In the early days of the universe, there was darkness. Until somebody said, “let there be light”? Not quite. In First Light, astrophysicist Emma Chapman introduces you to ongoing research into the first billion years of our Universe and the birth of the first stars. Popular science at its finest, this book challenged me pleasantly but was above all—with apologies for the terrible pun—enlightening.

First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time, written by Emma Chapman, published by Bloomsbury Sigma (a Bloomsbury Publishing imprint) in November 2020 (hardback, 304 pages)

Though I have never given it much thought, the idea of there being a first generation of stars seems logical once you mention it. As Chapman shows, there is a gap in our understanding of what, exactly, happened during this time. Ongoing research shows this to be an unusual period, going by such evocative names as the Dark Ages, the Cosmic Dawn, and the Epoch of Reionisation.

Before we get to these, Chapman introduces you to the basics in the first four chapters. To grasp the science, you will need to understand the properties of light (its dual wave-particle nature and its high but not unlimited speed), stellar classification (from young to old: Population I, II, and III stars), the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe, and how stars are born. With that sorted, she then walks the reader through those first billion years.

An awful lot happened in the first three minutes after the Big Bang. Protons and neutrons were able to combine in a process known as nucleosynthesis within ~14 seconds. Within minutes, this process ended and the early Universe was full of hydrogen and helium isotopes. Electrons were still too energetic to bind to them to form atoms proper. It would take another 380,000 years of the Universe expanding and cooling down for so-called recombination to take place and hydrogen atoms to form. Something else happened at this point: the Universe became transparent to radiation. Before this time, “we cannot see anything with light […] because the environment is too volatile to allow photons to travel on unimpeded paths to our telescope” (p. 84). Although photons were released during these steps, the continued expansion of the universe meant their wavelengths increased (a process known as redshifting) until they left the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. With stars not yet born, the Universe entered its Dark Ages.

“[…] stellar archaeology […] tries to find quiet parts of the Universe, so-called stellar tombs […] , where rare, light-weight Population III stars might have survived until now.”

And yet, something was stirring in the darkness. Hydrogen gas coalesced into clouds until some became dense enough to ignite fusion, the first stars flickering into life. This was the Cosmic Dawn, some 180 million years after the Big Bang. Chapman talks at length about these Population III stars as they were unique. Consisting of nothing but hydrogen, they were huge (hundreds of solar masses) and short-lived (millions of years). As fusion consumes a star’s hydrogen, they go through several cycles: “with heavier and heavier metals created in onion-like shells” (p. 153). (To astronomers, all elements heavier than helium are simply “metals”.) This continues until you hit iron: photons released in these fusion reactions as so energetic that they destroy the iron again and the whole thing goes supernova. The first Population III stars thus seeded the cosmos with heavier elements, paving the way for new iterations of star formation.

There are two big narrative threads regarding Population III stars. The first was, for me, rather technical and challenging, so hold on to your helmet while I attempt to explain it. This has Chapman talk about how to find the first stars using the radiation emitted by hydrogen gas that is cooling down, which has a very particular wavelength. This involves the abstract property of an atom’s spin state and the emission of a 21 cm wavelength photon when a hydrogen atom goes through a spin-flip transition to settle in its energetically least excited state, its ground state. The experiment detecting this particular radiation incidentally also provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. In the early Universe, dark matter was condensing to form filaments that formed the gravitational skeleton, if you will, around which regular matter such as hydrogen gas ended up condensing. As such, our universe has a large-scale architecture that resembles a cosmic web of clusters of galaxies connected by filaments of galaxies.

The second point is that Population III stars are still theoretical entities: we have never observed any. This leads Chapman down two very interesting avenues of research. The first is known as stellar archaeology and tries to find quiet parts of the Universe, so-called stellar tombs (astronomers get all the cool names), where rare, light-weight Population III stars might have survived until now. The other, complementary approach searches for ancient dwarf galaxies that have escaped the galactic cannibalism through which galaxies grow by gobbling up smaller ones. This would provide information about the environment in which these first stars formed.

“[…] this subject could have ended up being impenetrable in the hands of a lesser science communicator. [Chapman] excels at explaining the astrophysics and uses some imaginative metaphors […]”

Lastly, there is the Epoch of Reionisation. The Big Bang initially resulted in a Universe with nuclei that did not yet have electrons bound to them; it was ionized. Recombination resulted in a Universe filled with neutral hydrogen. But something happened to reionise the Universe’s hydrogen, a state that persists to this day. Research is ongoing to find out what that something was. Early quasars emitting X-rays have been implicated, but photonic emissions by Population II stars are another likely contributor. Similarly, astronomers are trying to constrain the when, with current estimates suggesting that the process took some 500 million years and was complete 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

For a biologist such as myself—admittedly one fascinated by astronomy—this subject could have ended up being impenetrable in the hands of a lesser science communicator. Chapman has received various commendations and prizes and is a well-known public speaker. She excels at explaining the astrophysics and uses some imaginative metaphors. Why do some particle interactions require a low-energy environment? “Try hugging someone sprinting in the opposite direction and you’ll understand why sometimes slower is better when it comes to interactions” (p 130). How do you find a black hole? Through its gravitational effect: “Like spotting someone well known in a shopping arcade, you are unlikely to see that person, but you know that something is happening from the mass of people heading to one point from all directions” (p. 221). Furthermore, she makes good use of subheadings in the text, includes diagrams to visualize abstract concepts, and ends each chapter with a helpful recap.

Although the focus of her writing remains firmly on the science, she delivers it in a conversational style. There are some nerdy jokes, but never too many. There are lyrical passages, but used in moderation. For example, the Big Bang “[…] is a theory that has been forced on our uncomprehending three-dimensional brains, incapable of visualising infinity but able to understand the overwhelming evidence” (p. 70), while stellar archaeology is described as “[…] a field that has moved from seeking the first stars to conversing with the second stars and hearing tales of their ancestors” (p. 178). Peppered throughout are historical episodes, e.g. the accidental discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (which features two very unlucky pigeons) and its recognition as the afterglow of the Big Bang. And Chapman highlights some of the underacknowledged female pioneers such as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who proposed stars were primarily made of hydrogen and helium, Vera Rubin, who provided evidence for the existence of dark matter, or the women at the Harvard College Observatory, who classified stars on an industrial scale.

By now, I have reviewed eleven of the almost seventy titles on the Bloomsbury Sigma imprint. Though billed as popular science, these are not boilerplate books, but cover specialist, cutting-edge topics and provide a pleasant intellectual challenge. Invariably, they are written by skilled science communicators who are experts in their field and are willing to spend several years on a book. And judging by the acknowledgements I have read so far, they go to great lengths to seek advice from peers and solicit colleagues to proofread and comment on their manuscripts. In that sense, First Light represents everything I appreciate about the Bloomsbury Sigma imprint. Next to a wildly fascinating book, it is another shining addition to their roster.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

First Light

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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The Genesis Quest is one of those books that quickly makes a good case for its own existence. It takes the reader through the century-long research endeavour on the origin of life, providing a big-picture overview of who’s who and how their ideas have waxed and waned. Such an overview requires an outsider’s perspective on the whole show, which is exactly what science writer Michael Marshall achieves in my opinion. A superb starting point if you want to read more on this subject, this is the book I wish I had read earlier.

The Genesis Quest: The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth, written by Michael Marshall, published in the US by the University of Chicago Press in October 2020 (hardback, 360 pages)

Judging by the long history of creation myths, the question of our origin has always fascinated us. But creation myths, contends Marshall, are not an answer. The scientific question of how life originated from non-living matter, a process known as abiogenesis, needed the theory of evolution and a conception of the age of the Earth before it was conceived of. (On a side-note, this seems to harken back to the now obsolete idea of spontaneous generation; the two are similar, but not the same.) What The Genesis Quest shows is a research community that started out unified, then splintered into competing fields, and is only recently showing signs of a reunification.

