Roger Highfield OBE is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. Roger has visiting professorships at the Department of Chemistry, UCL, and at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of the Medical Research Council and Longitude Committee. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, including two bestsellers. His latest title is Stephen Hawking: genius at work . Why science? There are three answers to this question, depending on context: Apollo; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl; and, finally, Nullius in verba . Growing up I enjoyed the sciencey side of TV programmes like Thunderbirds and The Avengers but became completely besotted when, in short trousers, I gazed up at the moon knowing that two astronauts had paid it a visit. As the Apollo programme unfolded, I became utterly obsessed. Today, more than half a century later, the moon landings are

Many of us who read popular science regularly will be aware of the 'great debate' between American astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis in 1920 over whether the universe was a single galaxy or many. Less familiar is the clash in the 1930s between American Nobel Prize winners Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton over the nature of cosmic rays. This not a book about the nature of cosmic rays as we now understand them, but rather explores this confrontation between heavyweight scientists. Millikan was the first in the fray, and often wrongly named in the press as discoverer of cosmic rays. He believed that this high energy radiation from above was made up of photons that ionised atoms in the atmosphere. One of the reasons he was determined that they should be photons was that this fitted with his thesis that the universe was in a constant state of creation: these photons, he thought, were produced in the birth of new atoms. This view seems to have been primarily driven by re

Tim James' writing style is a bit like going to see a comedian who only tells one-liners. Initially it's amazing and highly entertaining, but eventually it can get a touch wearing. Having said that, thanks to the sheer variety of the content, James manages to keep the reader interested, and the short entries (not one liners, but mostly two to three pages), which feel as if they are coming at you at breakneck speed, make it decidedly moreish. James is writing about unintentional scientific breakthroughs, which he divides into clumsiness; misfortunes - where things went wrong for the desired outcome, but then achieved something different (a fair number of these are medical); surprises, where results are unexpected; and eurekas, where a major breakthrough is caused by an apparently insignificant observation or comment. The topics are wide ranging - everything from guncotton to the telephone, Super Soakers (oddly in the 'major breakthrough' Eureka section) to superglue. It&

In this slim collection of what were originally blog posts, Eva Amsen takes us around the scientific world looking for interesting stories where science crops up in unexpected places. It combines entertainment and information effectively, and because each article is short, it is satisfyingly moreish. I read the book in three short sittings - and each time I ended up reading more sections than I intended, as it's very tempting to read just one more. To give an example of some randomly enjoyable entries, we get 'Rubber ducks and Lego' about the way that containers of floating goods (accidentally) dropped in the sea have helped with studies of ocean currents, 'Manhattanhenge' on cityscapes that line up with the low Sun (like Stonehenge, though less purposefully) and 'Songs about Science', exploring how science turns up in songs, whether it's as a subject of an original or a comedy song changing the words of a classic, a trend started with Lehrer's perio

In this delightfully readable book, Harry Cliff takes us into the anomalies that are starting to make areas of physics seems to be nearing a paradigm shift, just as occurred in the past with relativity and quantum theory. We start with, we are introduced to some past anomalies linked to changes in viewpoint, such as the precession of Mercury (explained by general relativity, though originally blamed on an undiscovered planet near the Sun), and then move on to a few examples of apparent discoveries being wrong: the BICEP2 evidence for inflation (where the result was caused by dust, not the polarisation being studied),  the disappearance of an interesting blip in LHC results, and an apparent mistake in the manipulation of numbers that resulted in alleged discovery of dark matter particles. These are used to explain how statistics plays a part, and the significance of sigmas . We go on to explore a range of anomalies in particle physics and cosmology that may indicate either a breakdown i

Paul Halpern is a professor of physics at Saint Joseph's University and the author of 18 popular science books, including Collider , Flashes of Creation, The Quantum Labyrinth, Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat, and Synchronicity. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His latest title is The Allure of the Multiverse . Why science? Science embodies humanity’s longstanding passion to understand its world and to probe its frontiers.  Ancient peoples looked to the stars and strived to decipher celestial patterns, with the aim of not only predicting astral occurrences, but also trying to comprehend the fundaments of nature and how it affects human lives.  As science developed, humankind’s knowledge of the world and its vital laws grew, along with a greater sense of its barriers and limitations. Interest in multiverse ideas bears on the question of whether or not science is wi