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.

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“Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes“, written by Ron Cowen, published by Harvard University Press in May 2019 (hardback, 192 pages)

Cowen starts off gently enough, introducing Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Although a cornerstone of modern physics, its descriptions of reality seem counterintuitive in comparison to our day-to-day experience of how the world functions. And thus Cowen has the unenviable task of explaining such concepts as the constant speed of light (no matter how fast an observer tries to race along with it), time dilation, spacetime fabric and how it warps, gravitational lensing, and, of course, black holes. But, with useful diagrams and clear examples, clarifies them he does.

The first few chapters focus on Einstein and his theory. Cowen provides a pleasant mix of relevant biographical information and science history, charting how the thinking of Einstein and others developed. He paints a very human portrait of the man, mentioning both his triumphs and his tribulations. Einstein’s theory required that he immerse himself in an unfamiliar branch of mathematics, something he struggled with tremendously. He made mistakes, sometimes stubbornly opposing others, only to later come around to their point of view (e.g. on the question of whether the universe is expanding or not). And he did not think much of black holes. Nobody ever said brilliant minds never get the wrong end of the stick.

“[Einstein] did not think much of black holes. Nobody ever said brilliant minds never get the wrong end of the stick.”

For all his great theorizing, it fell to others to test Einstein’s ideas in practice, and that is the other main thread in Cowen’s story. One of the first ideas to be tested was gravitational lensing, that is, whether gravity can bend light. Or, really, as Cowen clarifies, whether spacetime near a massive object is curved. One way to check this is to compare the position of stars in the sky when they appear close to the Sun versus when they do not. Doing that successfully requires the rare conditions afforded by a solar eclipse when the Sun’s bright light is momentarily prevented from drowning out the much fainter light of distant stars. Against the backdrop of World War I, Cowen provides a vivid story of the efforts involved back in 1919 to try and do this, reminding the reader just how much the state of infrastructure and technology meant this was a long and laborious process.

From there, Cowen walks the reader through other milestones and conjectures, such as the accidental discovery of the sought-after cosmic microwave background (the leftover heat of the Big Bang), further observations of gravitational lensing, the formulation of dark matter and dark energy (see e.g. The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality), the discovery of black holes (see e.g. Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved and Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes) and the realisation that one of them lies at the heart of our own galaxy (see Revealing the Heart of the Galaxy: The Milky Way and its Black Hole). Cowen also provides detailed coverage of the more recent detection of gravitational waves (see e.g. Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: The Story of a Gamble, Two Black Holes, and a New Age of Astronomy, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy, and Gravity’s Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves), before coming to the current pièce de résistance: the collaborative effort by the Event Horizon Telescope to image the spectacular light show that occurs right at the edge of a black hole. (As a side note, it looks like this book went to the printers just before that first image was released on April 10th)

“Cowen is enlightening. I had heard of the models that postulate that the universe is a hologram. But what does that really mean? Well, not that we are living in The Matrix“

Cowen manages to cover all these exciting topics at a brisk clip in just over 160 pages, with nary an equation in sight. And where they appear, he explains their working and relevance, such as Einstein’s famous equation (no, not that one, this one). Most chapters feature short “deeper dive” sections which go into just that little bit more technical detail. As a biologist who was last taught physics in high school twenty years ago (plus whatever I have gleaned from subsequent reading), I found the writing accessible.

The only chapter that went a bit over my head in places was that on quantum gravity. But perhaps I should take heart from the fact that even Einstein did not succeed in unifying gravity and quantum theory (see also my review of Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime). But even here, Cowen is enlightening. I had heard of the models that postulate that the universe is a hologram. But what does that really mean? Well, not that we are living in The Matrix. The analogy Cowen mentions of a three-dimensional video game being read off a two-dimensional chip was very helpful and gave me a basic idea of what some theorists mean when they conjecture that all actions and physical laws of our four-dimensional universe are governed by a system that resides on the boundary of the cosmos.

Gravity’s Century is a great introduction to Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the century of research that has been testing his ideas since. Cowen is an enthusiastic storyteller that knows how to communicate complex topics effectively. Readers new to the fields of cosmology and astrophysics are well served with this springboard.

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

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“Exoplanets: Hidden Worlds and the Quest for Extraterrestrial Life“, written by Donald Goldsmith, published by Harvard University Press in September 2018 (hardback, 254 pages)

I first touched on exoplanets in my review of astrobiologist Charles Cockell’s book The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution, who provided a very brief introduction to them as a little aside. Their existence and the remote possibility of finding worlds inhabited by other lifeforms has captured the public imagination. Just in the last two years there have been at least three other popular science book on the topic (The Planet Factory: Exoplanets and the Search for a Second Earth, Exoplanets: Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System, and One of Ten Billion Earths: How we Learn about our Planet’s Past and Future from Distant Exoplanets). So where do you start? Though I haven’t read these books yet, what I can tell you is that Goldsmith here provides an inclusive overview.