Marshall takes the 1920s as his starting point, which is when the Russian scientist Alexander Ivanovich Oparin and the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane independently theorised that life could have arisen from non-living chemicals in a step-wise fashion in Earth’s primitive oceans. Experimental support for the Oparin–Haldane hypothesis was delivered by chemists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller in the famous Miller–Urey experiment. In a laboratory setup simulating early Earth conditions, they created organic molecules such as amino acids from simple precursors. Though iconic and launching the field of prebiotic chemistry, their findings quickly became obsolete as criticism mounted. Earth’s early atmosphere was probably unlike their simulation, nor were the chemical steps observed necessarily realistic.

During the ’70s and ’80s, disagreements arose over which of life’s essential functions came first, which basic molecules came first, where on the planet this happened, and which organisms held the clues to the questions. Consequently, the field gradually splintered into four competing schools of thought that Marshall discusses in turn.

“Though each school has advanced the field, none of them have provided a complete and satisfactory solution to life’s origin”

The proteins-first school argues amino acids can spontaneously form complex proteins and even proteinoid microspheres (a sort of protocells), but it receded with the death of Sidney Walter Fox. The compartmentalisation-first school argues that life needs a container if it is not to fall apart immediately. Experiments by key figures such as David Deamer, William Hargreaves, and Pier Luigi Luisi showed how precursors can spontaneously form lipids which can then form protocells, and how they can be coaxed to divide or pick up molecules relevant to life’s biochemistry.

The other two are arguably the more widely known ideas. The replication-first school has become synonymous with the RNA World hypothesis and got boosted by discovering that RNA can have enzymatic activity (so-called ribozymes) and that it sits at the heart of ribosomes. Lastly, the metabolism-first school argues that energy underlies everything, for without a constant input to counter the second law of thermodynamics, entropy wins and life falls to pieces. This idea was boosted by the discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, argued to be ideal biochemical reactors by Jack Corliss. Mike Russell predicted the existence of alkaline vents in the ’80s based on geological formations and was vindicated by the discovery of the Lost City hydrothermal field in 2000. These would provide a gentler environment and, from reviewing Alien Oceans, it is clear that alkaline vents still have currency.

Though each school has advanced the field, none of them have provided a complete and satisfactory solution to life’s origin. Experiments often fall short or have doubtful real-world relevance. This is the part of the book where Marshall finally plays his own hand and clarifies which scenario he favours based on the evidence so far. Along the way he throws out some fascinating ideas. He charts how some people have changed their minds and a new school is emerging that argues that “the essence of life is the interaction of all three” (p. 250), i.e. genes, metabolism, and a membrane-bound cell. Experiments by Jack Szostak, initially an RNA-world devotee, have partially succeeded in creating a model system with genes copying themselves inside membrane-bound protocells, though they still lack metabolism. Arguably, the boundaries between life and non-life become fuzzy once you start looking at such self-sustaining networks of chemical reactions, which is the domain of systems chemistry “The first life was so intimately bound up with its surroundings that it is difficult to tell what should count as organism and what as surroundings” (p. 272). He also highlights Harold Morowitz‘s argument that life should be considered at the level of ecosystems, or, in Marshall’s words “The first cell was not alone: it belonged to an instant community” (p. 270).

“Arguably, the boundaries between life and non-life become fuzzy once you start looking at […] self-sustaining networks of chemical reactions.”

Some people are now focusing on where such protocells would get their chemicals from, and e.g. Deamer, initially a compartmentalisation-first devotee, favours terrestrial tide pools undergoing wet-dry cycles as the best place for this. Marshall does not put much faith in hydrothermal and alkaline vents, though he does entertain the option that life might have arisen in more than one way, which opens “the possibility that several kinds of life arose in different places, and either merged or competed” (p. 278).

Marshall discusses many more researchers who made important contributions than I have space to mention here (the chapter on Graham Cairn-Smith and his notion of replicating crystals in clay stands out). This overview is arguably the book’s strongest point, but I have two additional observations. First is his eye for subtlety and detail. For example, he clarifies how speaking of the “Oparin–Haldane hypothesis” obscures the fact that their ideas differed subtly, and he explains the difference between hard and soft versions of the RNA-world thesis. Second, his version of the story of how the structure of DNA and the ribosome were discovered matches what I have read in other books.

Based on these observations I feel reasonably confident to claim that Marshall knows his stuff, even though he is “only” a science writer. I use inverted commas as I feel science journalism has a sometimes undeserved bad reputation. Here, however, having an outsider without allegiance to any research group is an advantage. The acknowledgements mention his close reporting on origin-of-life research for over a decade and 46 pages of references to journal articles back up the ideas he presents here. Clearly, Marshall has done his homework.

“This overview [of the different schools of thought] is arguably the book’s strongest point […] having an outsider without allegiance to any research group [reporting on it] is an advantage.”

Despite the serious intention, the book is very readable. He provides just the right amount of biographical information without losing focus on people’s ideas. There is the occasional footnote with nerdy pop-culture references, which is amusing when used in moderation. And he can be refreshingly brusque and honest. When introducing Haldane, he cracked me up by remarking that “Ronald Clark’s biography J.B.S. is essentially one long stream of outrageous anecdotes punctuated by occasional outbreaks of science” (p. 44) which matches the picture I got from Haldane after reviewing a more recent biography. Criticism of some of Walter Fox’s work on proteinoid microspheres is summarised as “nice experiment, but would it happen in the real world?” (p. 142). And an older Stanley Miller is described as being “very much in the ‘criticise anyone who challenges me’ phase of his career” (p. 194).

This is not the first book to give a history of this field, nor the first one written by a science journalist. Though I have not read those books, a quick comparison suggests they spend more time surveying thinking in Antiquity, which is something Marshall only briefly surveys in his first chapter. Given that I have recently been reading a fair bit about astrobiology and the origin of life, this is the book I wish I had read first. If you have any interest in delving deeper into origin-of-life research, The Genesis Quest makes a fantastic starting point that will give you the lay of the land. It gets my unreserved recommendation.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Genesis Quest

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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This is the second of a two-part dive into the story of oceans on Earth and elsewhere, following my review of Ocean Worlds. That book gave a deep history of how our oceans shaped Earth and life on it and briefly dipped its toes into the topic of oceans beyond Earth. Alien Oceans is the logical follow-up. How did we figure out that there are oceans elsewhere? And would such worlds be hospitable to life? Those are the two big questions at the heart of this book. If there is one person fit to answer them, it is Kevin Peter Hand, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and their deputy chief for solar system exploration.

Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, written by Kevin Peter Hand, published by Princeton University Press in March 2020 (hardback, 248 pages)

A major question in astrobiology is whether the evolution of life on Earth is a fluke, or whether life is bound to pop up wherever conditions are favourable. Hand very neatly frames this in the bigger history of science. Over the centuries, we figured out that the laws of physics, chemistry, and geology work beyond Earth. But “when it comes to biology, we have yet to make that leap. Does biology work beyond Earth?” (p. 15). What we have learned is that life as we know it needs water. And though there is no shortage of theories on the origins of life, oceans are very likely where it started, and thus a logical first place to start looking for answers.

If you have any interest in astrobiology, you will probably have heard of the concept of a habitable zone or Goldilocks zone where, based on the distance to a star, conditions for life are just right. Not so close as to be too hot, nor so far as to be too cold. Earth obviously falls in that zone. Next to many minor insights, Alien Oceans had three major eye-openers for me. This was the first one:

There are other Goldilocks zones.

