Dan Hooper - At the Edge of Time

Somewhere on my shelves I have a copy of Steven Weinberg's book The First Three Minutes, a 1977 classic that looks at the origins of the universe in the Big Bang. Dan Hooper's At the Edge of Time might be considered a modern updating of that book, though it really looks at the "first three seconds" and summarises much of the latest research about how the early universe developed and led to what we can see today in the skies.

The immediate aftermath of the Big Bang was an incredible time. For extremely brief periods the rapidly expanding universe went through a series of different states that saw subatomic particles crashing into each other at massive speeds. Periods known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma era and the Grand Unified era followed in quick succession, followed by longer periods (of minutes) which saw the formation of the first protons and neutrons, followed by the creation of nuclei in the 50,000 years that followed. It is a complex time during which, as Hooper points out, "almost everything... remains a mystery to us". It is a time when the laws of physics we know today probably behaved very very differently, and when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.

It is this inflationary period to which Hooper devotes much of his discussion - because it is in this period that the large scale structures of the contemporary universe have their origin. It, as he says, ends after a brief moment and "in a sense one can think of the end of inflation as the true beginning of the universe we live in". When Weinberg wrote his book, the idea of the Big Bang had only just been accepted by most cosmologists. Hooper explains that many of them probably expected that 50 years later we would know much of what there is to know, but that isn't true. In fact some of this book is tinged with disappointment as he points out that he, and many of his colleagues, expected the Large Hadron Collider to answer most of their questions about what took place in the very early universe. 

The book is easy to understand, though readers without some physics and astronomy background might find some of it hard going. I was challenged by some of it - one realises that ones physics degree from the early 1990s is going out of date quite quickly when reading Hooper or Chanda Prescod-Weinstein). But at times I wasn't sure my incomprehension was simply lack of clarity on physics. For instance, I thought that Hooper confused the many universes theory by simply explaining how the existing universe is broken up into sections that are unobservable due to them being beyond a cosmic horizon where they are receding from the observer faster than light. This is important because, as Hooper points out, we cannot really explain how the temperatures in those distant areas are so similar. But it is not, in my opinion, quite the same as the many universes idea that speculates about multiple universes with (perhaps) different physical laws.

The book is at its best when Hooper is linking these complex ideas to his day to day work. In fact there is rather a nice part when he explains what he actually does! I think this sort of communication is important because it helps to ground science in reality, as well as making it clear that scientists are ordinary workers too.

For those fascinated by astronomy and the early universe, Dan Hooper's book is excellent. Let us hope that his firm belief that many of the unknowns he highlights will be explained soon.

Related Reviews

Prescod-Weinstein - The Disordered Cosmos
Miller - Empire of the Stars: Chandra, Eddington and the Quest for Blackholes
Greene - The Elegant Universe
Poskett - Horizons: A Global History of Science

Christina Thompson - Sea People

The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on Earth. It huge area is larger than the planet's entire landmass, and its possible to look at the Pacific on a globe and almost imagine a planet completely devoid of land. Yet zooming in from such a view, it quickly becomes apparent that this massive area of water has land, tiny volcanic islands that poke out of the water, sometimes separated by thousands of kilometres. When Europeans first arrived at these islands they were amazed to find most of them inhabited. To the European's this seemed amazing. The islanders had what seemed to be very rudimentary boats. How could this have taken place? 

Christina Thompson's book is a history of the "Polynesian Triangle", an

area of ten million square miles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean defined by the three points of Hawai'i, New Zealand and Easter Island. All the islands inside this triangle were originally settled by a clearly identifiable group of voyagers: a people with a single language and set of customs, a particular body of myths, a distinctive arsenal of tools and skills, and a "portmanteau biota" of plants and animals that they carried with them wherever they went. 

Without compasses, sextants or maps, they colonized the Ocean and did so in a remarkably short period of time., creating what was "until the modern era, the largest single culture area in the world".

The Europeans, of course, could not believe the Polynesian's did this on their own, and a significant part of the book is the story of how Europeans misunderstood the history of the Pacific. Believing that navigation over such distances was impossible without European technology, those that came after Captain Cook, came up with a variety of ideas about what happened. These ranged from the racist - that the Polynesians were actually descendants of white tribes, to the improbable - the Polynesians were actually South American. Much discussion took place about how the navigation took place - whether it was accidental (as most people believed until very recently) or planned.

In exploring the European approach to the Polynesians, Thompson draws out the real story - which is an incredible account of brilliant exploration, genius navigation and completely different ways of understanding the world. She shows how different understanding of the relations between currents, waves, land and water, allowed the first navigators to move around the Ocean with incredible accuracy, and how this was proved by some startlingly brilliant experimental voyages in the 1970s and 1980s. These trips both proved the impossible possible and gave new renewed identities to the Polynesians themselves, rescuing their own history from the condescending ideas of many European scientists. There are fascinating accounts of archaeology, navigation and oral history - and I was particularly struck by Thompson's brilliant account of Cook's relationship to the Tahitian Tupaia who produced a famous chart. Thompson shows how this is actually an incredible accurate map of the Pacific, but one almost incomprehensible to a 17th century European sailor.

I picked up Sea People on a whim in a bookshop and I am very glad I did. It seems like it might be a specialist topic, but its a brilliant exploration of the different "ways of seeing" that different human cultures develop, and how such knowledge has been lost because of the way European colonialism remade everything in its own image. I highly recommend it. As Thompson points out, there are still questions about the origin of the Polynesians, it is "unlikely that we will ever know how some of the remotest archipelagos were initially discovered or how many canoes were lost in the course of this long and arduous colonising process", but

To the extent that this history has been disentangled... it has been thanks to input of radically different kinds. At one end of the spectrum are the mathematical models: the computer simulations, chemical analyses, statistical inferences - science with all its promise of objectivity and its period lapses into error. At the other, the stories and songs passed from memory to memory: the layered, subtle, difficult oral traditions, endlessly open to interpretation, but unique in their capacity to speak to us, more or less directly, out of a pre-contact Polynesian past.

Related Reviews

Poskett - Horizons: A Global History of Science
Cushman - Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History
Moorehead - The Fatal Impact
Hunt & Lipo - The Statues that Walked: Unravelling the Mystery of Easter Island

Earl Swift - Across the Airless Wilds

Across the Airless Wilds, a history of the Lunar Rover and its voyages on the final three Apollo missions, might seem like a niche subject - even for those of us fascinated by the history of space exploration. Yet Earl Swift's book is a surprisingly gripping read and deserves a readership beyond the narrow confines of enthusiasts. 

The rover concept had its origins in the near fantasy science fiction stories that shaped the early popular vision of rockets and spaceflight. In those gaudy depictions of Americans on space, popular magazines depicted astronauts exploring the moon and travelling around in a variety of vehicles. For a society seeped in automobile culture it seemed inevitable that visionaries, scientists and science-fiction authors would suggest that moon explorers would soon need a "car". Yet oddly the first people to really push the idea of such vehicles were not Americans, they were German scientists.

Just before reading Across the Airless Wilds I finished a book about the early Atomic scientists and the development of the atomic bomb. Robert Jungk's Brighter Than 1000 Suns showed how former German nuclear scientists were central to the US development of the Atomic bomb. This was also true of the space programme, and indeed the Lunar Rover. Two key figures in its early development Werner von Braun and Hermann Oberth were both  German scientists, with von Braun at least having played a significant role in the Nazi war effort. Swift makes a point that many key figures in the US space programme were "foreign born". 