After familiarising the reader with the vast distances involved and the units astronomers use, including Astronomical Units, light years and parsecs (yes, the one George Lucas famously got wrong), the first half of the book dives into the how. Given that even the nearest stars are very far away, and planets emit no light, how, indeed, do you find them?

“Given that even the nearest stars are very far away, and planets emit no light, how, indeed, do you find them?”

Two indirect methods have been particularly successful and are explained here in-depth by Goldsmith: radial velocity measurements and transit observations.

The former relies on the fact that as a planet circles a star, it exerts a small gravitational tug on the star, causing both the star and the planet to turn around a shared centre of mass that is not exactly at the centre of the star, but somewhere towards its edge or even outside of it. In effect, the star wobbles, and this wobble can be observed in changes in the wavelength of the light that reaches us. Remember the Doppler effect? How a siren sounds higher in tone when an ambulance approaches you, and lower in tone when it moves away from you? It is the same for light. The differences are minute, but with sensitive enough equipment these shifts in wavelength can be measured.

The second method, pioneered by NASA’s now-retired Kepler space telescope, is perhaps easier to grasp: a planet moving in front of its star causes a temporary blip in the intensity of the star’s light. If these observed blips are regular enough you have a candidate exoplanet. Of course, this only works when a planet’s orbit passes in front of a star from our vantage point, but there are plenty of stars out there for which this is true.

“What we have discovered and catalogued so far has very much surprised everyone […] our Solar System is far from the only possible configuration. “

These two methods have led to the discovery of thousands of exoplanets. But Goldsmith would not be thorough if he did not also explain other methods, such as direct observations using the infrared radiation emitted by planets, gravitational lensing (the bending of light’s path due to the proximity of massive objects – one of those counterintuitive phenomena Einstein predicted), orbital brightness modulation (where a star’s observed brightness fluctuates ever so slightly by light reflected off nearby orbiting planets), changes in light polarization (also due to reflection off a planet), and several other obscure methods, some of which have so far been unsuccessful. I found his explanations here clear, and they gave several of those “aha” moments. For example when he explains adaptive optics, an engineering solution employed in modern telescopes to correct for image distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere (so that is why I keep seeing photos of telescopes shooting a laser beam into the sky).

Throughout, Goldsmith is careful to point out the limitations and biases of current methodologies. Despite their success, the resolution of most methods is still so poor that we can only find planets (much) bigger than Earth. Technological improvements are continuing apace though, and new observatories, whether on Earth or in orbit, are finding smaller and smaller planets.

What we have discovered and catalogued so far has very much surprised everyone. Goldsmith takes the reader through an eye-opening tour of the weird and wonderful planetary systems; giant planets racing around stars at a fraction of the distance between our Sun and Mercury, planets around binary stars, planets young and old, big and small, dense and fluffy… our Solar System is far from the only possible configuration. Goldsmith adds a very interesting chapter on how this affects our existing theories of star and planet formation.

“For the moment, the exoplanet search is largely a cataloguing exercise and we have gathered only the most basic of [information].”

But it is not all hard facts. Goldsmith permits himself plenty of informed speculation towards the end of the book as he ponders which planets are likely to be friendly to life as we know it. For the moment, the exoplanet search is largely a cataloguing exercise and we have gathered only the most basic of estimates on sizes, masses, distances to stars, and orbital periods. Ongoing and planned projects such as ESA’s PLATO mission and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will hopefully change this and Goldsmith gives an informative overview of future missions and the technical challenges that need to be overcome to improve our detection methods. He happily veers into near science fiction when speculating about future missions that will send nanoprobes into interstellar space to pass by the nearest discovered exoplanets, and the hypothetical possibility of sending humans on interstellar missions.

Goldsmith lightens up his writing with the occasional wry observation on the quirks of his profession, and quotes from fellow astronomers who he has interviewed. There are places where I would have liked a few more illustrations to explain certain principles, although the ones that have been included are useful and clear, having been carefully redrawn for this book.

The strong suit of the book is its solid writing though: Goldsmith goes into plenty of technical detail but he never lost me. The book strikes the right balance between starting from first principles for readers without a background in astronomy or astrophysics in a way that is not patronising, while delivering plenty of technical details and caveats about what we know so far. Above all, he transmits the sheer awe that this fast-moving field inspires.

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

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