Depending on the details of their orbit, moons can experience such strong tidal tugs from their parent planet that the constant squeezing and stretching of the rock creates enough heat through internal friction to sustain liquid water. The physics of water helps, as it has a seemingly mundane but rather unusual property. Ice floats. When water solidifies, its density decreases slightly. What this means for moons is that the liquid water exposed to the cold of deep space freezes and forms a protective icy shell. Most liquids do not have this useful property. When they freeze, they sink to the bottom exposing more liquid until all of it is frozen solid. To top it off, ice is also a good thermal insulator, helping such ocean worlds retain heat. Maybe I have been hiding under a rock, but this was revelatory for me. Suddenly, the amount of cosmic real estate suitable for life has increased quite dramatically. And we have some of it right here on our doorstep.

“Over the centuries, we figured out that the laws of physics, chemistry, and geology work beyond Earth. But “when it comes to biology, we have yet to make that leap. Does biology work beyond Earth?“”

The existence of oceans in our solar system and how we gathered the evidence is one of the two major threads running through this book. Hand examines this in detail for Jupiter’s moon Europa, which has been studied in the most detail. Three types of data are typically gathered: spectroscopic, gravimetric, and magnetometric. This is where Hand gets fairly technical, though, fortunately, he extensively uses comparisons with everyday concepts and technologies to help you understand the underlying (astro)physics. Without retreading his careful explanations, in Europa’s case, these different strands of data all converge on a moon with an icy shell and a substantial subsurface ocean some 80–170 km thick as the best explanation. Mixed in with this narrative are the details and many technical setbacks of the Galileo mission that are nail-bitingly tense in places.

Similar missions and measurements have been done for Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Callisto, Neptune’s moon Triton, and Pluto. The evidence for oceans gathered so far gets less robust in this order, but there are some notable variations on the theme. Enceladus ejects spectacular plumes of water and carbon compounds that were photographed and sampled by the Cassini–Huygens mission. Ganymede, meanwhile, is so large that the bottom of its ocean might consist of an exotic form of dense ice, ice III, formed at very high pressures not seen on Earth, meaning its ocean is sandwiched between two layers of ice.

So you have found exo-oceans. Now what? Can we expect to find life here? That is the second major thread. Hand identifies five conditions for life to emerge: a solvent such as water, chemical building blocks, an energy source, catalytic surfaces, and time. Interestingly, there is a gap between two schools of thought. The top-down explanation deconstructs life backwards in time until we arrive at an RNA world, but how did that get started? The bottom-up explanation has shown that life’s basic building blocks such as amino acids exist in space, but how do we go from there to larger functional molecules?

“There are other Goldilocks zones. Moons can experience such strong tidal tugs that the heat released by internal friction can sustain liquid water.”

This was the second major eye-opener for me: “Our environment is full of chemical disequilibrium […] there are reactions just waiting to happen. […] The metabolisms that drive life accelerate reactions in the environment, releasing energy faster than would have occurred without life” (p. 144). Hand takes a leaf out of Nick Lane’s book The Vital Question (which, shame on me, I still have not read) when he enthusiastically concludes that “the why of life is metabolism” (p. 146), offering the universe a pathway to increase entropy faster. These are remarkable ideas that give a whole new meaning to philosophical questions on the meaning of life.

The third and final eye-opener concerns the need for a catalytic surface, which is where Hand circles back to oceanographic exploration here on Earth, a recurrent theme in this book. When the submarine Alvin discovered hydrothermal vents in 1977 and found them teeming with life, these quickly became a popular alternative explanation to warm tidal pools as a place where life could have started. These so-called black smokers are powered by magma rising to the surface at mid-ocean ridges, jetting out superheated water of over 400 °C. Though volcanism and tectonics are, or sometimes were, common processes on many solar system bodies, there is another option. Alkaline vents, first discovered in 2000 at the Lost City hydrothermal field, are powered by exothermic (energy-releasing) reactions between water and mineral-rich rock, heating water to a more gentle 70–100 °C. All these need are the right rocks with cracks in them so water can percolate down.

“In addition to hydrothermal vents, alkaline vents are another place where life might have started. All these need are the right type of rock with cracks in them so water can percolate down, no plate tectonics needed.”

Hand raises many other interesting questions towards the end of the book, of which I will mention just three. One, life’s metabolic reactions require so-called oxidants, oxygen being “the most glorious of oxidant” (p. 162), but how would these get down into subsurface oceans? Two, how contingent or convergent is the evolution of life’s biochemistry? Carbon is a suitable building material for life as it is “hands down the best team player on the periodic table” (p. 212). But to these options, or can we sketch a periodic table of life with other, weirder possibilities? And three, how should we seek for signs of life? What makes a good biosignature? This is discussed far more in-depth in Life in the Cosmos, but Hand considers three types of evidence.

Alien Oceans limits itself to oceans in our solar system, not touching on the topic of exoplanetary oceans. Given this is not Hand’s expertise, that is reasonable. He also glosses over the question of what aliens might look like, though he speculates on the likelihood of intelligent life in ice-covered subsurface oceans. Even without these topics, Alien Oceans is information-dense, requiring me to make a summary, and then a summary of that summary while preparing this review. Nevertheless, it is an intellectually very rewarding book and the many analogies make it accessible. I enjoyed it as a follow-up to Ocean Worlds but it is a fine standalone book. Terribly fascinating, Alien Oceans makes a convincing case for exploring the moons in our solar system in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Alien Oceans

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Life most likely originated in the oceans, and it is to oceans that astronomers are looking to find life elsewhere in the universe. With the publication last year of Kevin Peter Hand’s Alien Oceans, I decided this was the right time to finally review Ocean Worlds, a book that I have been very keen to read ever since buying it some years ago. This, then, is the first of a two-part dive into the story of oceans on Earth and elsewhere.

Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and other Planets, written by Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams, published by Oxford Press in December 2017 (paperback, 302 pages)

Palaeobiologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams have previously collaborated on The Goldilocks Planet. Here, they provide a deep history of our oceans. As soon as I tucked in, it became clear that they go deeper than Eelco Rohling did in the previously reviewed The Oceans: A Deep History, a book that focused heavily on palaeoclimatology. Even though most of the action in Ocean Worlds takes place on Earth, and the wider universe is only considered in the opening and closing two chapters, the book is characterised by an almost cosmic perspective on the subject. The writing of Zalasiewicz and Williams is such that I felt as if was surveying major developments in the history of our universe from an elevated, slightly detached, almost omniscient position. The result is thrilling and at times awe-inspiring. What follows are some of the big questions and outrageously fascinating topics they consider.

To have an ocean we first need water. Hydrogen was an immediate byproduct of the Big Bang. Oxygen, however, did not appear until after the universe had gone through its first cycle of stars being born and dying, as its creation required nuclear fusion. Likely, the formation of water had to wait for a few hundred million years, though some have argued it could have started much sooner. As is usual when dealing with processes that took place in such a distant past, opinions are divided and there are several reasonable scenarios.

“the book is characterised by an almost cosmic perspective on the subject […] The result is thrilling and at times awe-inspiring.”

With water present in the universe, how did Earth acquire its oceans? After all, “There is a wild card here, which surely had an impact” (p. 18). We have good evidence that our proto-Earth, called Tellus by some, was hit by a small planetoid, Theia, with the resulting debris forming our current Earth–Moon system. This event would likely have obliterated what early oceans we had, if any. Various authors have proposed that certain meteorites (carbonaceous chondrites) or comets might have subsequently been water’s cosmic delivery vehicle.