He continues "America's race to reach the moon, both within NASA and at the aerospace companies that built the hardware, relied on the minds and talents of immigrants - on Americans who happened to start their lives elsewhere." It is hard not to think that Swift is taking a dig at the right-wing politicians in the US (and elsewhere) who attack immigrants, but he makes an important general point about the space programme itself - it was the product of an enormous amount of physical and mental labour by hundreds of thousands of people, and its roots go back into the early twentieth century. That said, Swift does not ignore the murky parts of this history. We cannot forget the fact that one of the key architects of the Apollo programme was a former leading member of the SS and it is important that Swift acknowledges this.

I highlight this to emphasise that Swift's book is no mere celebration of technical achievement, but places that achievement in the context of the time and politics. That said the technical and economic history of the Lunar Rover makes up the bulk of this book, and readers will be fascinated by how the Rover itself came to be. Despite its long intellectual gestation, the Rover itself was only given the go ahead by NASA a few days before Apollo 11 lifted off to put Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. The engineers had a limited budget and barely 18 months to turn their designs into a functioning vehicle. It seems utterly incredible that it happened, not least as it began around the time that budgets for moon flights were beginning to be cut back. Nevertheless it is testament to the way that the central drive from the state could make things happen far faster than would normally take place if just left to the free market.

The Rover was far more than a car on the moon. It had to be incredibly light and strong, rugged and safe. It had to be able to take its passengers far away from their spacecraft and bring them back. This required incredible inventions in terms of batteries, cooling, and navigation instruments. Even the tires are unique and incredible inventions. The accounts of the six astronauts who drove the Rover on the moon, and how they fared are breath-taking in and of themselves, especially when you see the interaction between crewmembers and technology in terms of solving problems on the lunar surface.

Swift points out that the Rover's importance was not just in terms of exploration. It also helped inspire and reawaken public interest in the programme. As I said earlier this is, in no small part, because of the centrality of the car to US culture. Few people could imagine piloting a lunar lander. But everyone could imagine driving a car. Video of astronauts skidding and racing on the surface touched a nerve in a way that the early astronauts bunny hopping did not. I would have liked Swift to explore this further - not least to draw out more about how the public understood and celebrated the Rover itself. 

There is no doubt that the Rover transformed lunar exploration and massively increased the amount of science that the Apollo machines did. The price tag was around 250 million USD in today's money - a significant investment. Whether that sort of spending was worthwhile is something that continues to be discussed today. Nevertheless the story of the Lunar Rover is the story of how when resources and labour are set to solve a technological task, then the amazing can be achieved. It is a lesson we could do with applying to many other social and economic needs today.

Related Reviews

Rubenstein - Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race
Burgess - The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration
First on the Moon - A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin Aldrin
French & Burgess - In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquillity 1965-1969
Scott & Leonov - Two Sides of the Moon

Robert Jungk - Brighter Than 1000 Suns

Before reviewing this book I feel compelled to note that it represents a personal milestone of sorts. It is likely one of the oldest, unread, books on my to be read pile. Slightly over thirty years ago I purchased it, intending to read it during my physics course at university. I never got around to it, though I wish that I had read it many years ago. The reason for this is that it is a interesting discussion about the motivations of scientists, particularly the moral dilemmas of those engaged in nuclear weapons research. In a time of heightened international tensions between Russia and the United States there's much to concern the public about nuclear weapons, and this book offers insights into the very earliest days of the Cold War.

The book opens with the intoxicating atmosphere of physics research in the first two decades of the 20th century. This would probably have been the most useful part of the book to read during my university period, because it simultaneously captures the excitement of physics and the way in which scientists develop their knowledge. The exchange of information, the excitement of research and the incredible breakthroughs that are covered are fascinating. It is particularly notable that Jungk notes the important roles of female scientists like Lise Meitner and Irène Joliot-Curie, and because this is a political and moral account of their work, we also see their personal bravery in the face of the rise of the Nazis.

The book moves on to the Hitler's victory and World War Two, which provides the first key discussion of the morals of the scientists. Because German scientists had been at the forefront of atomic research there was a real fear that Germany might get the Atom bomb. This fear led to many scientists urging the US to begin their own research into the weapon. Many brave German scientists who did not flee, refused to assist their government's atomic research, or at least slowed it. It is, of course, impossible to say how much this actually took place, and it seems clear that several scientists did assist Hitler's efforts. Historically the book is at its weakest in this section, likely because Jungk was unable to get his sources to speak, or archives were still inaccessible. I am not sure his relatively positive summary of Werner Heisenberg stands scrutiny today. Among atomic scientists the fear of a Nazi atomic bomb appears to have made their belief in the positive force of the United States in the world real. Jungk concludes:

It seems paradoxical that the German nuclear physicists, living under a sabre-rattling dictatorship, obeyed the voice of conscience and attempted to prevent the construction of atom bombs, while their professional colleagues in the democracies who had no coercion to fear, with very few exceptions concentrated their whole energies on production of the new weapon.

Many of those scientists were to find their faith in US democracy undermined by the events of the war and the first use of atomic bombs on Japan. Jungk reports a discussion between the physicist Samuel Goudsmit and a US major, with whom he was liasing between the War Department and the Manhattan Project. Goudsmit remarks, "Isn't it wonderful, that the Germans have no atom bomb? Now we won't have to use ours." The major replied, "Of course you understand, Sam, that if we have such a weapon we are going to use it". This answer shocked Goudsmit, who like many of the scientists seemed to genuinely believe that the US would not use the weapon. This, for me, is the real paradox of these scientists who dedicated their work towards making a bomb, they expected would not be used because they naively believed in the public ideals of the US. 

Jungk neatly describes the combination of shock and relief when the first nuclear weapon is used on Hiroshima. The scientists are proud their work has succeeded and relieved the war is over, but utterly shocked that the weapon had been used against a city. Jungk discusses the Franck report, a detailed discussion of the military significance and the need to avoid the use of nuclear weapons by a number of atomic scientists sent to the US President in 1944. Reading it today it seems hopelessly naïve, its authors firmly believing that the world would sit down and sensibly discussion nuclear weapons and work to avoid a proliferation of bombs. 

But to be fair to many of the scientists, their immediate response to the use of nuclear weapons was to try to awake the world to their threat and highlight the problems. Jungk credits this movement with forcing both the US and the USSR to acknowledge the scale of the threat to their citizens, and begin a discussion about the use of these weapons. It was, in a very small way, the beginning of the anti-nuclear weapon movement.

These broad outlines tell the main subject of the books, though we learn a great deal more. There's plenty of material on Robert Oppenheimer, though there are better and more recent books. In terms of autobiography only the briefest material is included, but the book offers the reader directions to follow, especially for those interested in specific scientists. The book is at its best discussing the moral quandaries of the scientists of the Manhattan Project during World War Two. In some regards the book is dated, but it does attempt to look at the  question of nuclear weapons from an explicitly moral and political individual point of view - a vantage point that is unusual for such studies. Most importantly it is a powerful reminder about why scientists cannot abstract themselves from politics and history, or even social movements. The book is very readable, and I'd recommend you don't wait thirty years to pull it off your shelf.

