We recently spent a week in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a very nice place that I highly recommend. Be sure to take some day trips out of the city to some local attractions too.

My highlight was the KL Bird Park. I really wasn’t expecting this to be my highlight. But they have done it so right.

The main area consists of a large forest in the city that they have basically slung huge netting over to create a giant aviary. It contains 3000 birds (200 species) that are free to fly around and do whatever they please. We saw birds hunting for fish, birds making nests – everything you would expect wild birds to do. And they have become accustomed to humans – they don’t mind people walking about. Perfect for photography.

I highly recommend it.

So, here are some of my photographs. I’ve tried to identify each species. I’m no ornithologist so feel free to correct me!

Clicking an image takes you to a much larger a version.

Yellow Billed Storks

Yellow Billed Stork

Western & Victorian Crowned Pigeon. Yes, they are pigeons.

Scarlet Ibis

Sacred Ibis

Rose-ringed Parakeet

Peacock

Greater Flamingos

Great Egret (?)

Black-naped Oriole

Black Hornbill

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This is a “crowd-sourced” list of recommended popular science books.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post: “Can you recommend a PopSci book?“. I was after books that people felt everyone should read. Books that you would really recommend to someone who perhaps knows nothing about a subject, or would even recommend to someone who doesn’t read science books.

I left that post running for a few weeks and have regularly been asking for more recommendations. The recommendations have stopped coming in now so I thought that I should finally collate all the books into a single list.

I must stress that this is not my list – I have only read a handful of the books listed below (about 10); I cannot personally vouch for the quality of all the books on the list. They have just been recommended as a “must read” in reply to the original blog post.

Here is a summary of the requirements:

• Not too many pages – recommending a 500-600+ page to someone may just put them off! [I've removed this rule. If someone thinks a book is a "must read" then it should get on to the list. And, as the number of pages in each book are provided, you can always decide for yourself if you think it will be too long for you].
• Accessible to someone who hasn’t studied the subject before.
• Think carefully: “Would I recommend this book to someone who knows nothing (or very little) about <insert subject area here>?”
• The book should be relatively cheap and readily available.

And, of course, this is by no means a final list – if you feel that there is a book that should be on this list, let me know via a Tweet or a comment on ”Can you recommend a PopSci book?“.

The list is not in any particular order – the books are literally listed in the order that the recommendations were sent to me. Don’t get angry if your favourite book appears at the bottom of the list!

However… books 1 to 11 appear at the top of the list as they were recommended by multiple people. Bill Bryson’s book has been recommended by many people – the audio version has been recommended too. If you have never read a science book before, start with this one.

So…here it is:

