13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: labeled release, missing universe, giant virus, Wow Signal, Red Queen, John Webb (more...)

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Product Description
When we look to the "anomalies" that science can’t explain, we often discover where science is about to go. Here are a few of the anomalies that Michael Brooks investigates in 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense:

Homeopathic remedies seem to have biological effects that cannot be explained by chemistry

Gases have been detected on Mars that could only have come from carbon-based life forms

Cold fusion, theoretically impossible and discredited in the 1980s, seems to work in some modern laboratory experiments

It’s quite likely we have nothing close to free will

Life and non-life may exist along a continuum, which may pave the way for us to create life in the near future

Sexual reproduction doesn’t line up with evolutionary theory and, moreover, there’s no good scientific explanation for why we must die

Science starts to get interesting when things don’t make sense.

Science’s best-kept secret is this: even today, there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar "anomalies" have revolutionized our world, like in the sixteenth century, when a set of celestial anomalies led Copernicus to realize that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse, and in the 1770s, when two chemists discovered oxygen because of experimental results that defied all the theories of the day. And so, if history is any precedent, we should look to today’s inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. In 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet thirteen modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow’s breakthroughs.

13 Things opens at the twenty-third Solvay physics conference, where the scientists present are ready to throw up their hands over an anomaly: is it possible that the universe, rather than slowly drifting apart as the physics of the big bang had once predicted, is actually expanding at an ever-faster speed? From Solvay and the mysteries of the universe, Brooks travels to a basement in Turin to subject himself to repeated shocks in a test of the placebo response. No study has ever been able to definitively show how the placebo effect works, so why has it become a pillar of medical science? Moreover, is 96 percent of the universe missing? Is a 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization? Might giant viruses explain how life began? Why are some NASA satellites speeding up as they get farther from the sun—and what does that mean for the laws of physics?

Spanning disciplines from biology to cosmology, chemistry to psychology to physics, Brooks thrillingly captures the excitement, messiness, and controversy of the battle over where science is headed. "In science," he writes, "being stuck can be a sign that you are about to make a great leap forward. The things that don’t make sense are, in some ways, the only things that matter."

Amazon.com Exclusive: Anahad O'Connor Reviews 13 Things That Don't Make Sense
Anahad O'Connor, The New York Times' Science Times "Really?" columnist and author of Never Shower in a Thunderstorm, reviews 13 Things That Don't Make Sense exclusively for Amazon:

Michael Brooks opens 13 Things That Don't Make Sense with an anecdote about watching three Nobel laureates struggle to figure out a hotel elevator. It's an amusing story that illustrates at least two things. One, three heads are not always better than one. And two, as every science and health reporter learns their first day on the job, even the world's greatest minds cannot always sort through the problems we expect them to conquer.

It is this latter theme that is at the core of Mr. Brooks' fascinating new book – except in this case, the problems are 13 stubborn mysteries that have stumped top scientists for decades and, in some cases, centuries. Spun out of a popular article that appeared in New Scientist – an article that quickly became one of the most forwarded articles in the magazine's online history – Mr. Brooks' book takes its readers on a lively journey through the cosmos, physics, biology and human nature. Along the way he explores questions such as why scientists cannot account for 90 percent of the universe (hint: dark matter has something to do with it), whether we have already been contacted by alien life but paid little mind, why humans rely on a form of sexual reproduction that, from an evolutionary perspective, is extremely inefficient, and why we are routinely deceived by the placebo effect.

Mr. Brooks expertly works his way through these and other hotly debated quandaries in a smooth, engaging writing style reminiscent of Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould. At times, as I was deeply engrossed in parts of this book, I found myself as captivated and wide-eyed as I was decades ago when I picked up my first science books and found my calling. Mr. Brooks has the ability to make his readers forget their surroundings – in my case a hectic newsroom – and train their minds' eyes on images as foreign as a vast Martian landscape or as distant as a roiling, infant universe. Every mystery is brought to life in vivid detail, and wit and humor are sprinkled throughout.