However it got here, the first major effect it had was kick-starting plate tectonics. The early Earth was hot, but without the lubrication provided by water, the heat-venting mechanism of plate tectonics was not in place. How did molten rock make its way to the surface? Some scientists argue that it was through simple vertical conduits, so-called heat pipes, which would have made for a radically different surface topography: “the fundamental proportions of land area and ocean area […] would have been utterly different to today’s familiar patterns” (p. 34). Though, again, this idea is contested by others. The puzzle of when plate tectonics started, possibly 3 billion years ago, relies on truly ancient rocks, 3.5 to 3.8 billion years old, of which we have precious few remaining in places such as Australia and Greenland.

Beyond those earliest days, Ocean Worlds has much interesting material about later episodes. Life likely started in the oceans, this much I knew, but these were iron seas. Water without oxygen can hold large amounts of dissolved iron, and early organisms used this in their biochemistry to generate energy. This was the realm of the Archaea: the salt-tolerant, heat-loving, chemoautotrophic microbes for whom oxygen was poison and the Great Oxygenation Event murder. It was also a time when banded iron formations (BIFs) were built up, relevant to us today as they formed the ore deposits providing most of our iron and steel. Though, as clarified here, their formation was anything but straightforward. Other fascinating episodes are the Messinian Salinity Crisis, some 5.6 million years ago, when the Mediterranean repeatedly dried up, leaving behind kilometre-thick salt layers that reduced global ocean salinity.

“However it got here, the first major effect [water] had was kick-starting plate tectonics.”

Of course, a book about oceans has to consider current human impacts. With due diligence, the authors tackle the problems of overfishing, shifting baselines, trawling, litter, ocean warming, oxygen loss, and acidification, and conclude that: “there currently seems not the faintest chance of stopping carbon emissions over many decades, let alone overnight” (p. 191). Does this sound gloomy? I prefer the word “sobering”. Consider, they write, that the “more-than-tripling of human population” (p. 183) was enabled by the invention of the Haber–Bosch process and the plentiful artificial fertiliser it made available. To this, they add geologist Peter Haff’s argument of the technosphere that resonated with me. “The 7 billion humans on Earth today are kept alive only through the continuous action of an enormous, globally interlinked system of transport and communication, metabolized by the use of vast amounts of energy […] Without it, most of us would not be alive—and therefore we are forced to keep it going” (p. 197).

If that was not sobering enough, what really made me feel small was when they pulled back from our timescale and the current “brief ecological wrecking spree” (p. 195), to the long-term future. Our oceans are not forever. As the Sun grows hotter they will evaporate, though the “end of the oceans is not likely to be simple” (p. 207). Whether through a moist greenhouse phase where water is gently siphoned off into space by solar winds, or a runaway greenhouse hot enough to melt rock, a dry future awaits, and plate tectonics will once again grind to a halt. As this process “is unlikely to simply just stop, smoothly and without fuss” (p. 211), expect some extraordinary landscapes.

“Our oceans are not forever. […] Whether through a moist greenhouse phase where water is gently siphoned off into space by solar winds, or a runaway greenhouse hot enough to melt rock, a dry future awaits.”

Amidst these grand, cosmic scenes, the authors highlight the human stories behind this research. Such as the pioneering contributions to oceanography by the people on board the HMS Challenger expedition, the mapping of the seafloor by Marie Tharp, or the work of Wally Broecker who established a link between ocean currents and rapid climatic changes. And while Svante Arrhenius is better remembered for linking historical changes in carbon dioxide concentrations to past ice ages, both he and Fritz Haber tried to extract gold from sea water. Unsuccessfully, I might add.

In the last two chapters, the authors turn their gaze to the skies once more, discussing past and present oceans inside and outside of our solar system. With the many discovered by the Kepler space telescope, “We are on the verge of not just a new chapter in oceanography—or exo-oceanography, if you like—but of setting up an entirely new library of oceans, for the diversity and complexity of cosmic oceans will be beyond anything that we can dream of” (p. 264).

I explore this topic more in-depth in my review of Alien Oceans. But, as a warming-up exercise and a proper deep history of oceans, Ocean Worlds is a fantastic book that strikes the right balance. Zalasiewicz and Williams present fascinating science with enviable ease, without smoothing over the fact that science is rarely a straightforward affair, proceeding by means of conflicting scenarios and competing hypotheses. The deep-time perspective and big questions asked make this one awe-inspiring book.

Ocean Worlds

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Marine biologist Helen Scales returns for her third book with Bloomsbury’s popular science imprint Bloomsbury Sigma. After shells and fish, she now drags the reader down into the darkest depths of the deep sea. Both a beautifully written exploration of the ocean’s otherworldly wonders and a searing exposé of the many threats they face, The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s most strident book to date.

The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed, written by Helen Scales, published in Europe by Bloomsbury Publishing in March 2021 (hardback, 352 pages)

Sir David Attenborough has probably said it best: “No one will protect what they do not care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced“. Both Scales and the publisher have taken that message to heart and the book is neatly designed. As with her previous book, illustrator Aaron John Gregory is involved again, this time providing two beautiful end plates and an eye-catching cover, while the colour plate section contains some outstanding photos. But at the heart of The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s captivating writing.

First, consider the landscape. As she explains, the seabed, shaped by plate tectonics, is far from a featureless bathtub. Spreading centres create mid-ocean ridges, colossal mountain ranges that girdle the planet, while subduction zones where oceanic crust plunges back into the planet form deep-sea trenches of terrifying depths. The abyssal plain in between is studded with active or extinct underwater volcanoes that form seamounts of great import to marine life. Wherever magma approaches the surface, percolating seawater becomes superheated, rising back to the surface laden with dissolved minerals and metals. They form hydrothermal vents: towering structures that are home to unique fauna and are “the deep-sea equivalent of hot springs and geysers on land” (p. 97). Woven throughout is a history of scientific exploration, from the first oceanographic expeditions to today’s robotic submersibles, and from pioneering deep-sea explorers to today’s trench-diving billionaires.

Otherworldly as the landscape is, the real stars of this realm are its fauna. Scales’s knowledge and love of marine biology shine through here, as she populates the pages with a bewildering cast of creatures. Notable examples of bizarre deep-sea fishes are included, but she gives you so much more. Whale carcasses, so-called whale falls, become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. Large gelatinous members of the drifting plankton, such as colonial siphonophores and giant larvaceans, form previously underappreciated links in the food web. Hydrothermal vents are crowded with worms and furry Yeti crabs that domesticate symbiotic bacteria capable of chemosynthesis, the “dark alternative to photosynthesis” (p. 104). Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron! And then there are the corals. No, not the familiar tropical corals who “hog not only the sunlight but the limelight” (p. 129); the lesser-known cold-water corals that occur at great depths and grow even slower.

“[…] the real stars of this realm are its fauna […] whale falls become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. […] Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron!”

And if the intrinsic value of biodiversity does not sway you, Scales is no stranger to discussing the deep’s instrumental values. The capacity of seawater to absorb heat and carbon dioxide. The role of global oceanic currents in regulating our climate. Or the carbon pump provided by marine snow; the constant rain of dead plankton, fish poop, and other organic debris that descends into the depths. And what of the quest for new classes of biological compounds with antiviral, anti-bacterial, or anti-cancer properties that could form the pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics of the future?

