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

About this book

Science starts to get interesting when things dont make sense. Sciences best-kept secret is this: Even today there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past similar anomalies have revolutionized our world like in the sixteenth century when a set of celestial anomalies led Copernicus to realize that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse and in the 1770s when two chemists discovered oxygen because of experimental results that defied all the theories of the day. And so if history is any precedent we should look to todays inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. In 13 Things That Dont Make Sense Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet thirteen modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrows breakthroughs. 13 Things opens at the twenty-third Solvay physics conference where the scientists present are ready to throw up their hands over an anomaly: is it possible that the universe rather than slowly drifting apart as the physics of the big bang had once predicted is actually expanding at an ever-faster speed? From Solvay and the mysteries of the universe Brooks travels to a basement in Turin to subject himself to repeated shocks in a test of the placebo response. No study has ever been able to definitively show how the placebo effect works so why has it become a pillar of medical science? Moreover is 96 percent of the universe missing? Is a 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization? Might giant viruses explain how life began? Why are some NASA satellites speeding up as they get farther from the sunand what does that mean for the laws of physics? Spanning disciplines from biology to cosmology chemistry to psychology to physics Brooks thrillingly captures the excitement messiness and controversy of the battle over where science is headed. In science he writes being stuck can be a sign that you are about to make a great leap forward. The things that dont make sense are in some ways the only things that matter.