Book review – science
Seeing the dark in a new light
Even in the deepest mineshaft we’re surrounded by light we can’t see, explains Jacqueline Yallop, drawing on quantum physics to help dispel ordinary night terrors
The balance of power between humans and machines
Robert Skidelsky dismisses the possibility of our annihilation by a superintelligent computer system, since ‘science tells us that we cannot create such a being’. But does it?
A computer will never write the Brandenburg Concertos
What is creativity? Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician and Oxford professor for the public understanding of science, offers this pert…
Carbon – the stuff of life we’re shamefully ignorant about
‘I didn’t realise we were carbon,’ said a friend to whom I mentioned this book. She was the first of…
We still live in the age of dinosaurs
The age of dinosaurs is a perennial favourite on any time traveller’s wishlist. Even though we’re technically still in it…
For the man who has everything, only a space rocket will do
Today’s VHNWI wants a PRSHLS. That’s Very High Net-Worth Individual and Partially Reuseable Super Heavy Lift System. Or, in the…
How Siddhartha Mukherjee gets it wrong on IQ, sexuality and epigenetics
A clear, accurate, up-to-date pop science book on genetics would have been most welcome, says Stuart Ritchie. Sadly, this isn’t it
The frightening, fascinating, inspiring story of radiation
About a century ago, scientists started meddling with an unfamiliar force of nature and the rest of us were terrified.…
When Britannia ruled the digital waves
Everyone, we hear these days, must learn to code. Being able to program computers is the only way to be…
Matt Ridley manages to Pangloss over the nastier aspects of evolution
Before I read this book, I wasn’t aware that I was a creationist. But Matt Ridley tells me I am,…
Physicists have stranger ideas than the most preposterous Old Testament preacher
The beliefs of physicists are infinitely kookier than anything in the Bible, says Alexander Masters
The weather: a very British obsession
As I got into a Brighton taxi this morning, my driver’s first words were ‘apparently it’ll clear in a couple…
White dwarfs and neutron stars — stepping-stones to the black hole
The idea of black holes sounds so quintessentially modern and 20th-century that it may come as a surprise to learn…
The toughest, smartest, strangest creatures ever to evolve are nearing the end of their continental shelf life
The rich, strange, finely balanced ecosystems of the oceans — on which our lives depend — are profoundly threatened, says Rose George
Digesting all the facts — without getting bogged down
Funnily enough, after my editor sent me these three books to read, my guts started playing up. Suddenly, food seemed…
If we recreate the mammoth, it will be 99.999 per cent white elephant
Years ago, in an ill-conceived attempt to break into natural history radio, I borrowed a nearly dead car from a…
Bigger, better bedbugs bite back with a vengeance
‘Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ my mother used to say when she tucked me in at…
Stuck at K: we know very little about vitamins except that they’re good for us (in small quantities)
Before I read this book about vitamins, I thought I knew what it would be like. It would be vaguely…