Related Reviews

Ananthaswamy - Through Two Doors at Once
Prescod-Weinstein - The Disordered Cosmos
Farmelo - It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science

Mary-Jane Rubenstein - Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race

Mary-Jane Rubenstein opens her book by asking the reader to imagine a "bad dream or a mediocre sci-fi story" where Earth is becoming uninhabitable and "a wealthy fraction of humanity hitches a ride off world to live in a shopping mall under the domination of the corporation that wrecked the planet in the first place." This scenario sums up the vision that certain billionaires have for the future. While millions of people might currently be cynical about Elon Musk's ability to run any sort of complex operation following the debacle of his takeover of twitter, Musk is actually one of the leading "NewSpaceniks" who wants to "save" humanity by pushing us towards space.

Rubenstein's book Astrotopia is a fascinating study of these billionaire visions. It begs some interesting questions. The most obvious of these is why should these billionaires be able to impose their visions of humanity's future? But there are others. By what rules can they divert resources and capital to these plans? What rights do they, or anyone, have to use the mineral resources of the solar system in the interest of furthering the wealth of their class? Finally, what basis is there to their compulsion to go into space itself?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a space enthusiast and I have a particular fascination for the early space programme and Apollo missions to the moon. As a socialist and anti-capitalist I was looking forward to Rubenstein's demolition of the ideas of the NewSpaceniks, but was pleased that she develops this into a subtle critique of ongoing space programmes as being motivated by right-wing, colonialist ideologies. As she says, the astropians have a "deeply conservative nature" and "the rocket men seek more land and resources to plunder in space", despite the fact that people, communities and ecologies are under desperate threat in the here and now.

Rubenstein explores how visions of US expansion have been shaped by very similar politics to those that backed up the expansion of European colonialists across the Americas and the genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas. Donald Trump perhaps exemplifies this, and Rubenstein offers several quotes where he refers to America's history as a "frontier nation" and she paraphrases him saying "America is again being called to settle a wild new frontier and embrace its 'manifest destiny in the stars'." The concept of "manifest destiny" having been used for near 200 years to justify European colonial rule. Such language is not restricted to more recent Presidents. Rubenstein quotes Kennedy worrying in the 1960s about the space threat from the Soviets, "This does not mean that the US desires more rights in space than any other nation. But we cannot run second in this vital race. To insure peace and freedom, we must be first". As Rubenstein points out, Kennedy disingenuously argues for US equality in space, at the same time as insisting they'll be top dog. 

Such ideas run through the visions that Trump and the billionaires have for space today. Their vision for space is couched in the language of helping humanity, but is really about ensuring a particular vision of society - one where billionaires control everything and the rest of us toil to support them - continues. This is a space were the rocks, minerals and energy available is there to maintain an Earthly status quo, and keep us subordinate. It is, as she says "deeply conservative" not least because we know what such policies have done to indigenous peoples, ecological systems and natural resources in the past.

However I was prepared to disagree with Rubenstein's book. While we share many politics - anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism and a clear hatred of oppression - we come from a very different ideological place. She is a "professor of religion and science", has a religious background and her personal beliefs are clearly important to her. They shape her approach to this work, and I was concerned that her framing of this study as one of "religion" on the part of the billionaires would undermine her critique. But the more I read the more I appreciated the framing given that it is closely tied to the sort of ideological beliefs that have shaped US history so far. 

But the use of religion also allows Rubenstein to develop wider understandings of the relations between nature, the universe and humanity - ones that would be completely alien to the billionaire class. In exploring all this, she touches on literature, poetry and religion. I did not always agree with her, but I found it stimulating indeed. Rubenstein is an entertaining writer, and at her best when eviscerating the billionaires and their ludicrous ideas (Musk wants to drop 1000s of nukes on Mars to warm it up...!)

Given my interest in space and astronomy, I was intrigued by how she would answer the question she sets herself at the end: "Should we explore outer space?" She answers in the affirmative, but cautions: 

[Only] if we can find a way to study it without doing further damage to its ecology and our own and without escalating human violence. Yes, if we can rein in private interest enough to privilege knowledge over profit and cooperation over competition. Should we try to live there? I'm honestly not sure. But either way, we need to stop pretending that escaping Earth is going to solve our problems... because... we'll bring them all along with us one way or another.

I would argue that this cannot happen without the destruction of capitalism itself. While there remains a need to accumulate for profit's sake, the capitalists will only understand space in terms of capital. We can and must do scientific research, send probes out and use Earth's orbit to help improve peoples' lives. But exploration, permanent bases and new colonies are a distraction from the urgent work to be done - and that includes the fight against a system that would mine the moon for raw materials to make electric cars for Elon Musk's bank balance.

Related Reviews

Burgess - The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration
Shetterly - Hidden Figures
Prescod-Weinstein - The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred
Moore - What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Brzezinski - Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Race

Donovan Moore - What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

It is difficult, when reviewing biographies, to separate the review of the biography from the subject. It is all too tempting just to rewrite a summary of the person being depicted and ignore the biography itself. This is particularly the case when the subject is such an extraordinary person who is almost unknown outside the field they excelled in. Such a person was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. As such the main importance of Donovan Moore's biography is that it highlights the life and contribution of this amazing scientist. But first we have to talk about the importance of Moore's subject.

Born in 1900, Payne-Gaposchkin's life straddled the greater part of the twentieth century, and exemplified some of the great changes that were to take place. From a young age she was fascinated by the world around her - botany, astronomy and science in general. But she was also a gifted student of literature and language and later in life, she peppered her science lectures with allusions and references to plays, poetry and literature. Moore's book tells the story of Payne-Gaposchkin's early life and the important influence of her parents who clearly did not hold with Victorian ideas of what a young woman should study. He is particularly strong when highlighting the barriers that Payne-Gaposchkin faced as a result of her gender.

The most important part of the book deals with Payne-Gaposchkin's break into academia. She eventually went to Cambridge were, defying expectations and open hostility from faculty and bureaucrats, she studied botany, physics and astronomy. The first of these she dropped quickly, and focused on her greatest love - astronomy. Her interest in the subject was famously begun when aged eight years old she had seen a meteor while walking with her mother. But it was really after attending a Cambridge lecture by the great astronomer  Arthur Eddington about his 1919 expedition to verify Einstein's relativity theories while viewing an eclipse, that she became hooked. She completed her studies but Cambridge would not award a degree to a woman until 1948, so Payne-Gaposchkin emigrated to the United States were she got a job at Harvard in what would become the fledgling astronomy department there.

Payne-Gaposchkin's Cambridge years are of great interest because they show the stifling nature of life at Cambridge. The heavy weight of tradition, sexism and Empire clung to the university. Payne-Gaposchkin's entrance exam to her science course was centred on a translation of a classical text from ancient Greek. Hardly a test of whether or not she understood the basics of her science subjects. But it is the appalling inequality experience by women that is most shocking to the modern reader. The rudeness, casual sexism and dismissive treatment of female students is one thing, but so is the way that they were treated by wider society. Women wanting to play tennis had to have written permission from home in order to go out without petticoats. Male students rioted against the idea that women would be awarded degrees.