Two-thirds through the book Scales switches gears. Now that she has your attention, it is time to highlight the many dangers the deep faces. Deep-sea fishing targets long-lived, slow-growing species such as orange roughy. Vulnerable seamounts with millennia-old corals are destroyed by trawlers in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, the promise of food for everyone is not being met. Vast catch volumes are being turned into fish meal for aquaculture and pet food, or questionable nutraceuticals such as omega-3-oil supplements. And where Daniel Pauly already gave me reason to be suspicious of the Marine Stewardship Council, Scales lays bare their dubious raison d’être: funded by royalties from sales of their eco-labelled fish, there is an imperative to keep certifying fisheries. She calls their scandalous certification of the “recovering” orange roughy population a “case of a dead cat bouncing, with a green-washed eco-label tied to its collar” (p. 204).

Scales made me shudder with her stories of pollution, especially the persistent legacy of the large-scale dumping of chemical weapons. But the topic that concerns her most is the looming spectre of deep-sea mining. Though much is still on the drawing boards, mining licenses are being issued and exploratory missions are taking place. What for? The minerals and metals contained in seamounts, hydrothermal vents, and the polymetallic nodules littering the seabed, which take millions of years to form. As with fishing, “the slow pace of the deep is out of step with the timescale of impatient human demands” (p. 205). Here too, the position of the body that oversees protection of the seabed, the International Seabed Authority, is incredibly compromised. Next to issuing mining permits they unbelievably have already assigned areas to be exploited by their own mining company!

“To think that [deep-sea mining] will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt […]”

Scales’s focus on deep-sea mining is urgently needed. Scientists have been sounding alarm bells in the peer-reviewed literature regarding its impact, but this topic is still mostly hidden from the public at large. Her descriptions of the destructive practices and the size of the machines involved are chilling. To think that this will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt, and Scales deftly disarms their arguments as to why deep-sea mining is necessary. She agrees that the shift to renewable energy requires infrastructure that needs tremendous amounts of diverse metals. However, as a detour into the design of wind turbines shows, predicting which ones will be needed is difficult. And whether the seabed is the best place to get them is highly questionable.

Scales tackles many of the same topics that Alex Rogers covered in . Her tone is more strident but no less knowledgeable and, as opposed to The Deep, her book does include endnotes with references. I recommend them both highly. Meanwhile, her call “to declare the entire realm off limits [to] extraction of any kind” (p. 286) meshes seamlessly with Deborah Rowan Wright’s bold vision laid out in Future Sea.

Whether you enjoyed her previous books or are new to her brand of writing about marine biology, I urge you to read this book. Next to an unforgettable trip, she provides a rousing rallying cry for the preservation of the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss is, true to its title, brilliant.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Brilliant Abyss

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“There is a vast, arterial power humming all around us, hiding in plain sight” (p. 320). With these words, geographer Laurence C. Smith concludes his engaging and impressive book on the environmental history of rivers. Touching on a multitude of topics, some of which I did not even know I cared about, I found my jaw dropping more than once.

Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World, written by Laurence C. Smith, published in Europe by Allen Lane in April 2020 (hardback, 364 pages)

For a big book on the environmental history of rivers, you expect some classical history, Brian-Fagan style. Rivers of Power does not disappoint and dishes out fascinating introductions to the ancient Harappan civilization in South Asia who mastered municipal plumbing two millennia before the ancient Romans, the early Mesopotamian cities that sprang up around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and the importance to ancient Egypt of the Nile and its annual flooding.

But Smith ranges far wider—take his sections on more recent historical events that revolve around rivers. One of the decisive battles of the American Revolution was Washington’s nighttime crossing of the Delaware River which helped America win its war for independence with Britain. Or the sordid history of Britain’s opium wars in China, which relied heavily on shipping traffic up the Yangtze River and the opening of so-called treaty ports to force China to accept the importation of opium in exchange for goods the English wanted. These are both examples of historical episodes I knew little about, but for which Smith here provides context and background in a pleasingly compact manner.

Rivers can also influence human affairs in more roundabout ways and Rivers of Power includes some remarkable examples. The disastrous 1889 Johnstown flood changed the face of US law forever. When a neglected dam belonging to a gentlemen’s country club burst, it wiped this Pennsylvanian settlement off the map. When neither the club nor its millionaire members could be held responsible for the death and destruction caused by their negligence, the ensuing national uproar led to the introduction of strict liability laws, creating a culture of litigation that persists to this day. Similarly, Smith argues that the 1927 Mississippi flood changed the face of US politics for good. Herbert Hoover cleverly used the disaster for self-promotion, contributing to his victory in the next presidential election. But when he never made good on his promises to provide black sharecroppers with mortgage payments for land resettlement, it spelt the end of African American support for the Republican Party.

“Rivers can also influence human affairs in more roundabout ways […] The disastrous 1889 Johnstown flood […] created a culture of litigation that persists to this day.”

Smith possesses some serious writing chops and has contributed pieces to the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other major outlets. My jaw dropped more than once. The identity of the young German boy that historians now believe was saved from drowning and grew up to be an influential statesman? That reveal hit me like a bombshell. Some of the details of the aftermath of the Johnstown flood make for chilling reading. And the interview with a veteran of the Vietnam war, a war largely fought from riverboats in the Mekong delta, was particularly gripping.

And what of the topics I would otherwise snooze through? Normally, my eyes are likely to glaze over when you say “transboundary river treaty” or “mega-dam geopolitics”. Instead, I found myself reading with great interest about Laos’s unilateral decision to build dams in the Mekong River, or the current construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in one of the Nile’s two main tributaries and the political upset this is causing in Egypt. Smith also makes clear the immense scale at which we are now modifying landscapes. No longer content with simply building dams and canals, China, India, and several African countries are in the process of rerouting whole drainage basins in megaprojects known as interbasin transfers. Rivers of Power will teach you as much about historical events as it does about current affairs.

The above is but a sampling of the numerous interesting stories and studies that Smith covers here. In a book that wanders this widely, there will inevitably be sections that are of less interest. For me, it was the last chapter on riverfront redevelopment projects. Instead, I wanted to read more about Smith’s own hydrological research. For example, I was surprised at how brief his mention of the upcoming SWOT satellite mission was, given that he has been involved in conceiving and planning it for nearly two decades. Short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography, it will map the whole of the Earth’s surface waters in 3D. At the same time, it is testimony to the huge amount of research that Smith has put into this book that he is not choosing the easy option of writing mostly about the topics he knows intimately.

“Smith also makes clear the immense scale at which we are now modifying landscapes. [Several countries] are in the process of rerouting whole drainage basins in megaprojects known as interbasin transfers.”

Despite the chapters appearing long at the outset, they have been divided into shorter subheaded sections, so I never found the book wearing on me. Although no references or annotations are given in the text, the reference section at the back is organised according to the same subheaded structure, so finding sources and more information is fairly painless.

If I have to gripe about something, I feel that Smith is sometimes a bit too neutral in his reporting. Riverfront redevelopment is all fine and dandy but is a luxury for nations that have off-shored their heavy industry. Or take Egypt, which has single-handedly commandeered most of the Nile’s water discharge through the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement: “A new international agreement […] is badly needed. Yet any reduction in the total volume of water flowing downstream is potentially devastating for Egypt” (p. 155). To call Egypt not acknowledging upstream nations a “glaring omission” as Smith does here is putting it mildly, it strikes me as a scandalous example of overreach by a single nation.

Furthermore, a chapter dedicated to the effects of climate change on rivers would have been prudent—coverage of it is now scattered over different chapters. There is, for example, the shocking fact that half of the world’s glacier-fed rivers are past peak water (this refers to the highest discharge rate from glacier melt). Or the increased likelihood of more extreme floods thanks to the Clausius–Clapeyron relation (warm water holds more water vapour and will result in more rainfall—in effect increased temperatures accelerate the evaporation–precipitation cycle).

