this is a different book to the remarkably similarly titled Simplexity: the simple rules of a complex world by Jeffrey Kluger.)

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Review by Brian Clegg

1001 Inventions that Changed the World – Jack Challoner (Ed.) **

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It is hard to envisage how to do better at making a book that has clearly involved a lot of work, and that contains lots of interesting information, yet at the same time is quite so useless.

This book derives from the series that started as things like 1001 Places to Visit before you Die or some such. That kind of application has a clear use – dip in, find somewhere to visit, visit it. But when you start applying it to inventions, it’s a bit different.

It’s all nicely laid out with some interesting illustrations, but if you try to sit down and read through it, you will very soon give up. It’s just so dull. It doesn’t help that the inventions are in date order, so by page 100 you have only reached the pulley (750 BC).

There are lots of wonderful inventions in here, everything from the stone axe to the Large Hadron Collider. And some pretty barmy things too. But why would you possibly want to read it? It’s impossible to read end to end (apart from anything else, it weighs a tonne), dipping in feels rather pointless, and if you want a reference it’s much easier to go online.

In fact that’s the answer really. This is the book equivalent of bringing out Coldplay’s latest track on a 78 rpm record. This is a website on paper, with none of the advantages of the online medium.

It’s frustrating. There really is lots of good material here that people have sweated over producing. But there’s no point to it.

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Review by Jo Reed

The Little Book of Mathematical Principles – Robert Solomon **

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This is a pocket book in the same series as the entertaining Little Book of Unscientific propositions etc – but there is a fundamental difference between the two. The subject matter in that other title was fun and entertaining, making the little articles on different subjects an enjoyable read, but here it’s more a case of plodding through mathematical history picking out the main features. Frankly it is dull, not aided by the relentless chronological order, which puts all the boring basics at the beginning.

Even when the book moves out of straightforward maths into historical context there are some issues because the history of maths parts don’t always seem particularly well researched. So, for example, the book says that the Pythagorean who let slip that the diagonal of square to be irrational is unknown, but that he was taken out and drowned. The usual version is that we have a name for the man (Hipparsus) but that there is only a legend that he was drowned. Similarly, Newton is identified here as the ‘infidel’ in Bishop Berkley’s discourse on the method of fluxions/calculus – where in fact it was Edmund Halley.

There also seems to be paucity of maths to cover, because a fair number of the topics are straightforward science, like the move from an earth-centred to a sun-centred universe and the mechanics of falling bodies. There’s even a section on special relativity, which is rather poorly handled as the text suggests the effects of relativity are subjective, as if (for instance) time dilation just seems to happen. This is misleading as it is a real, measurable effect.

Overall, then, this is a book that isn’t particularly one you can sit and read through for enjoyment, but neither is it detailed enough to be used as a reference book. I’m really not sure what it’s for. We need more good popular maths books, but sadly this doesn’t make a contribution.

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Review by Peter Spitz

Life as Energy – Alexis Mari Pietak **

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I am in a real quandary with this book. It has some severe problems that make it difficult to recommend, and yet at its heart is a very interesting idea that merits further thought.

The author is a biophysicist, so has scientific credentials, yet at the same time the book has some worrying aspects that make it feel like what New Scientist would refer to as fruit-loopery… and let’s face it, some perfectly respectable scientists have had bizarre ideas in the past.

Let’s get the good bit up front, because it really is rather impressive. As I have limited experience with biology, I don’t know how new an idea it is, but let’s give Alexis Pietak the benefit of the doubt. It goes something like this. In physics we can look at the behaviour of individual particles like atoms, and to do so we apply quantum theory to great effect. Yet quantum theory isn’t our only weapon when looking at, say, matter. We can also apply macro physics to come up with things like mechanics and thermodynamics. We get benefit from operating at more than one level.

Also in physics, we often apply more than one model or metaphor to describe a physical concept. So, for example, when talking about electromagnetism we sometimes use particles, sometimes waves and sometimes fields. In principle you could probably do everything just using particles, but fields particularly have lots of benefits both in terms of understanding and in developing new theories. Pietak then contrasts this with biology. On the whole biology seems to try to apply the equivalent of a quantum theory approach to everything. There isn’t the equivalent of thermodynamics or field theory that gives us a different view that makes it easier to take in the whole. She argues this should be attempted, and gives some suggestions as to how it might be done.

To this extent, the book has a lot of merit. But there are two problems with the approach taken.

Firstly the author simply isn’t very good at explaining science to the general reader. Her approach is repetitive, and her explanation of quantum theory is one of the worst attempts I’ve seen in popular science.

That isn’t what really drags the book down though. Unfortunately she wraps the whole thing in a New Age appealing wrapper that immediately puts off any reader with an interest in the science. She keeps telling us about how mankind’s early beliefs almost always imbued living things with a ‘life force’ or ‘living energy.’ So what? Mankind’s early beliefs almost always put a static Earth at the centre of the universe, but it doesn’t make it true, nor is it useful to understanding cosmology to be receptive to an Earth-centred picture. Pietak also has a habit of pointing out that the concept of ‘life energy’ is central to the likes of Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic systems. If this is supposed to encourage us to be supportive of her ideas, it has exactly the reverse effect.