Going to Harvard was Payne-Gaposchkin's way out. Getting a low paid job at the university was the result of a brilliant exam, but the university also got its money's worth. Harlow Shapley, the Director of the Harvard Observatory, ensured she was very lowly paid for decades, and Payne-Gaposchkin - for fear of losing the job - never complained publicly. But Harvard was very different to Cambridge, and this probably reflects the different places that the two countries were at. Britain was still clinging onto the remnants of its Empire, stuck in the old ways. The United States, at least, was a country powering forward economically. Its treatment of women was still unequal and misogynistic, but at least women could work at Harvard and no one seemed to care about petticoats too much. Payne-Gaposchkin ended up working on stellar spectra, work that relied on the labour of several female "computers" whose systematic work had provided the observatory with a wealth of raw data. From this Payne-Gaposchkin was able to publish a brilliant PHd thesis that overturned some key ideas of astronomy, including those of Arthur Eddington, her great hero. Payne-Gaposchkin showed how the most abundant elements in the stars, and hence the universe, where not in the same proportions as on Earth. Instead the element Hydrogen was dominant. It was too radical a conclusion and Payne-Gaposchkin had to tone down her argument at the behest of more famous (and male) scientists. But she was eventually proved right - though not accepted until male scientists had verified her conclusions.

At Harvard, Payne-Gaposchkin was a pathbreaking scientist. She also broke down many barriers for women. According to Moore, she was, "The first PHd in astronomy, the first winner of the Cannon Award, the first woman promoted to professor at Harvard... the first woman at Harvard to chair a department." 

These firsts were made in the face of opposition and resistance. She was repeatedly ignored for promotion because of her gender, though she also forced the authorities to accept her unusual behaviour. She brought her children to work during World War Two, forcing the Observatory to permit other women to do the same at a time of great shortages of labour for childcare. She lectured while pregnant, something that was considered shocking in the 1930s and 1940s. She was defiant of convention and this defiance led her to take risks and do things, such as drive across the United States with a female friend camping, that must have been shocking to many at the time.

She also exhibited great bravery, travelling to Germany and Russia in the 1930s, helping the astronomer Sergei Gaposchkin escape Nazi Germany and get a job at Harvard. They eventually married and had several children. Cecilia gained the "reputation" of being a "dangerous radical" according to her own autobiography, for the radical discussion groups she and Sergei hosted during World War Two, but it seems that her radicalism never became the organised kind. This is perhaps something she understood herself, saying at a lecture once that she found herself, "cast in the unlikely role of a thin wedge". The words were intended as a joke - Payne-Gaposchkin was almost six feet tall and chain smoked - but they were also very true. 

Payne-Gaposchkin was a "thin wedge" but this should not diminish her achievements. It was her fortitude and confidence that drove her forward, and opened up a path for many others to follow. But first and foremost she was a scientist - her love was pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. 

Donovan Moore's book is a great introduction to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's momentous and unusual life. It is not without its faults - I felt that Moore glossed over the science that Payne-Gaposchkin was working on a little too much. The reader deserved to know more about why her breakthroughs were so important and radical. This requires some more context - the quandary over the make up of the stars (and hence the universe) was because there was no real accepted understanding of how stars worked. This would require clarity over nuclear physics, which was simply not available to the scientists that preceded Payne-Gaposchkin. In this very real sense Payne-Gaposchkin was working on cusp of enormous breakthroughs and her pioneering work helped take this knowledge forward. Sadly Moore doesn't really do this justice. I would also have liked more information on her later years - there is little here about the 1970s and her life then. I would also have valued a slightly more critical engagement with the life and work of Arthur Eddington, whose attitude to critics was problematic and, in the case of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (who also fled Britain to the US) was likely shaped by racism. 

Nonetheless this is a fascinating, entertaining and well written account of the neglected life of one of history's greatest scientists. 

Related Reviews

Prescod-Weinstein - The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred
Miller - Empire of the Stars
Green - 15 Million Degrees: A Journey to the Centre of the Sun
Winterburn - The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel: The Lost Heroine of Astronomy

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein - The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred

It is not uncommon, while looking at reviews of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's The Disordered Cosmos, to see people describe it as a book of two halves, the first being the difficult science and the second the politics. But to read The Disordered Cosmos like this is to misunderstand a fundamental point about Prescod-Weinstein's powerful polemic. One of her key arguments is that science, and that includes the cosmology and particle physics that she researches, cannot be separated from politics. This is something that the author herself learnt, as she writes in to the introduction, "my new understanding that society would follow me into the world of physics was also something of a phase transition for me."

Prescod-Weinstein's research is complicated. That said, she has a gift for analogy and clear writing that makes the concepts she deals with as accessible as possible. Much of Prescod-Weinstein's work is related to "Dark Matter". This is the mysterious substance that dominates our universe yet is invisible to our detectors. We can infer its existence from experimental measurements and from the complex equations that Prescod-Weinstein loves (though she is careful to only include one of these in the book!). In her explanation of her own work, and the "disordered cosmos" we live in, she begins with the smallest particles and their components, building up and linking these to the enormous structures of galaxies and clusters of galaxies that dominate the galaxy we can see. It is fascinating and Prescod-Weinstein is a brilliant communicator and tackles some amazing science. 

But as she explains the science, Prescod-Weinstein also does two other things. She constructs useful metaphors that allow her to explain wider, political issues and tackles the way that capitalism shapes the very framework that scientists use to understand the world. Let's look at a good example of this. Prescod-Weinstein says:

Newton's conception of objects moving in space relied intensely on Euclidean geometry as an organising framework. I a sense, students are still introduced to calculus through this lens... Almost everything in my education about space eventually came back to Euclidean geometry, because it was supposedly intuitive.

But she continues,

The Palikur people of the Amazon see it rather differently. Their geometric system, which more accurately describes the movement of stars across the night sky than the Euclidean one, is what we would call 'curvilinear.' Understanding stars moving across the sky requires a king of intuition for curves - something that's hard to gain when you're always thinking in Euclidean terms. The Palikur system seems to train the mind to think in terms of curves from the very start.

This, is an important insight. The intellectual framework we have for understanding science arises out of a particular time and space - the European enlightenment. This was, as Prescod-Weinstein says, then imposed on the rest of the world through an ongoing process of imperialism and settler-colonialism. So our science is closely tied up with the interests of the capitalist system. 

Prescod-Weinstein points out that even a subject as seemingly scientifically "pure" as astronomy is tainted by its role in this process. She highlights the recent debates over a new telescope on Mauna Kea were administrators and scientists dismissed indigenous communities concerns. European astronomy expeditions needed the labour of slaves and indigenous people and their findings helped spread the capitalist system around the globe. Those astronomers and scientists who would dismiss the close links between astronomy and the interests of capital might like to note that the first thing a visitor sees when arriving at the Greenwich Observatory in London is not the brass meridian line, but a set of "Imperial Standards of Length" crucial to the organisation of global commerce. The meridian line itself carves up the world based on a line drawn through the capital of the British Empire. Time itself was transformed by capitalism, as EP Thompson famously wrote about in his article Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. 

Our intellectual frameworks then arise out of the dominant economic and political interests of the system we live in - and this has shaped even the science that Prescod-Weinstein studies. The use of colour names as analogies in particles physics is problematic, and Quantum Chromodynamics was originally (and sometimes still is) called "colored physics". A name that would not have been used, as Precod-Weinstein points out, had Black people not been "excluded" from particle physics in the 1960s. The language of physics is "a hot mess".