But these are minor complaints. Overall, Rivers of Power is bristling with fascinating and skilfully told riverine topics. Though meandering widely, it remains captivating throughout thanks to Smith’s excellent writing.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Rivers of Power

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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The images that astronomers produce can shape whole generations. Based on the Pale Blue Dot photo taken by the Voyager 1 space probe, Carl Sagan’s moving speech in Cosmos highlighted how small and insignificant we appear in the vastness of the universe. But we are not alone, being part of the solar system which is part of the Milky way galaxy. And ours is but one of billions, possibly trillions, of galaxies in the universe that, interestingly, are not scattered at random in space. In this compact and engagingly written book, French cosmographer Hélène Courtois shows you the next level up: superclusters. When it was published in 2014, the image of the supercluster to which our galaxy belongs for me was another one of those generation-defining images. It was of such stunning beauty that it stopped me in my tracks. Welcome to Laniakea, our home amidst the stars.

Finding our Place in the Universe: How We Discovered Laniakea – the Milky Way’s Home, written by Hélène Courtois, published by MIT Press in May 2019 (hardback, 177 pages)

Finding Our Place in the Universe was originally published in French as Voyage sur les Flots de Galaxies in 2016, with reissues in 2018 and 2020. This English translation updates the story of how we determined the size and limits of Laniakea with subsequent findings of what lies beyond our local supercluster. But first, what is a cosmographer? In essence, Courtois is a star mapper. The same way geographers make maps of Earth, cosmographers make maps of our universe. One of the strong points of this book is its explanations. The book is liberally illustrated with diagrams and uses side boxes for more technical matters such as the dual nature of light or the value of the Hubble constant (the rate of cosmic expansion).

Courtois starts with the earliest attempts to determine the distances of the heavenly bodies such as the moon and nearby planets. Where it really gets interesting where this book is concerned is April 26th, 1920. This was when hundreds of scientists attended an academic debate, the Great Debate, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Two opposing ideas that had been around since the mid-18th century came to a head. One viewpoint, defended by Harlow Shapley, held that the universe is limited to our Milky Way galaxy—it is enormous, but it is all there is. The other viewpoint, here defended by Heber Curtis, held that our galaxy is but one of innumerable others.

Further research by Edwin Hubble would prove Curtis right and lead to the acceptance of the notion of a universe filled with galaxies. From here, we fast forward to the early ’90s where Courtois’s career starts. Work up to this point had already established the existence of the so-called Local Group (our galaxy and its neighbours) and nearby (super)clusters that surround us. Courtois brought further clarity to the positions of these groups of galaxies.

“[…] gravitational forces are pulling our galaxy and all the neighbouring clusters to a region [called] “The Great Attractor””

Stars and galaxies, however, are not motionless. Hubble had already shown that our universe is expanding. But even when accounting for that motion, later research revealed residual motion. Astronomers call this “peculiar” motion (a slightly confusing term given the word’s everyday connotations) and Courtois uses all her explanatory power in words and diagrams to clarify this. It turns out that gravitational forces are pulling our galaxy and all the neighbouring clusters to a region in space with the wonderfully mysterious name “The Great Attractor”. Frustratingly, we cannot directly observe this region of space as it lies behind the disc of our Milky Way galaxy.

To determine how far the influence of this Great Attractor reaches, Courtois and colleagues teamed up with an ever-expanding international collaborative network. Through painstaking observations made over years, they build several iterations of an ever-larger database dubbed Cosmicflows that contained the positions and “peculiar” motions of as many nearby galaxies as possible. First 1,800 galaxies spanning 130 million light-years. Then 8,000 galaxies spanning 250 million light-years. It was not until the third iteration, the Cosmicflows-3 database that encompassed 18,000 galaxies spanning 600 million light-years, that Laniakea emerged. Next to a beautiful name (it is Hawaiian for “immense heaven”), this work also offered a clear definition of what a supercluster is, as the term had been used loosely up to this point. One useful analogy is the way a lake is fed by streams and rivulets and collects water from a large area around it, its watershed. Courtois and colleagues had now mapped the entire outline of the galactic watershed of which our galaxy was a part. It led to a well-deserved Nature publication in 2014 and the publication of that iconic image. A short video on Nature‘s YouTube channel helps visualise it all.

As Courtois takes readers on this story, there are short personal asides about life as an astronomer, the people you get to work with, and the wonderful places you get to visit. Other technological developments and important discoveries that bear on her work are also covered, including a very clear explanation of the still mysterious nature dark matter and dark energy—and the distinction between the two. A final thing to mention is the boxes that celebrate female scientists past and present, from Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who Edwin Hubble thought deserved a Nobel Prize, to Wendy Freedman, who led efforts to pinpoint the value of the Hubble constant and won the Gruber Cosmology Prize in 2009. Next to their work as human computers in the early years of astronomy, many women made ground-breaking discoveries themselves which were either downplayed until accepted decades later, or for which men took the credit. This book thus joins the fray to set this record straight and celebrate the underrecognized role of women in astronomy.

“The final thrill this book offers is the glimpse we are getting of the larger structure of our universe, where condensing superclusters form a filamentous cosmic web”

The discovery of Laniakea is not the end of the story, however, but merely the beginning of the next chapter. This is, I guess, the section that was added in the English translation. Work is already underway on Cosmicflows-4, which will encompass over 50,000 galaxies spanning more than a billion light-years and map neighbouring superclusters. The final thrill this book offers is the glimpse we are getting of the larger structure of our universe, where condensing superclusters form a filamentous cosmic web with cosmic voids forming in between.

A love letter to cosmology, Finding Our Place in the Universe is a short but thrilling read that gives the scientific backstory to one of astronomy’s most striking images. MIT Press did an excellent job releasing this in translation.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Finding our Place in the Universe

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Did life arise merely by accident? Many scientists feel uncomfortable with talk of goal-directedness and greater plans, as it reeks more of religion and theology than rational explanation. And with creationists lurking, the risk of “smuggling God in through the back door” under scientific pretences (as Richard Dawkins put it) is something to be wary of. Without descending into this territory, Universe in Creation might skirt dangerously close to it for some. In turns lyrical, unsettling, and, yes, speculative, this book argues that life may be written into the most basic laws of nature.

Universe in Creation: A New Understanding of the Big Bang and the Emergence of Life, written by Roy R. Gould, published by Harvard University Press in May 2018 (hardback, 273 pages)

Roy R. Gould, a Principal Investigator and Education Analyst at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, here takes a two-pronged approach to examine the emergence of life. He follows the cosmological story from the Big Bang forward, and, since life’s origin somewhere in the middle remains impenetrable, he also follows the story of evolution today back in time.

The first part was the more unfamiliar territory for me as it put forward some ideas that I had never heard of. Not being well-versed in cosmology, it is hard to be sure how widely accepted they are. Gould starts with observations by Hubble (the astronomer, not the telescope) that every galaxy in the universe is moving away from us. An expanding universe seems odd, as “gravity should attract, not repel“, writes Gould. Similarly, if the universe started with a cosmic explosion, its light should have sped off into space and be long gone. Instead, astronomers discovered that cosmic microwave background radiation, a leftover from the Big Bang, is coming at us from all directions. So, we need a new idea, and things will get more speculative going forward: “We will put aside our observations about the universe, take a deep breath, and dive into the world of ideas” (p. 42).

