Author(s): Nigel Calder
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date : 2005
This is a remarkably interesting series of science essays (the author calls them 'short stories'). Even if I had not read the back of the book's dust jacket, I would have known that Nigel Calder was a former writer for the ebullient British weekly, "New Scientist." He's got their opinionated, breezy, clear style of writing. "Magic Universe" scintillates. It is easy to understand. The author does not linger overly long on even the most fascinating topics (actually, this brevity is sometimes frustrating).
There are several ways of working through the book. There is the 'spider-web' method as illustrated by the book's end-papers, where all of the subjects are ultimately linked together. For instance, I started onto a subject path with "Volcanic Explosions (where will the next big one be?)" which led to "Hotspots (are there really chimneys deep inside the Earth?)" which pointed to "Plate Motions (what rocky machinery refurbishes the Earth's surface?)" which sent me back to "Extremophiles (creatures that thrive in unexpected places)."
According to the author, his spider's web "celebrates a reunion of the many subdivisions of science that is now in progress..." but I'm getting dizzy flipping back and forth. Let's try an alphabetic read-through for awhile, starting at "Extremophiles" --> "Flood Basalts (can impacting comets set continents in motion?)"--> "Flowering (colourful variations on a theme of genetic pathways)" --> "Forces (a pointer entry)."
Wait a minute, here's an interesting entry about something called the 'Casimir force (the attractive force between two surfaces in a vacuum).' I've never heard of it, even though I'm a faithful cover-to-cover reader of "New Scientist." Where does Casimir's force point? To "Plasma Crystals." What is a Plasma Crystal? Isn't that an oxymoron? Just let me just follow this topic a little further...
Warning: if you like good writing, especially concerning outre, outer-edge-of-science topics, you might not be able to put down "Magic Universe" until you've read every 'short story' in this book. From first-hand experience, the author knows that "thrilling discoveries can tip-toe in, almost unnoticed to begin with."
This book held many thrilling discoveries for me. Consider those plasma crystals. They opened up many new windows in astronomy for me, including a fresh look at the method by which planets form.
Nigel Calder also believes that the surest way to shorten this book's life would be to "report only the consensual opinions of the late 20th century." To drive home this point, read what he has to say about superstrings: "A scandalous fact was not lost on the bystanders. This was the lack of even the smallest shred of direct evidence for the validity of either superstring or M-theory as a description of the real world."
What can a good science writer like the author do with an unproven theory?
Quote Lewis Carroll, of course: "But I was thinking of a plan/ to dye one's whiskers green, /And always use so large a fan /That they could not be seen."
Do superstrings exist? Are they composed of green whiskers? Read, "Magic Universe" and you'll be pondering similar, mind-bending theories.
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