Which brings me to one of the key points of this book - racism. Physics, Prescod-Weinstein points out, has a racism problem. Part of that is something that she calls "white empiricisms", this is 

a practice of ignoring information about the real world that isn't considered to be valuable or specifically important to the physics community at large, which is oriented toward valuing the ideas and data that are produced by white men... I developed this argument by using the specific example of how Black women are treated in the scientific workplace and juxtaposing it against a debate about whether actual observations and experiments are necessary to support theories of quantum gravity. Black women are constantly asked to provide hard evidence for our evaluations of our most common place experiences with discrimination, et white men are taken seriously when they suggest that more affirming data isn't necessary in order to test their theories of quantum gravity.

Physics is a subject that has been built upon racist structures and individual actions of racism and colonialism. As James Poskett has recently pointed out, Isaac Newton had enormous investments in the South Sea Company, which in turn made massive profits from the slave trade. Prescod-Weinstein shows how indigenous people, slaves and servants had their knowledge and labour stolen and used by white-male scientists who claimed it as their own. The scientific establishment has developed on a structural racism that has deep historic roots - both systemically in terms of the history of capitalism and institutionally in terms of the history of the science itself. 

The problems with structural racism, and misogyny that Prescod-Weinstein documents, mean that  physics is not a welcoming space for people who don't fit the white-male norm. Prescod-Weinstein gives us the unpleasant statistics. But she also tells us her experiences - the racism, the sexism, transphobia and homophobia and the difficulties that students who come from lower income backgrounds (something that is much more common for Black students) experience arriving in an academic environment that is shaped by the interests of better off white people. I suspect this is true of other sciences too, but Prescod-Weinstein argues it is particularly a problem in physics. She also highlights that trans and nonbinary people in physics are "particularly harmed by gender discrimination, including by advisers and colleagues who refuse to use people's correct pronouns". Too often the institutions say that its "too difficult" to learn how to do this. To which Prescod-Weinstein rages:

First-year college physics students are expected in just one semester to not only memorize Newton's laws of physics but also to learn how to apply them. If we can have the lofty expectations that our students will master the basics of gravity - a deeply mysterious force that pervades the entire universe - then surely they are owed mastery by their professors and classmates of a couple of letters that get their pronouns right.

So Prescod-Weinstein is under no illusions that more training in "microaggressions" or "antiracism" is enough to solve this problem. Nor is simply increasing the number of black or LGBT+ students. As she says, "My personal success will not end the structural racism that keeps so many Black people and refugees, especially single mothers, their children, and trans folks in poverty."

Instead what is needed is the destruction of a system that is based on oppression and exploitation. Prescod-Weinstein is very clear that the systemic and structural problems that she outlines are the consequence of centuries of colonial and imperialist rule, and are integral to capitalism. They distort science, and they distort scientists and they make it harder to practice science. As such the system needs to go.

Prescod-Weinstein's book is a powerful, beautifully written study of science and society. It is, at times, a difficult read, because the subject matter includes racism, sexism, transphobia, sexual abuse and rape. Towards the end of the book she writes that as a teenager she believed "that if we solved the fundamental equations of physics, the rest of the proper order of the universe could be derived". This chimed with my own experiences studying mathematics and physics at university. As a white, heterosexual male I certainly do not claim that I can share her experiences of oppression. But I did have a naïve belief in "pure science" that I thought would fix the world. Finding that this was not the case was one of the reasons I became a socialist activist. 

In reading The Disordered Cosmos I was reminded however that science, and education, do matter in and of themselves and that we want more people to enjoy them. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's book is filled with her enthusiasm for the universe, as much as it is filled with a rage against a system that denies this to so many people. As she concludes, "We must demand liberation for all, including the right to know and understand the night sky, not as the context of desperate and generous searches for freedom, but as the beautiful place that holds the answers to how we came to exist at all."

Related Reviews

Richardson - Say it Loud! Marxism & the Fight Against Racism
Saini - Superior: The Return of Race Science
Horne - The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism
Winterburn - The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel: The Lost Heroine of Astronomy
Angus - A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism
Miller - Empire of the Stars: Chandra, Eddington and the Quest for Blackholes

Poskett - Horizons: A Global History of Science
Farmelo - It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science
Ananthaswamy - Through Two Doors at Once

Clegg - Gravity: Why What Goes Up, Must Come Down

Greene - The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Helen Pilcher - Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth

The ongoing way that human society is changing the species and ecosystems around us has roots in historic ecological transformations and the need for humankind to "first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion". It is a fact acknowledged by Helen Pilcher who begins her study of how humans are altering life on Earth, by examining how they have altered life. 

In her opening chapter Pilcher begins with her own "genetically modified wolf", a dog called Higgs, and examines how and why early humans must have domesticated wild animals. Dogs could hunt, defend and provide food and furs to hunter-gatherer communities, likely ensuring their survival. Pilcher then develops these points looking at how our ancestors would have domesticated animals and plants, to produce the cows, chickens, horses and agricultural crops that billions of us depend upon today.

Pilcher sees a continuity between these early domestications and the ongoing changes we are making to species today, what she describes as "our complicated relationship with the natural world and our growing sense of mastery over it". She takes up some important political issues such as environmental destruction and genetically modification, in the hope that the reader will find a "source of inspiration and of hope, because they show us that, when humans take time to care about [the] natural world, great things are possible."

Pilcher embarks on a whistle-stop, and accessible, account of how species change and evolve, before delving into the complexities of genetic modification. She looks at various examples of species, from cows to fish, possums to horses. While some of the science is a little superficial (the book is aimed very much at the general public) Pilcher doesn't shy away from the complex issues these subjects provoke, and links each story to wider contexts - such as extinction, ecological changes or the need to produce more food. Some of these accounts, such as the GM goldfish and the changing nature of farmed chickens touch on more fundamental issues - such as the way that animals are transformed in the interest of profit. Unfortunately Pilcher does not fully interrogate these issues. Writing about the genetic changes that result from selective breeding in cattle aimed at making cows that produce more milk Pilcher says,

although Holstein [a breed of cattle] breeders are beginning to adopt the genetic test for Chief's [an important sire] faulty gene, they too can look past this and see the broader economic picture. Although the faulty gene cost the dairy industry millions of dollars in losses, using Chief's sperm to inseminate dairy cows has still led to US $30 billion in increased milk production over the past 35 years.

She then notes that "we are now beholden to an industry that prioritise short-term productivity over the long-term health and sustainability of its herds". Here the word productivity could be more helpfully replaced by the word profits, as that is what the GM companies and breeding industry is actually interested in. In fact, a great limitation of this book, is that it fails to adequately examine the motivation behind such scientific developments tending to celebrate the science rather than query the motives.

Pilcher celebrates scientific and technology advance in the face of wider social and ecological issues. For instance she writes:

I agree that there are problems with our food system. If these engineered animals are used to prop up an already broken system, then I question their value, but I am open-minded to the use of gene-edited farm animals in different settings. If we could somehow ensure that big companies don't have the monopoly on these animals, and tat they could be made available to smallholders, it could make a big difference to their lives... African sleeping sickness, bird flu, mad cow disease... as scientists unravel the molecular mechanisms that confer immunity, animals could be modified to resist these blights.