To be sure, some of the chapters are more entertaining than others. A section on cold fusion, for example, while understandably necessary in a book on scientific mysteries, may not turn out to be quite as captivating for some readers as the chapters that precede and follow it. That may have something to do with the notion that cold fusion has been unfairly maligned and ridiculed by scientists despite its continuing promise, an argument Mr. Brooks lays out well. But it is ultimately in his chapters on the Big Bang, dark matter, and other issues that relate to the cosmos where Mr. Brooks, who holds a Ph.D. in quantum physics, really works his magic. No surprise then that Mr. Brooks is also co-writing a TV series for the Discovery Channel that explores the universe through the eyes of none other than Stephen Hawking. If 13 Things That Don't Make Sense is any indication, the series will find an enraptured audience.

(Photo © Lars Klove)

Review

Advance Praise for 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense

“WOW! is one of the things that Michael Brooks includes here—it is the signal from space that may have come from an alien civilization—but it’s also the way I feel about this book’s magical mystery tour. You will be amazed and astonished you when you learn that science has been unable to come up with a working definition of life, why death should happen at all, why sex is necessary, or whether cold fusion is a hoax or one of the greatest breakthroughs of all time. Strap yourself in and prepare for a WOW! of an experience.” —Richard Ellis, author of The Empty Ocean and Tuna: A Love Story


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385520689
• ISBN-13: 978-0385520683
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #88,554 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quantifying Ignorance...the fractal nature of knowledge, September 21, 2008

By	Steve Reina (Troy Michigan) - See all my reviews

"I believe that knowledge is fractal in nature. No matter how much we learn, what remains how seemingly small is infinitely complex."
Isaac Asimov

In detailing 13 mysteries at the edge of modern science Michael Brooks expertly lays bare fertile domains for scientific progress. But much more than that, referencing history and historical shifts in perspective that accompanied scientific advance (as for example, when the church attempted to suppress the writings of Galileo and was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so) Brooks also suggests that shifts in perspective may be necessary for us to gain the advance we seek.

But enough about generalities...let's take glimpse at the mysteries surveyed by Brooks:

1) The search for the missing mass in the universe: Today's physicists believe they can only fully explain four percent of what constitutes the universe. The remaining 96 percent has been supposedly divided into dark matter and dark energy owing to qualities about some of it that seem to behave more like matter and others that seem to behave more like energy. However, another proposal is that our understanding of gravity itself is at fault and just as Einstein had to tweek Isaac Newton's concepts of gravity in relation to light we may also have to tweek them in relation to supposedly empty space...which relates to the next mystery:

2) The Pioneer anomaly: In the early 1970s the US sent out two Pioneer probes that are now both past Pluto. Yet amazingly both of them are off course and by the same degree than would be predicted under traditional notions of gravitational pull. Have our probes journeyed far enough to make contact with that missing universe aluded to in the first mystery? The answer to that question is related to our next mystery:

3) Varying Constants: The set strength of the various fundamental forces of nature may not be constant. For those whose appetite is whetted by this chapter, please read Oxford University Prof. John Barrow's book entitled simply "Constants of the Universe." In a rough way, this mystery relates to the next one:

4) Whether cold fusion is possible: Thanks to Einstein's famous E = MC2 huge amounts of energy can be produced by either nuclear fission (the division of nuclear particles) or alternatively fusion (the unification of certain nuclear particles). For those familiar with US A bomb and H bomb testing videos and Godzilla movies, this process is usually a very dramatic one. If cold fusion were possible it would bode significantly against global energy concerns. And while we still don't know for sure if it can be done, we do know that the US Navy is convinced enough to massively fund research in this area. From this mystery, we leap to our next one:

5) How did life originate: Wisely Brooks peppers this part of his book heavily with quotations from both Erwin Schroedinger whose 1944 essay of the same name is still in print and also Adelaide U prof Paul Davies fantastic book The Fifth Miracle. While personally, I believe life will ultimately be found to a fairly common emergent property on certain types of planets and moons, it's still interesting reading to see just how far current research has NOT come. This brings us to our next mystery:

6) Did Viking find evidence of life on Mars: On July 20 1976 the Viking lander did just that on Mars. In four then cutting edge tests (the fifth one failed to work properly) Viking's magic eight ball said: Probably not. But was that the final word? Itself probably not. Which brings us to the next mystery: did we alredy recieve an extra terrestrial signal?