To make matters worse, the author employs the classic language used by practitioners of woo to attack rational science. She refers to reductionism with negative tones. She even falls into the ‘so-called’ trap. This is a standard indicator that we’re dealing with pseudo-science, when a writer refers to something within the scientific field using ‘so-called’ as a put down. Pietak refers to the ‘so-called life sciences.’ Immediately the reader’s woo detector goes into overdrive.

Finally, Pietak makes the mistake of referring to Rupert Sheldrake’s work without the literary equivalent of a raised eyebrow. Whatever you think of Sheldrake, he is a highly controversial figure, and doing this only brings doubts on Pietak’s own ideas. It doesn’t help that she uses the term ‘morphogenetic field’, which sounds too much like Sheldrake’s morphic fields, though the concept is different. She also, near the end of the book, puts in some thoughts on applications of her ideas to ecology that seem thin and poorly thought out. (For example, while trying to take a holistic view, she seems to think it’s okay to deal only with the plant life in an ecosystem, ignoring bacteria, animal life and physical factors like weather.)

Overall, then, a puzzling book. It has a really interesting idea at its heart but the way it is presented I can’t see it appealing to anyone. Those with an interest in science will be put off by the New Age wrapper, those wanting to take a New Age view will be scared off by the heavy dose of science. Like the nuns in the Sound of Music we have to ask what we will do with a problem like this book?

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Review by Brian Clegg

Chariots of the Gods – Erich von Daniken **

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When I saw this book in a publisher’s catalogue, I couldn’t resist reviewing it. It was a book that blazed large in the bookstores in my childhood, though for some reason I never got round to reading it. Many would argue that it has no place here. But it was an attempt at popular science. Those who have never ventured into its pages would, perhaps, be surprised to learn that within a few pages we have a brief explanation of special relativity and even the formula for time dilation. Of course you may well dispute von Daniken’s thesis and/or methods, but I think it is bad practice to criticize a book you haven’t even bothered to read. So here goes.

I was a little unnerved by the introduction, which is rather heavily spattered with exclamation marks in a way that rather suggests ‘here be crackpot theories’, but I persevered. Von Daniken starts fairly well. He argues that there is a good probability that there are planets with life out there in the universe. He then, rather cleverly, points out what it would be like for the inhabitants of a planet who are at an equivalent development to our stone age if astronauts turned up. Leaving aside the rather cringe-making 1960s ideas of what such astronauts might do (including ‘A few specially selected women would be fertilised by the astronauts. Thus a new race would arise that skipped a stage in natural evolution.’), the picture he paints isn’t stupid.

Admittedly the predictions of technology seem quaint now (and this is part of the book’s entertainment value). He suggests that by 2100 a giant spaceship could be constructed on the moon, the size of an ocean liner. (Apparently we would have the technology to build spaceships on the moon by the 1980s.) This ship would be powered by a ‘photon rocket’ that enabled it to get to nearly the speed of light, which sounds more than a little imaginative.

The other point von Daniken has that makes a lot of sense is that prehistory (he says history, but I think he primarily means prehistory) has been assembled from a lot of pieces like a puzzle, and the way it was assembled was based on certain assumptions. He argues that we should use modern science to transform our view of prehistory, which I think, to be fair, we have done since his day.

Then things start to get a bit worrying. He comes up with the first of a number of assertions about ancient wonders that he says show that ancient people had capabilities far beyond those that were possible without the help from extra-terrestrial astronauts. In reading this now we have a huge advantage over the reader of the 1960s, who could only absorb these claims in wide-eyed wonder if they had not got appropriate expertise. Now it’s easy to nip onto the internet and check them out. So, for example, his first wonder is the Piri Reis map, a 16th century map that von Daniken claims is uncannily accurate and even shows the contours of the Antarctic, which would be unknown for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, even a brief Google search comes up with plenty of information demonstrating that the map isn’t uncannily accurate, but is quite wrong in many places, and shows that the part interpreted as the Antarctic is much more likely to be (and a better fit to) parts of South America.

Then he gets onto what is probably his best known assertion – that the Nazca lines in Peru are a stone age landing strip for spacecraft. Indubitably he is right that they were not roads (as he tells us they were identified at the time by archaeologists – I don’t know if this is true) but sadly his explanation is unnecessary. As has been demonstrated time and again, just because an earthwork can’t be seen in all its glory from ground level, doesn’t make it unattractive to make. A much more likely model for the Nazca lines is the massive markings on the sand that children often make at the seaside. They aren’t trying to attract spaceships. (For that matter, it is very unlikely that a space travelling vessel would need an airstrip.) It’s fun for a moment, but von Daniken has very little to argue in favour of his idea other than a slight visual resemblance.

Much of what follows falls down on the classic error of assuming that everything recorded in the past was literally true. Human beings are story tellers. We tell stories that aren’t true, both for education and for entertainment. We paint pictures of non-existent scenes. We read books, watch TV and movies where hardly anything bears resemblance to reality. Yet those who fall for this mistake, von Daniken included, assume that everything portrayed in ancient cave paintings, carvings and writing had to be true. Remove this assumption and much of his argument through most of the book falls away.

Overall, then, it would be impossible to call this a good book. Yet it is fascinating to read, in part because it is now such a period piece, but also because it had such an impact at the time. von Daniken was putting forward a theory that wasn’t unreasonable, but that in the end didn’t have much in the way of solid evidence to back it up. What we are left with is something rather like the works of Freud. These ideas have no scientific basis and are mostly nonsense, but we can’t ignore the impact they had on twentieth century culture.

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Review by Brian Clegg