But this hope masks a much bigger problem. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation has noted the close links between poverty and African Sleeping Sickness which had been seen "as a colonial disease that had been eliminated and could be relegated to history". Cuts in funding for "control units" had helped lead to a major resurgence in the disease. Repeated outbreaks of Bird Flu are closely linked to the way that industrial agriculture concentrates huge numbers of animals together in the interest of maximising profit, something the late Mike Davis wrote eloquently about. Mad Cow disease too is closely linked to the irrational way that cows were fed in the interest of fast growth and maximising profits. 

There are, of course, scientific, technological and medical advances that can help prevent and treat those affected by these diseases. But at their root they are a problem caused by a food system driven by big business in the interest of profit. We can hope big business will not have a monopoly on GM animals, but the reality is that big business has a monopoly on the global food system which drives unsustainable, unhealthy practices and encourages zoonosis. Looking for purely technological solutions to these problems ignores the origin of the problems themselves. 

This problem is also there in Pilcher's approach to ecological destruction, where she again looks to scientific and tech solutions. She says, "some find de-extinction unnatural. The scientists responsible have been accused of 'playing God', but don't we also play God when we destroy forests, over-hunt, pollute the planet and warm our word?"

While the science Pilcher describes is very modern, sadly her framework is dated. "As our numbers have grown, our impact on the planet has intensified. Now humans have become an evolutionary force of extraordinary influence". 

But here again Pilcher ignores the nature of an economic system that drives such ecological destruction in the name of profit. "We" aren't guilty of anything. Capitalism, and the big mining, logging, agricultural and fossil fuel corporations are guilty of destruction in their own interests. Looking to corporations to develop technological solutions to biodiversity loss and extinction allows these companies to continue their unsustainable behaviour while placing a green fig-leaf over the consequences. 

In the final section of the book we are introduced to some amazing work by conservationists and scientists trying to protect endangered species such as coral and the New Zealand flightless bird the Kākāpō. The people doing this work are clearly motivated by a desire to save their chosen species, and work incredibly hard to do so. Some of the science (not all of it GM) is incredible, and Pilcher's amazement at this work is infectious. She writes, "It's still evolution, but it's evolution that is guided by a well-meaning, informed human hand. This is conservation at its finest."

But again the focus on saving specific species seems a throwback to an earlier period of environmental activism. Today the struggle against biodiversity loss needs a much more systemic approach that looks at the way that ecological systems are placed at the mercy of capital. Conservation at its finest would be the integration of such science and technological insights into a wider challenge to the economic interests that are destroying the coral reefs, cutting rainforest or draining wetlands - an approach that would recognise the subordination of natural systems to the interests of profit.

Pilcher's book left me intensely frustrated. It is a book that attempts to understand how human society impacts upon the natural world, but divorces its discussion of the science of Genetic Modification and related technologies from human society itself. In particular Pilcher fails to really discuss the question of these technologies in the context of a world dominated by the pursuit of profit. She touches on some concerns about GM, but doesn't raise any real issues about accountability or democratic control of these technologies - or even the question of science under capitalism. Instead she seems spellbound by the science, isolated from social context, and that makes for a deeply unsatisfactory study of some of the most important questions of our era.

Related Reads

Davis - The Monster Enters
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Wallace - Big Farms Make Big Flu
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Francis French & Colin Burgess - In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquillity 1965-1969

The recent launch of the Artemis rocket to the moon has put humanities' exploration of space back in the media spotlight. Artemis brings to mind the Apollo moon landings that took place fifty years ago. But Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's first steps on the moon could only take place because of the technological and scientific achievements of dozens of earlier spaceflights. 

In the Shadow of the Moon is a broad history of the human spaceflights that took place between the earliest missions and the moon landings. Covering both the Soviet and US missions, it focuses particularly on the development of the skills and technologies that allowed humans to leave spacecraft and "walk" in space and the skills needed to rendezvous two vehicles together in orbit. Most of the book is focused on the US missions as these are the ones that the authors have most access to archive material and interviews, though there are some interesting sections on Soviet achievements.

At the heart of the book are the Gemini missions which were the point when the US outstripped the Soviet Union in the "space race". Here the Americans learnt rapidly, though not always smoothly, the technologies needed to achieve a landing. What is obvious is that this was very much a race - these missions and the training of the astronauts were all geared toward hitting the target of a 1969 moon landing as declared by President Kennedy. All sorts of other things were sacrificed to make this possible, and indeed this included human lives on both sides as space agencies and governments pushed quickly forward. Two tragedies are at the heart of this. The launch pad fire of Apollo 1 which transformed NASA's internal organisation and forced a re-evaluation of much of how they approached human spaceflight and the death of Vladimir Komarov in Soyuz One.

It would have been remarkable had no lives been lost on the way to the moon landings. These were incredible achievements in terms of skills. The authors tell the story of how the space agencies learnt how to do things that are common place today - docking ships with each other, meeting in space and manoeuvring around other vehicles. The material on Gemini is particularly interesting as its often neglected in the stories of the moon landings, though I felt at times that the authors obsessed a little too much on the oft-told stories of the US astronauts themselves. The information on the Soviet cosmonauts was much less familiar and thus more interesting. But I did want more technical information - for instance I would have liked to know more about how the US developed the computing technology that is often referred too, yet barely described. This continues to be the basis for so much modern technology and it would have been fascinating to know more.

The authors tell the story of the first moon landing, but in many ways it is overshadowed by the earlier missions, in particular the two Apollo missions that went to the moon first. We also get a real sense of how those missions captured public interest and held it, before the waning of interest toward the end of the programme.

One thing I found fascinating. The authors emphasise how the astronauts were almost all from test pilot, or high ranking naval pilot backgrounds. This helps explain how many of them seemed uninterested in continuing their space careers. For them it had been a mission to be done, and once checked off, they were happy to do something else. I'm often fascinated by how astronauts might not want to return to space, yet this book helps explain why that happened. But the emphasis on high profile figures - astronauts and mission control - once again neglects and ignores the contributions of thousands of scientists, electricians, engineers, mathematicians and admin workers. I would have liked more on these "hidden figures" of the space programme - and it would have been nice to hear about the contributions of women other than the astronauts wives and mistresses. That said there is some amazing social history here - including how NASA essentially blocked its crews from getting divorces because they risked their flight status.

This is an accessible and interesting book that fills the gap between Mercury and Apollo and does not neglect the sacrifices and achievements of the Soviet Union in space. It is probably one for those with a deeper interest in the period and technology, rather than the casual reader. Though such a reader will also find it lacking in detail in places.

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Stern & Grinspoon - Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto
First on the Moon - A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin Aldrin
Shetterly - Hidden Figures
Scott & Leonov - Two Sides of the Moon
Burgess - The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration
Bell - The Interstellar Age

Minnie Vaid - Those Magnificent Women and their Flying Machines

In September 2014 the Indian space programme successfully put a spacecraft in Mars orbit. It was an amazing achievement, and there were two principle reactions. Firstly the cost. Putting Mangalyaan in orbit was priced at $74 million USD. While this figure was far cheaper than a similar US mission there were those that argued it was too costly for a country with such levels of poverty. Defenders of the mission pointed out that the cost was less than the $100 million USD spent on the Gravity film staring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Few commentators also called for the Indian government to check its spending on weapons, or pointed out the high levels of poverty in the United States. Nonetheless the cost were enormous. But the scientific and technological benefits were demonstrated by the second response which was to celebrate the role of female engineers within the Indian programme and their centrality to the Mars mission.

