Download 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time fb2

13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks

“13 Things That Don’t Make Sense” is a provocative look at 13 scientific wide-ranging mysteries. Michael Brooks holds a PhD in Quantum Physics, editor and now consultant for New Scientist magazine, takes the reader on the wonderful journey of scientific mysteries. Since the publishing of this book a few of these mysteries have been resolved. This provocative 256-page book includes the following thirteen mysteries/chapters: 1. The Missing Universe, 2. The Pioneer Anomaly, 3. Varying Constants, 4. Cold Fusion, 5. Life, 6. Viking, 7. The Wow! Signal, 8. A Giant Virus, 9. Death, 10. Sex, 11. Free Will, 12. The Placebo Effect, and 13. Homeopathy.

Positives:
1. A well-written, well-researched and entertaining book.
2. The writing is fair and even-handed almost too much so.
3. The fascinating topic of scientific mysteries in the capable hands of Dr. Brooks. “The future of science depends on identifying the things that don't make sense; our attempts to explain anomalies are exactly what drives science forward.”
4. Excellent format! Each chapter is about a specific scientific mystery and the author cleverly leads the end of the previous chapter into the next one.
5. Interesting facts spruced throughout the book. “Color is our way of interpreting the frequency of—that is, the number of waves per second in—radiation. When we see a rainbow, what we see is radiation of varying frequencies. The violet light is a relatively high-frequency radiation, the red is a lower frequency; everything else is somewhere in between.”
6. Profound and practical practices in science. “They won't embrace the extraordinary until they rule out the ordinary.”
7. Provocative questions that drive the narrative. “Have the laws of physics remained the same for all time?”
8. An interesting look at cold fusion. “To get energy out of atoms, you either have to break up their cores—a process called nuclear fission—or join different atoms together by nuclear fusion.”
9. One of the deepest concepts, the concept of what constitutes life. “If creating life is "simply" a matter of putting the right chemicals together under the right conditions, there's still no consensus about what "right" actually is—for the chemicals or the conditions.”
10. It never hurts to quote some of the greatest thinkers, consider the late great Carl Sagan, “We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.”
11. Is there life on Mars? Find out about some of the attempts made. “One of the strongest arguments against life existing on Mars has always been the harshness of the environment: low temperatures, a wispy thin atmosphere, and the lack of liquid water all count against the development of living organisms.”
12. A look at Occam’s razor applied to aliens. “Occam's razor, and it says that, given a number of options, you should always go for the simplest, most straightforward one.”
13. A fascinating look at the Giant Virus. “There were the eukaryotes, the advanced organisms like animals and plants whose large and complex cells contained a nucleus that held inheritable information. The other branch was the simpler prokaryotes, such as bacteria, which have cells without a nucleus.”
14. A look at death. “Over the years, though, evidence mounted up supporting Kirkwood's idea that aging is due to a slow, steady buildup of defects in our cells and organs.”
15. Why the need for sex? “In general, the random genetic drift due to chance variation offers the best hope of explaining the apparent advantage of sex.”
16. Homosexuality in the animal kingdom. “Bruce Bagemihl's ten-year labor of love, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, reports that more than 450 species have been documented engaging in nonprocreative sexual behavior—including long-term pairings.”
17. A fascinating look at free will. “The lesson we learn from all this is that our minds do not exist separately from the physical material of our bodies. Though it is a scary and entirely unwelcome observation, we are brain-machines. We do not have what we think of as free will.” “In the illusion of free will, it seems we have been equipped with a neurological sleight of hand that, while contrarational, helps us deal with a complex social and physical environment.”
18. So what about the placebo effect? “The general conclusion here, it seems, is that the placebo effect is due to chemistry.”
19. Why is homeopathy still in existence? “According to the World Health Organization, it now forms an integral part of the national health-care systems of a huge swath of countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Mexico.” “An assessment of homeopathy using the criteria of known scientific phenomena says it simply cannot work; no wonder Sir John Forbes, the physician to Queen Victoria's household, called it "an outrage to human reason.”
20. Notes and sources provided.

Negatives:
1. Since the book was released in 2008 some of the anomalies have been resolved if not really not taken seriously. As an example, the Pioneer Anomaly was resolved; feel free to look it up.
2. I felt Dr. Brooks was a little too generous toward the wrong side of scientific consensus. As example, the discarded homeopathy.
3. Lack of charts and diagrams that would have complemented the sound narrative.
4. Though immersed to various degrees here and there I would have liked to see Dr. Brooks be clearer on what the scientific consensus is for each chapter.

In summary, I really liked this book. The book holds up quite well despite being released in 2008. My only gripe is not making perfectly clear what the scientific consensus is for each mystery, also, I would have discarded homeopathy as a scientific mystery. That said, a fun book to read, I recommend it!

Further suggestions: “At the Edge of Uncertainty” by the same author, “The Big Picture” by Sean Carroll, “Now: The Physics of Time” by Richard A. Muller, “13:8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything” by John Gribbin, “Know This: Today’s Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments” by John Brockman” and “The Island of Knowledge” by Marcelo Gleiser.

A great book that starts out with several Nobel laureates baffled by a hotel elevator, a metaphor for science where a lot of really intelligent people are just at a loss to explain certain things. The book then goes through 13 things that current science can't explain and in a lot of cases there isn't even a theory or worse multiple completely contradictory theories. Lots of detail and references to current and historical research. Surprisingly engaging, not the dry exposition you might think.

This is an outstanding book. It's a thought-provoking examination of thirteen problems in science that have puzzled-- and sometimes embarrassed and angered-- scientists for years. Though it is scientifically rigorous, it is at the same time very readable.

The book is a greatly expanded version of an article that the author wrote for New Scientist magazine. Brooks considers a wide range of issues, including what dark matter and dark energy might be, if they are anything at all; why the Pioneer spacecraft is apparently violating the rules of physics as it leaves the solar system; why scientists decided that the Viking landers on Mars didn't detect life, despite consistent evidence that they did; whether an alien civilization has already contacted us but we weren't listening carefully enough to notice; why death and sex exist, despite their nearly complete lack of evolutionary advantage; how experiments continue to show that cold fusion may be a real phenomenon, despite abundant proof that it can't exist; why the placebo effect works, despite evidence that it doesn't actually exist; and more.

All of this is tied together by a theme: The world's best experts can't always figure things, out, even when large numbers of them agree; indeed, sometimes those experts prevent things from being properly examined, let alone figured out.

The general tone and style of the book reminded me of Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and John McPhee. There is a LOT to chew on here, but the bites are correctly sized and very tender. The author has a PhD in quantum physics, but he's also a good magazine feature writer. The balance of real science and entertainment is perfect.

I enjoyed this book very much, and I think it will easily repay any reader for the time and money invested in it.

I love it and so does my daughter. I love it when scientist say this doesn't make sense but this is what the facts show or "that was weird!"

Having aligned myself with "scientific thinking" for most of my adult life, I find it refreshing to realize those deep thinkers before (and "above") me were (and continue to be) as unclear about the "facts" as I was/am.

The unexplained fascinates me. This book is about the unexplained. This book has 13 anomalies to ponder and none can be explained (yet). With a storyteller's style, each anomaly is described without the mathematics usually found in scientific journals. Each anomaly is illuminated, calmly, and then jaw drops when you understand.

Really solid book. The 13 items are some obvious but others not so much, Makes you want to read more about each one

Loved the book. Arrived in great shape for a used book. I spent practically all weekend reading it, and Michael Brooks has made me look the universe differently. Dark matter & dark energy are spooky and mystifying topics, for starters.