As can be seen, the issues (and the ones listed were just a sampling are fascinating reading for both the questions they answer and the others they beckon us...their inheritors...to answer.

63 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not so baffling things, December 10, 2008

By	M. Narramore "Philomath" (Somerville, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was very disappointed. The first chapter on dark matter and dark energy was indeed a baffling mystery of science. However, many of the 13 things were not so baffling or in a couple of cases not even serious phenomenon.

There is a Nobel Prize waiting for the person who figures out cold fusion, but until someone can actually reproduce the experiments there is no "thing" to be baffled by. Occam's razor does not suggest an alien transmission is the best explanation for SETI's "Wow" signal. The "Wow" signal was a onetime event. It is scientific frustration that we don't have more data from the event, but it isn't one of the most baffling mysteries in science.

The situation gets even worse when the author moves on to free will and homeopathy. I was hoping for a book about the frontiers of science. This was not it. Failing to prove negatives does not constitute scientific mystery.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Author of incredulity, September 9, 2009

By	Northern Man (The Frosty North) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 13 Things that Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time (Vintage) (Paperback)

Point by point response to the amazon.com review

Things That Don't Make Sense:
"Homeopathic remedies seem to have biological effects that cannot be explained by chemistry"

When properly controlled studies are done all correlations on the efficacy of homeopathy disappear. It's actually possible to disprove homeopathy at home. Take a single drop of coffee and put it in your city's water supply intake. If homeopathy is correct then this super dilute amount should induce the opposite effect: it should make everyone extremely tired.

Now when everyone else is sleeping, rob all the banks in your town
Haha

Homeopathy, if true would mean that all the trace chemicals in the enviroment would have an enormous effect on us. A glass of water would contain in it all the traces of absolute chemical chaos and would tear us down

"Gases have been detected on Mars that could only have come from carbon-based life forms "

What GASES? There's hardly any atmosphere, and of that all can be created by non biological sources. There are few things that can only be said to have come from biological sources complex proteins would be an example. If you found that the red of mars was because of hemoglobin, then... wow it's a slam dunk.

But even if we were to take this at face value: let's provisionally accept this as evidence of life on mars. How does this belong in the list of 13 things that don't make sense? There's nothing that says there can't be life on mars. A piece of evidence can only be said to not make sense if it contradicts something. Many reasonable scientists have reasoned that the possibility of chemotrophic bacteria or analogs of a totally separate primordial genesis might be present on Mars. On Earth we find bacteria in boiling water in hot springs, on volcanic vents on the ocean floor surrounded by extreme pressures with high heat and bathed in sulfuric acid, miles underground in mines eating bands of iron. We find them everywhere! For every extreme condition on mars there is something that we know of on earth that can thrive in that niche

"Cold fusion, theoretically impossible and discredited in the 1980s, seems to work in some modern laboratory experiments"

So I suppose this is another example of "THE MAN" keeping us down? Hmmm.....

"It's quite likely we have nothing close to free will"

We cannot assign likelyhood or probability to something like this simply because finding a place for free will would require that we know EVERYTHING. And science cannot investigate such claims ultimately. IT can show that so far we've been able to show that neurobiology proceeds from physical events.

No greedy reductionism needed

"Life and non-life may exist along a continuum, which may pave the way for us to create life in the near future "

This is actually true. Good job for once! Protobionts display nearly all the properties of life. As well many non living things satisfy some of the requirements for being called living. Crystals are complex, grow, require resources, use energy, and pass on their specific structure. Fire uses energy, grows and reproduces.


"Sexual reproduction doesn't line up with evolutionary theory and, moreover, there's no good scientific explanation for why we must die "

1. We have some good ideas, read the book "The evolution of sex" by John Maynard smith as well as "the evolution of sex" by George C Williams. Then pick up "the Red Queen hypothesis by matt ridley for some ideas about this.
2. Disposable soma theory explains why things die. Whenever health and reproductive success become unlinked, evolution sides with reproductive success.

Also, evolution has been formed based on the assumption that on average things die at an average age. Development involves the complex timing of many factors and so evolution might just not have taken into account any "Methuselah Selection" properties.