Globally women "make up on 28.8 per cent of those employed in scientific research and development" and "there are only 12 per cent female members in sixty-nine science academies worldwide". Such gender disparities make the centrality of women to the Mangalyaan mission even more remarkable. Minnie Vaid's new book explores the paths those women took to reach their position, the roles that they play as scientists and the barriers they experience towards advancement. All the women interviewed clearly see themselves as crucial in terms of expanding the profile of women in science and encouraging young people, and particularly young women, to take up sciences. 

Vaid notes the barriers. Women are expected to take up the "lion's share" of domestic work, bringing up children etc, and as a result "many women scientists limit themselves to less challenging positions, stopping short of jockeying for higher posts". There are hints at other barriers, including sexism and harassment at work and the prejudices of male workers and managers. Clearly however many barriers are being broken down, though I was struck how many of the women still took on the "double burden" at home of the lions share of domestic and childrearing work. That's not to say that their partners did not cook or care for children - far from it - but that their was a pressure on these women to be seen as good parents as well as brilliant scientists in a way that was clearly not true for their male counterparts. 

There remains however, a long way to go. "There are two Indias" explains Vaid:

In the first we rank 131 out of 188 in the Human Development Index and 108 out of 144 in the Global Gender Gap Index. That is a women in India earns less than a quarter of the annual income earned by a man, while her share of unpaid household work and child care is 66 per cent - to the 12 per cent share of a man... in the second India, girls want to become space scientists, fly on a rocket to Mars and participate in human space programmes. In a recent survey... a whopping 70 per cent girls said they wanted to pursue higher studies and had a specific career in mind.

What struck me about many of the scientists quoted, and indeed their wider families, is that they frame their involvement in the programme in very nationalistic terms. It is notable, for instance, the pride with which the scientists are seen by within India. This is often directed in terms of taking India forward - several women interviewed remarked that wider family took on domestic and childcare tasks  for the good of the national space programme and India's national image. This celebration of the national achievement smacked of the nationalism around the US and Soviet space programmes and the "race" to beat the other, rather than a collective achievement. In the context of Modi's nationalistic politics it was notable that there was only one Muslim and one Christian female scientist interviewed. Also notable was that all the scientists clearly practiced their religion. This meant that while the book had some fascinating insights into wider Indian culture and politics, they aren't explored in great depth. 

Nor were questions of gender equality explored further. It was interesting to see that several women had to, on occasion, bring young children to work - and this was facilitated by the organisation. It would have been interesting and exciting to hear that women were demanding free workplace creches and other reforms as a result. The women often worked extraordinarily long hours, with no extra pay, especially at times of launch or critical mission moments. I was disappointed to see that no one challenged these sacrifices and demanding more compensation - working in a prestigious institution should never mean allowing exploitation to go unchallenged - no matter how often managers make the tea. The fascinating insights into women in the Indian space programme posed many questions, but sadly the opportunity became mostly an opportunity to celebrate achievements rather than highlight further economic and political improvements that might be gained.

India's space programme is clearly going places and will be worth watching. This book offers a fascinating account of its most prominent aspect - the central role of women scientists. Readers will gain a new appreciation of the hard work and gains to be achieved from such science, but might feel that there could have been further exploration of the barriers and limitations.

Related Reviews

Burgess - The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration
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Wolfe - The Right Stuff
First on the Moon - A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin Aldrin

James Poskett - Horizons: A Global History of Science

This is a remarkable book which turns much of what you thought you knew about scientific history on its head. It is a classic example of how social movements such as Black Lives Matter can transform how historians, scientists and academics approach questions and how readers engage with them. I will say this is likely to be one of my reading highlights of 2022.

I reviewed Horizons for SWP Long Reads you can read it here.

Riley Black - The Last Days of the Dinosaurs

The odd thing about dinosaurs is that they are defined by their absence. As children we learn about these enormous creatures that no longer exists, and perhaps our fascination with them stems from their extinction. Like mythical dragons they do not exist, but at the same time dinosaurs are not dragons - they did once roam the Earth, and then they were gone. 

But the strange thing is that while dinosaurs are known by extinction, we discuss the actual extinction very little. What usually matters for enthusiasts is dinosaur life. Museums don't have dioramas depicting mass death - we see replica dinosaur standing in landscapes. But the manner of extinction does matter, not least because we are living through an era of extinction ourselves. So Riley Black's book is unique because it looks precisely at the end of the dinosaurs - the moment of transition from Cretaceous to Paleocene. What exactly happened when that asteroid hit? 

While this is a book seeped in science Black tells the story as a narrative. She begins with a typical dinosaur diorama in Hell's Creek (now in Montana) reconstructed from fossil evidence. In an opening chapter we follow a Triceratops which dies of old age, and see how scavenging animals wait patiently for a Tyrannosaurus rex to break open the tough armoured hide so they can feast too. It is a scene drawn from Black's own experiences in Yellowstone Park watching birds wait for a grizzly to open up a dead bison. 

Each chapter tells similar stories, introducing the reader to a variety of dinosaurs and animals, following them through the extinction, then exploring what Hell Creek looked like a day, a month, a year, one thousand years and one hundred thousand years after impact. It is a sobering read. I was struck by how quickly extinction took place - most of the dinosaurs on Earth were dead in the 24 hours after impact, killed by a infra-red pulse that raised temperatures so high that they simply could not survive. I was also struck by how lucky humans are - the evolutionary space created by the extinction gave mammals the space to evolve. But had events taken slight different turns - asteroid impact at a slightly different angle - dinosaurs might have survived. Or indeed the impact been so great that only bacteria survived and life began, so to speak, again. We would not be here.

It is a grim story, that Black tells well. In parts it is a horror story, "there is no dawn on the first day of the Paleocene" writes Black. We can imagine the suffering and pain that billions of creatures felt in the previous 24 hours, and we can imagine just how difficult life will be for the survivors. This is not the gradual dying off of previous "extinctions" or even that accelerated extinction that we're seeing today. This was a light going out.

While Black's book did make me draw connections with today, oddly they weren't just about extinction. What I was repeatedly struck by was the way their descriptions of dinosaur ecology made me think about ecological relationships today. Black makes you think what a herd of massive dinosaurs does to the environment around them as they stomp through:

When ever-hungry Edmontosaurus and Ankylosaurus mowed down plants with their mouths, they shaped what would become of the forest. Young, juicy plants were always the best delicacy, so these dinosaurs often cropped off young plants before the could take hold. These megaherbivores kept the meadows and open ground clear, just as Triceratops did when they'd rub their horns against trees to the point of toppling some over. Soil  was packed, seeds were scattered ,carcasses were left behind to nourish the soil... And vast quantities of dung... Dinosaurs did not merely inhabit the world as if it were a ready-made diorama. Dinosaurs literally made the world their own.

What is true of dinosaurs is also true of the world today. Species make their own nature, shape their own ecology which in turn shapes them. Similarly, Black shows how evolution fits the context in which it takes place. There is no preordained path, rather "each evolutionary happenstance opened up new possibilities, biodiversity generating itself through interaction". Not all the animals that survived made it. Not all the lineages developed and not all the ecological niches were filled.