See, writes Gould, the terms “Big Bang” and “expanding universe” are somewhat misleading metaphors. Rather than expanding outwards into something, the universe expands inwards. How? Einstein’s model of gravity predicts that: “the universe is continuously creating more space [because] the scale of length is shrinking [with time]” (p. 61). Space is continuously welling up between the galaxies. The universe is fractalizing. This was one of those interesting and, for me, novel ideas. Gould traces its history through the 18th-century discussions between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz (is the universe the same scale everywhere?). Through the mathematician Bernhard Riemann’s questioning of a cornerstone of geometry (is the length of a line independent of its position?). And, of course, through Albert Einstein who argued that mass distorts space and time, an idea that was confirmed with the recent discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO detector. A logical follow-up question is what happened in the beginning, allowing Gould to recount how the Big Bang theory was conceived.

“Rather than expanding outwards into something, the universe expands inwards. How? […] the universe is continuously creating more space [because] the scale of length is shrinking [with time].”

Where it gets more speculative, and for some readers perhaps questionable, is when Gould asserts that the universe has a building plan. He refers to the universe’s infrastructure: the elementary particles making up atoms, and the forces that animate them (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). He marvels at the exact proportions in which these forces work: “nature’s specifications guarantee the stability of atoms” (p. 86), and remarks how slight tweaks of these values would have precluded the formation of even hydrogen atoms, and with it life.

“Why is the infrastructure of the universe so hospitable to life?“, asks Gould (p. 88), noting that this is known as the fine-tuning problem. One scientific perspective says this is a leading question and there is no reason: “nature does not “intend” to produce either atoms or life” (p. 88). A more speculative idea is that of the multiverse: “a vast landscape of universes, almost all of which would be stillborn” (p. 89). Our universe is the lucky exception where life flourished. But there is another perspective.

In 1983, physicist John Archibald Wheeler asked a question that Gould revisits throughout this book. In short: Is the universe set up such that intelligent life is guaranteed to arise? Gould thinks yes, and explores several highlights in the universe’s evolution in support. In its infancy, the universe was not completely uniform, it was just the right kind of lumpy for matter to coalesce into stars and galaxies. Had starting parameters been different this would not have happened, so “the universe was built from the start with a clever set of plans” (p. 109). Of the chemical elements forged in large stars that are scattered when stars explode, Gould writes: “it is truly marvellous that they are created in the abundances needed to form planets and to nurture life” (p. 118).

“Gould’s injection of meaning into events does not sit comfortably with me. Is the cosmos miraculously fine-tuned for life, or is life miraculously fine-tuned to the cosmos?”

This is where I found the book at its most unsettling. Gould’s injection of meaning into events does not sit comfortably with me. Is the cosmos miraculously fine-tuned for life, or is life miraculously fine-tuned to the cosmos? There is a subtle difference. Plus, we have no record of all the times life tried to take off and failed. This is a bit reminiscent of the bias that can arise when you exclude zeros and missing values during the statistical analysis of data sets.

The other half of the book looks at evolution today and works backwards. Without resorting to a veiled attempt at scientific creationism, Gould makes two arguments that life arises naturally from the laws of nature and is not just a happy coincidence. One, life’s ability to replicate depends on the molecular properties of its machinery (DNA and RNA) that are ultimately dictated by the fundamental properties of matter (what Gould earlier called the universe’s infrastructure).

Two, chance has a role to play, but random does not mean unpredictable. You can have a system with randomly behaving components that, as a whole, is still predictable. The molecular machinery of life has random behaviours (e.g. mutation and recombination) with a predictable outcome: genetic diversity. “Chance is the engine of diversity, and with enough diversity anything seems to be possible” (p. 183). This touches on some of the hottest topics in evolutionary biology such as convergent evolution, the predictability of evolution, and the origin of evolutionary innovations.

“Gould makes two [evolutionary] arguments that life arises naturally from the laws of nature and is not just a happy coincidence”

That last question touches on one of my favourite books: Andreas Wagner’s Arrival of the Fittest. Elsewhere, I rather verbosely summarised its central thesis as “evolution probing multidimensional spaces of possible protein sequences to rapidly come up with innovative solutions to life’s problems” (one day I will review that book properly, I promise). Gould, the science poet, outdoes me: “The landscape of evolutionary success appears to be very broad; there are many pathways of mutation that preserve function. Nature is wonderfully redundant.” (p. 201)

Compared to the cosmological argument in the first half of the book, I thought Gould makes a more appealing and sound argument here. Also as I consider it an example of life being fine-tuned to the cosmos rather than vice-versa. A final trio of chapters deals with senses and sensations, an exploration of the Mandelbrot set as an example of design without a designer, and the recent that might finally start offering resolutions to the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox. I was already savouring the taste of an argument well made at this point, so these chapters were like a dessert to me.

Gould is an enthusiastic and, at times, lyrical guide, and Universe in Creation is not hard to follow. It elicited contrasting responses, both fascinating and discomfiting me. That, surely, is the hallmark of an intellectually engaging book.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Universe in Creation hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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This book is dangerous. While reading it I missed metro stops, phone calls, and sleep. I also laughed. A lot. Webcomic creator and former NASA engineer Randall Munroe returns to book form for another instalment of zany humour and absurd ideas, this time providing absurd solutions to achieving everyday tasks and solving real-world problems. From fording a river by boiling it dry using a field of 300 million electric kettles, to using a swarm of butterflies to send large data files: the solutions are purposefully ludicrous. Nevertheless, this book falls back on logical principles, giving readers both a good laugh and a gentle introduction to science, engineering, and technology.

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, written by Randall Munroe, published in the UK by John Murray in September 2019 (hardback, 280 pages)

It is easy for me to assume that, surely, everyone knows xkcd. Or at least, most of my readers do. Wait, you have not heard of the stick-figure webcomic of “romance, sarcasm, math, and language“? Get with the programme already, you only have, as of the day this review was published, 2276 comics to catch up on! Started sometime in 2005 it has become one of the most popular geeky science webcomics, often consisting of only one or a few panels with stick figures. But do not let the simple drawings deceive you, the humour is clever (and the mouseover texts very much worth reading, adding an extra layer).

Munroe’s first venture into books (if we do not consider the self-published compilation xkcd, Volume 0) was What If? that offered scientifically sound explanations for unlikely scenarios. This was followed by Thing Explainer that explained complex scientific and technical concepts using only the one thousand most common English words. And now there is How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. In 28 chapters, the problems covered range from the seemingly mundane to the utterly absurd.

“From fording a river by boiling it dry using a field of 300 million electric kettles, to using a swarm of butterflies to send large data files: the solutions are purposefully ludicrous. “

How do you cross a river? The simple solution would be to find a shallow spot and carefully walk across that, but why do that when you can jump across it, skate over the surface, freeze it, or even boil the river away? How do you ski? Who says that skiing should be done on snow, to begin with? And what do you do when you run out of snow? On the other side of the spectrum: how do you build a lava moat? This includes proposed solutions to keeping the lava warm, your house cool, plus the costing options.

To answer his questions, Munroe seriously considers what it would actually take to make this happen, explaining engineering and physics principles by using infographics, cartoons, and equations. Want to throw a pool party in a swimming pool with walls made of cheese? Physics can tell you just how much cheese you need to prevent the pool from collapsing. After all: “Physics doesn’t care if your question is weird. It just gives you the answer, without judging.” And similarly, when considering how to move house: “I really love that we can ask physics ridiculous questions like, “What kind of gas mileage would my house get on the highway” and physics has to answer us.”

“To answer his questions, Munroe seriously considers what it would actually take to make this happen […] giving readers both a good laugh and a gentle introduction to science, engineering, and technology.”

Some of these chapters are not so much about outlandish solutions, as what solutions actually exist. When asking how to dig a hole, he explores the cost-reward trade-off when digging for treasure, and the techniques used in industry, such as vacuum excavation (this is a thing) and open-pit mining. The chapter on decorating trees, meanwhile, talks more about the largest and oldest trees in existence before digressing into which buildings would be large enough to display them in. But, by and large, the chapters stick to the book’s brief of considering the most outlandish approaches to solving real-world problems.

