The Origins of the Future: Ten Questions for the Next Ten Years

The topics discussed in this writing are not easily assimilated, but John Gribben does an excellent job of presentation such that my interest was held, page after page. I really enjoyed the read and have now added just a little more to my knowledge of the cosmos.

Astrophysics, particle physics, cosmology, and astronomy require advanced mathematics and high tech tools to really get to the nitty-gritty of the subject matter. Having neither, I, like so many others, struggle along with help from writers like John Gribbin. The unwritten premise of this book and many another in similar fields is that there is something valuable to be gained by learning about physics, cosmology and kindred disciplines even without the mathematics and the high tech tools. The ten questions that Gribbin addresses here begin with "How Do We Know the Things We Think We Know?" through "How Did the Universe Begin?" and "Why Is the Universe the Way It Is?" and "Where Did Life Originate?" etc., and end appropriately enough with, "How Will It All End?" The first question is not an epistemological philosophic query, although it looks like one. He means how do we know the things about the cosmos that we think we know? and it is a very interesting question answered mostly through reading the electromagnetic radiation from distant sources and drawing conclusions based on spectrography. This knowledge is combined with what we know about particle physics, chemistry, general relativity, quantum mechanics and even geology to make some very clever deductions about what is out there very, very far away. Even without the math some of the material is difficult. Especially challenging are the chapters dealing with the zoo of subatomic particles both extant and theorized. But Gribbin is a very good and knowledgeable writer with a flair for the kind of enthusiasm about his subject that makes the reading fascinating. Many books on science find it necessary to repeat a lot of scientific history in the various disciplines before they get to the latest discoveries. Gribbin does not do that here, perhaps because is previous book, The Scientists was a history of science. He does give us information on earlier theories and ideas when such information is apt, such as when explaining how the solar system originated since the latest ideas are different from what you and I were probably taught in school. In fact, Gribbin considers "old science" that science which occurred before the 21st century! I thought the most interesting chapters were the latter four on where the elements came from, on the origin of the solar system, on where life originated, and how the universe will end. Gribbin makes the argument that it is likely that life was already on its way to realization before the earth came into being. He supports this with new discoveries of amino acids and other "precursors of life" molecules in what are called Great Molecular Clouds seen throughout the universe. The material on the composition of comets and meteors furthers this argument since they contain many organic chemicals, some of which have only been recently discovered. Gribbin even goes so far as to say that "inside the icy bulk of a comet, warmed by the radioactive decay of short-

I read all of John Gribbin's books. They are wonderful, and essential for anyone who wants to keep up in what has happened in physics in the past 100 years. Gribbin is a very good writer. In this latest book, however, I find evidence of politically correctness that was not so obvious in his previous books. This shows up in three chapters: 2, 6, and 10. The first problem is that, without spelling it out, John introduces string theory as if it were a respectable scientific theory, discussing SUSY, supersymmetry, gravitinos, branes, neutralinos and all the rest of the multidimensional string nonsense as if it were similar to established science such as relativity, quantum physics, electromagnetic principles and DNA. Science goes like this (which I learned from earlier Gribbin books): hypothesis leading to a prediction which can then be validated or falsified by seeing if the prediction is accurate. That is how we learned that Einstein was right, and quantum theory was correct. String theory, on the other hand, after thirty years has made absolutely no predictions, and therefore has never been tested or proved. It for this reason not science, and should not be included in a book about science without telling the reader that this is all unproved and untested hypotheses, and possibly nonsense. The same problem comes up in Gribbin's discussion of Global Warming which is also a hypothesis in search of a valid prediction. Global Warmning comes from a bunch of models which are no better than the asssumptions which are fed into them. Every time a new model is run, it comes out with different ideas about what the temperature will be in the year 2100. It does not tell you what the temperature will be in 2010, which could be verified. Few people living today will be around in 2100, so there is no way that we can evaluate the validity of the various models. It is OK to discuss global warming in a book about science, but such discussion should be introduced by saying that it is not science, but is simply political theory. As he says, "It is now well established that the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is likely to raise the average temperature of our planet by a minimum of 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the twenty-first century". What is "well established"? No predictions have been made that can be validated by observation. So it becomes a "consensus" of many scientists. At the time of Galileo, the "consensus" of all leading authorities was that Galileo was wrong. But, of course, the leading authorities were wrong. That is why science proceeds from hypothesis to prediction to proof. Gribbin knows that, but he does not say that in this book concerning string theory or global warming. For the other side, read two good books: The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin and The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.

This is different from the usual run of science books, including Gribbin'd own earlier books. Instead of concentrating on the past and explaining the things we know about, this time he focuses on the future, and explains the limits of present-day knowledge and where there are likely to be breakthroughs in the next ten years. Will the Large Hadron Colider detect Higgs particles? Will we find planets with life on them orbiting other Suns? And so on. There is still a lot here about how we got to know the things we know (his phrase), but always with the aim in mind of looking to the future -- hence the title. Like Gribbin's famous book In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, The Origins of the Future needs careful reading and you have to go over some of it more than once to get the full flavour. But also like Schrodinger's Cat, it is well worth the effort. The best thing of all is the way Gribbin weaves the story of quantum physics, relativity theory, chemistry and biology together to show how science explains everything in the Universe, including life, in one integrated package. You can't pick and choose which bits of the edifice of science you want to accept, its all or nothing. The book makes a compelling case that it is indeed all. I'm sure I'll be going back to this one time and again over the next few years as the developments Gribbin discusses become reality.