While fresh, readable and packed with information this is a book that is rooted in contemporary science. I read each "narrative" chapter and then the corresponding section of the appendix where Black tells us precisely what bit of science backs up the descriptions she's made, and indeed the places were she has had to extrapolate or make educated guesses. I suggest that if you read it you do likewise.

This remarkably accessible book is well worth a read. Riley Black's Last Days of the Dinosaurs is very likely to be my science book of the year, and I hope that others grab hold of it. While the central events of the story are 66 million years ago, the connections I made were very contemporary. Highly recommended.

Related Reviews

Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
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Ward - The Call of Distant Mammoths: Why the Ice Age Mammals Disappeared
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Oliver Rackham - The Ash Tree

The Ash Tree was dictated by Oliver Rackham from his sick bed from memory. His editor tells us that while the text was "refined" it was, nonetheless, essentially written from Rackham's memory. It is testament to the author's brain that he was able to produce, almost on demand, a book that is both detailed and passionate, as well as polemical and beautifully written. The Ash Tree was written in response to growing public awareness of a major outbreak of 'Ash Dieback' a fungus that was destroying the trees. 

Rackham was concerned about how the immediate response to Ash Dieback was to plant hundreds more trees, arguing that the roots of the problem lay in something he had been "rabbiting on about for years". Rackham argues that the 

greatest threat to the world's trees and forests is globalisation of plant diseases: the casual way in which plants and soil are shipped and flown around the globe in commercial quantities, inevitably bringing with them diseases to which the plants at their destination have no resistance.

Attempts to solve the problem are limited, Rackham argues, because "people's enthusiasm for trees comes and goes on a shorter timescale than the lifespan of trees" and that we are an "unreliable guardian of the world's trees". 

He then begins an ash odyssey. He looks at its history, its biology, its associated flora and fauna and its cultural significance in prose, song and literature. We learn about ash trees in remote areas, of huge trees and how the wood has been used for wheels, tools and gates. We learn ash's history:

Ash has been increasing throughout the Holocene. Widespread since wildwood times, it seems to have got slowly commoner as the centuries have passed. In Anglo-Saxon times it was common but not universal: the sort of tree that places could be named after. It has slowly increased ever since, both in woodland and elsewhere.

The book ends with a polemic - about how to care for trees, how to plant them, and how to consider them as part of our lives and landscape. Readers of Rackham's other books will be familiar with his concern to place woodland in the context of a human and natural landscape, interacting with and being changed by social and ecological forces. 

The Ash Tree is a gorgeous piece of nature writing, illustrated, as these books should be, lavishly with plenty of colour. But it is a book that is also, intensely Rackham. His unique style and enthusiasm shine through, as well as his own life thinking about trees and woodland. His final lines, bemoaning the decline of tree pathology as a science studied in universities leaves him feeling isolated: "I am one of the last survivors of a Critically Endangered Species. I belong in the Zoo."

Woodland maintenance has become subordinated to capital. Planting new trees in their thousands, the immediate response to Ash Dieback and, sometimes, climate change can make things worse. 

Sadly Oliver Rackham died shortly after this book has left, but we can hope that his inspiring writing, read in the context of our greatest ecological crisis, will create a new generation of tree pathologists.

Related Reviews

Rackham - Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape
Rackham - The History of the Countryside

Colin Burgess - The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration

I was looking forward to Colin Burgess' The Greatest Adventure, because of the subtitled focus on "human space exploration". I was hoping that the book would look at the development of space travel while also examining how humans have learnt to live in space, cope with the mental and physical impact of space travel and how that might continue in the future. Unfortunately I was disappointed. The book is mostly a history of the different missions that the US and Soviet Union made during the "space race" followed by shorter chapters bringing the book up to date with the Space Shuttle, ISS, and brief mentions of the Indian and Chinese space programmes. Finally there is an all too brief account of private space companies, which doesn't do the discussion of the role of billionaires in space justice.

Oddly, given the title, there are some notable omissions. The rivalry between fixed wing and rocket strategies to explore space in the early US space programme is given cursory mention and Burgess doesn't even mention a figure as unique and important as Chuck Yeager. More importantly there is no real attempt to explore how social questions impacted on the human angle of the space programme. Burgess mentions Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, but doesn't explore why it was a further 19 years before Svetlana Savitskaya followed her. Sally Ride the first US woman in space didn't fly on the shuttle until a year after Savitskaya. Why this aversion to women in space from the space programmes? What other problems related to gender and sex discrimination did female astronauts experience? Indeed, why did Sally Ride have to hide her sexuality for 30 years? It would have been an interesting exploration of the human side of space exploration if Burgess had tried to investigate the way that space exploration seems so closely linked with macho male, and usually military, figures.

Similar points might be made about black astronauts. The first black American astronaut, Guion Bluford,  didn't go into space until 1983. At least Bluford gets a passing mention in Burgess book, which is more than can be said for Ed Dwight the first black American selected for the early US Air Force training programme for astronauts. Dwight, a test pilot, was selected in 1961 but was not selected by NASA to be an astronaut and resigned in 1966. Dwight said he was driven out by "racial politics". Surely a discussion of why the Kennedy Administration wanted a black astronaut and why he might not of been selected would have been an essential contribution to a book about the "human" side of space exploration.

The 2016 film Hidden Figures based on Margot Lee Shetterly's book, rescued the hidden history of the role of black, female, American mathematicians in calculating trajectories and orbits for the US space-programme. Yet the contribution of these women, and thousands of other men and women who supported the programme, built the rockets, made the equipment warrants no mention at all from Burgess, though at least every returning Apollo astronaut understood this. Writing a history of the "human" space programme surely should at least acknowledge that the few hundred people who have been to space do so because of the work of hundreds of thousands of others. 

A more mundane, but nonetheless crucial aspect of human space flight is the physical aspect. Returning astronauts frequently joke that the question they are most often asked by school children is "how do you go to the toilet in space?". Such basic, human, aspects to space exploration are absent from Burgess book and in discussing them Burgess could have opened up wider debates about the links between society, people and space. It would have been nice to include the illuminating story of Sally Ride being asked by NASA engineers if 100 tampons would be enough for a week in space. 

Inevitably, given the differences between the Soviet and US programmes, there is more of a focus on US missions. Burgess does at least explore a little about how the Russian programme built international links by inviting foreign astronauts to join their missions, and later invite fee paying tourists on board. 

The twelve astronauts who went to the moon, and the hundreds who have been in Earth orbit, found it a profound experience. It affected them in a myriad of different ways, and not all of the astronauts found it easy to deal with the fame and the emotional shock. Several early astronauts became alcoholics as a result. Some astronauts were penalised by NASA for taking things to space that they hoped to sell to supplement their meagre pay. Sadly, none of these interesting issues are discussed.

Space exploration is no different to any other aspect of society in that it carries with it the political and cultural divisions that capitalism creates. While it is impossible for Burgess to ignore the consequences of the imperialist rivalry between the Soviet Union and the US in creating the space race, there is almost nothing else in his book that discusses humanity and space beyond the most superficial. Instead the book is really a history of space missions, with the names of those onboard attached. Most disappointing.

Related Reviews

Shetterly - Hidden Figures
Scott & Leonov - Two Sides of the Moon
Brzezinski - Red Moon Rising
First on the Moon - A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin Aldrin
Wolfe - The Right Stuff