Particularly nice is the input from celebrities such as test pilot and astronaut Chris Hadfield (who remained unfazed by even the most unusual variations on the question of how to make an emergency crash landing) and tennis player Serena Williams (who tested how easy it is to disable a drone using tennis balls). Similarly, the inclusion of some one-page cartoons offering many answers to a problem in a graphic form break up the book nicely.

“Want to throw a pool party in a swimming pool with walls made of cheese? Physics can tell you just how much cheese you need to prevent the pool from collapsing.”

Next to a good laugh, Munroe hopes that people learn something from this book. One such “aha moment” for myself came in the chapter on how to play the piano. There is an upper limit to the frequency of ultrasonic calls used by bats, about 150 kHz. But why? You would think that as a biologist I would have an answer to this. Charles S. Cockell said it nicely in : “Because physics is life’s silent commander”, and as Munroe deftly explains, it is indeed plain old physics that gets in the way. High-frequency sounds are very quickly absorbed by the air they travel through, meaning they can only travel very limited distances before fading out. This places an upper limit on what is useful for a bat trying to catch prey by echolocation.

If you are a fan of xkcd, this book is a must-have. Munroe’s unique sense of humour works equally well for one-panel webcomics as it does for chapters running ten or more pages, and the smoothness with which he manages this transition is enviable. But beyond the xkcd fanboys and -girls, this book can be safely read by, or gifted to, anyone who enjoys geeky humour.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

How To hardback, ebook or audiobook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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If the end of the world is something that keeps you up at night you might want to skip this book. Some might snigger at the “rogue robots” in the book’s subtitle, but End Times is a serious look at so-called existential risks. Former foreign correspondent, reporter, and editor with TIME magazine Bryan Walsh takes an unflinching look at the various disasters that could wipe out humanity, the people whose jobs it is to seriously think through catastrophic threats, and how, if at all, we can prepare ourselves.

End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, written by Bryan Walsh, published by Hachette Books in August 2019 (hardback, 406 pages)

Surveying the table of contents feels like the roll call of Doomsday classroom: “Asteroid impact? Here. Volcanic eruptions? Check. Nuclear war? Thanks, your usual radiant self, I see. Climate change? Stewing in the corner over there. Pandemic and biotechnological killer virus? Thanks – please stop trying to poke each other’s eyes out. AI overlord? Check, can you please put down your smartphone? Aliens? Has anyone seen the aliens?”

Several of these topics have been the subject of book reviews here before. Walsh starts with the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs before turning his attention to the search for near-earth objects, covering similar ground to the recently reviewed Fire in the Sky, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, a visit to the same Catalina Sky Survey, and an interview with NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson. The chapter on volcanism covers the usual suspects, such as the Siberian Traps, the Toba volcano, the Tambora volcano, and the looming threat of the Yellowstone supervolcano.

“Surveying the table of contents feels like the roll call of Doomsday classroom.”

The threat of nuclear war is a topic that I am less familiar with, and Walsh walks you through the history of the first atomic bomb tests, the arms race during the Cold War followed by disarmament, and the recent resurgence in nuclear weapons stockpiling. Combined with the secret government war plans and the many near-misses, this makes for chilling reading.

Walsh has interviewed plenty of people while researching this book. Additionally, he draws on personal experience when writing of climate change and pandemics. He was stationed in Hong Kong during the 2003 outbreak of SARS and makes many relevant observations: vaccine resistance, the lack of investment in developing new ones, and the evolutionary trade-off between transmissibility and fatality that prevents diseases from completely wiping out their hosts.

“[Vaclav] Smil’s point about the difference in energy density between fossil fuels and renewables […] is often overlooked”

Just as Jon Gertner, he has visited Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier (see the previous review of The Ice at the End of the World). He discusses climate change tipping points, the fiendish problem of continued global warming even if we stopped emissions now, why addressing the hole in the ozone layer was easy and curbing carbon dioxide emissions is not, and why we all need to read Vaclav Smil’s work. Smil’s point about the difference in energy density between fossil fuels and renewables, and the challenges this presents, is often overlooked.

Walsh attended the 2009 UN climate change summit in Copenhagen and it is here that he makes some of his sharpest observations on the psychology of our inaction. He notes how in Copenhagen: “no one really wanted to do all that much to slow climate change. Not if it carried any political or economic risk. Not if it could cost them their job, or restrict their citizens in almost any way. Climate change was important, sure – but not that important” (p. 137). He calls climate change “the ultimate collective action problem” and highlights how this existential threat, uniquely, foremost affects generations yet to come.

“[Walsh] calls climate change “the ultimate collective action problem”.”

The remaining threats – biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and aliens – all stand apart as ones that have yet to pass. He considers biotechnology becoming bioterrorism in the wrong hands the biggest threat of all, discussing at length the ethics, regulation, and double-edged nature of this kind of scientific research. He clarifies why there is nothing to giggle about “killer robots” if so-called artificial general intelligence were to enter the loop of recursive self-improvement and take off on an exponential curve. And the seemingly unlikely threat of alien life forms results in a chapter that nicely discusses the Drake equation, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and some of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox (see also these two fantastic YouTube videos from Kurzgesagt).

As a reporter, Walsh knows how to write a captivating and entertaining book, even if the topic is grim. Yet I do have some concerns. I appreciate that, in tackling so many big subjects in just over 300 pages, the coverage is going to be somewhat superficial. Although he refers to peer-reviewed literature, I also noticed many references to online newspaper and magazine articles. Similarly, he seems to cite some, but not all, personal communications with people. And when mentioning the work of certain authors (e.g. Vaclav Smil), he curiously cites articles about them, rather than anything they have written.

“there is nothing to giggle about “killer robots” if so-called artificial general intelligence were to enter the loop of recursive self-improvement”

If it seems I am harping on about this, I ended up questioning how much Walsh has relied on second-hand information for this book. Although I trust that as a reporter he can judge sources for their reliability, I worry that he sometimes misses out on subtleties. A point in case is the extinction of the dinosaurs, where he sketches as dissenters those who blame massive volcanic eruptions. Although the evidence for impact is by now undeniable, the relative importance of each remains hotly debated (recent examples of palaeontologists airing different views in their books are The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Dinosaurs Rediscovered). And the idea of a global conflagration following impact is not supported by research on fossil charcoal. Similarly, the fear of AI running rampant has its share of dissenters.

Finally, I am not sure I always share Walsh’s optimism that e.g. geoengineering will offer a solution to climate change, or that colonisation of space is the answer to an overcrowded planet. I would not want to exclude these, but I feel as much attracted to Eileen Crist’s call of scaling down and pulling back. Which brings me to two existential threats I felt were missing. What of the one-two punch of habitat destruction and rampant resource extraction? Together with climate change, they are, in my opinion, symptoms of overpopulation accompanied by increasingly widespread overconsumption. I expect these will cause global disruption before climate change can get to us.

“What of […] habitat destruction and rampant resource extraction? […] I expect these will cause global disruption before climate change can get to us.”

If a book such as Global Catastrophic Risks seems too daunting at first, End Times makes a great read as a popular introduction to existential threats. Where it concerns ethics and philosophy, or human psychology in the face of threats, Walsh makes some excellent observations. Keeping in mind above reservations, I would encourage readers to subsequently go deeper into the literature if any one of these topics fascinates them, or consider the recent book The Precipice which has similar but more in-depth coverage.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

End Times paperback, hardback, ebook, audiobook or audio CD

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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