A list of “Must Read” Popular Science Books

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything - by Bill Bryson (423 pages if you ignore the notes!)
2. Bad Science - by Ben Goldacre (288 pages).
3. Your Inner Fish - by Neil Shubin (256 pages).
4. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13000 Years - by Jared M. Diamond (425 pages if you ignore the references!)
5. The Demon-haunted World - Carl Sagan (436 pages).
6. Wonderful Life: Burgess Shale and the Nature of History - by Stephen Jay Gould (353 pages).
7. Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - by Nick Lane (352 pages).
8. The Disappearing Spoon - by Sam Kean (400 pages).
9. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic - by David Quammen* (592 pages).
10. The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius - Graham Farmelo (560 pages).
11. The Periodic Table - by Primo Levi (224 pages).
12. The Code Book - by Simon Singh (402 pages).
13. Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You - by Marcus Chown (224 pages).
14. The Selfish Gene - by Richard Dawkins (384 pages).
15. Supersense: From Superstition to Religion – The Brain Science of Belief - by Bruce Hood (320 pages).
16. Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts - by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (304 pages).
17. Antimatter - by Frank Close (176 pages).
18. Six Easy Pieces: Fundamentals of Physics Explained - by Richard Feynman (176 pages).
19. Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution - by Richard Fortey (256 pages).
20. Last Chance to See - by Douglas Adams and Mark Cawardine (224 pages).
21. Paranormality - by Richard Wiseman (336 pages).
22. The Origin of Virtue - by Matt Ridley (302 pages).
23. How to Lie with Statistics - by Darrell Huff (128 pages).
24. The Ambidextrous Universe - by Martin Gardner (416 pages).
25. Afterglow of Creation: Decoding the message from the beginning of time - by Marcus Chown (288 pages).
26. We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe - by Marcus Chown (288 pages).
27. Nonsense on Stilts - by Massimo Pigliucci (336 pages).
28. Stiffs: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - by Mary Roach (304 pages).
29. The Left Hand of the Electron (PDF) – by Isaac Asimov (225 pages).
30. Philosophy of Science – Very Short Introductions - by Samir Okasha (160 pages).
31. Relativity – Very Short Introductions - by Russell Stannard (128 pages).
32. QED (The Strange Theory of Light and Matter) - by Richard Feynman (176 pages).
33. Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life - by Carl Zimmer (256 pages).
34. The Alchemy of Air - by Tom Hager (336 pages).
35. The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code - by Sam Kean (432 pages).
36. Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right is Wrong - by David Bradley (192 pages).
37. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life – Science Masters - by  Richard Dawkins (224 pages).
38. Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages - by Guy Deutscher (320 pages).
39. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences - by John Allen Paulos (160 pages).
40. Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life - by Enrico Coen (360 pages).
41. Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum - Richard Fortey (320 pages).
42. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth - by James Lovelock (176 pages).
43. Chaos: Making a New Science - by James Gleick (368 pages).
44. The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History - by Jan Zalasiewicz (256 pages).
45. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures - by Carl Zimmer (288 pages).
46. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - by Rebecca Skloot (384 pages).
47. Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA - by Maryn McKenna (288 pages).
48. Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us - by Maggie Koerth-Baker (304 pages).
49. Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements - by Hugh Aldersey-Williams (448 pages).
50. H₂O: A Biography of Water - by Philip Ball (400 pages).
51. Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body - by Armand Marie Leroi (320 pages).
52. The Particle at the End of the Universe: The Hunt for the Higgs and the Discovery of a New World - by Sean Carroll (352 pages).
53. Why Evolution is True - Jerry A. Coyne (336 pages).
54. Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need To Know About It - Simon Singh (544 pages).
55. Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth - by Andrew Smith (384 pages).
56. Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex - by Aarathi Prasad (288 pages).
57. Massive: The Higgs Boson and the Greatest Hunt in Science - by Ian Sample (352 pages).
58. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory - by Brian Greene (464 pages).
59. Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World - by Angela Saini (288 pages).
60. Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing Hoax - by Phil Plait (288 pages).
61. The Ascent of Man - by Jacob Bronowski (352 pages).
62. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate Our Universe - by Lisa Randall (464 pages).
63. Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All - by Rose Shapiro (304 pages).
64. Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide - by Lewis Dartnell (224 pages).
65. Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System - by Ray Jayawardhana (280 pages).
66. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space - by Carl Sagan (334 pages).
67. Written in Stone: The Hidden Secrets of Fossils and the Story of Life on Earth - by Brian Switek (320 pages).
68. The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science - by Natalie Angier (304 pages).
69. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in Space - by Mary Roach (312 pages).
70. The Eye: A Natural History - by Simon Ings (336 pages).
71. What Is This Thing Called Science? - by A.F. Chalmers (288 pages).
72. Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World - by Bruce Schneier (448 pages).
73. Risk - by John Adams (224 pages).
74. Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins - by Ian Tattersall (288 pages).
75. The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin - by Francis Spufford (240 pages).
76. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary - by Caspar Henderson (336 pages).
77. Death from the Skies!: The Science Behind the End of the World - by Phil Plait (336 pages).
78. Here is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics - by Misha Angrist (352 pages).
79. From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time - by Sean Carroll (448 pages).
80. The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy - by Seth Mnookin (439 pages).
81. My Beautiful Genome: Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time - by Lone Frank (336 pages).
82. The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China’s Political Animal - by Henry Nicholls (224 pages).
83. Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science - by Jim Al-Khalili (336 pages).
84. The Edge of Physics: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology - by Anil Ananthaswamy (336 pages).
85. Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain - by David Eagleman (304 pages).
86. The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began - by Stuart Clark (224 pages).
87. Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences - by Cordelia Fine (368 pages).
88. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality - by Manjit Kumar (464 pages).
89. Atomic: The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-1949 - by Jim Baggott (480 pages).
90. The 4-Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality - by Richard Panek (288 pages).
91. The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life - by Alison Gopnik (304 pages).
92. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding - by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (432 pages).
93. How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming – by Mike Brown (271 pages).
94. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning – by Daniel Bor (352 pages).

*I recommend you listen to Neil Denny’s fascinating interview with the author of this book (David Quammen) on the Little Atoms podcast.

Thank you to….

A handful of books in the list above were recommended by me, but the majority are recommendations from the following people:

Robin Ince, Rob, Alun Salt, Martin Orman, Mark Lewney, Mike Ward, John Tweedie, Sam Hawkswell, Ed Yong, Rob Sharp, Andrea Sella, Bob, Lewis Dartnell, Neil Denny, Alok Jha, Eva Amsen, Stuart Cantrill, See Arr Oh, Graham Steel, Matthew Hartings, Richard Van Noorden, Jon Turney, Dorothy Bishop, Dr Neil Martin, Sarah Mount, Abigail Amey, Martyn Norris, Rob McD, Simon Vessey, Liz Lutgendorff, Peter Harrison, Drew Rae, colsmudge, Julian Onions, Mark Lorch, Stephen J Henstridge, Steve Cook, John Read, Stuart, Jon Treadway, Chrissy Mitchell, Eamon, Sandra, Eleanor Baker.

Thank you!

And, last but not least, thank you to Stephen Curry for the original idea.

Pop Sci Book Club

I few of us have started up a Pop Sci Book Club! See “The Pop Sci Book Club – an introduction and our first book” for more details.

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This morning I read this rather strange blog post: What shall we do with Brian Cox? Selling science in the 21st century. Ignoring part of the title – I didn’t realise we needed to do anything with Brian Cox – the article discusses how science could be better promoted (“sold”) to the public.

There are a few things I disagree with in the article. For example, the author suggests that Cox wants us all “to become scientists to expand our horizons”:

Does he really want everyone to join in the grand scientific quests?  Would that even be in science’s best interests?

I’m not sure that is correct. Cox certainly wants the public to appreciate what science can do for us, to find it wondrous, to be excited by it – but I don’t believe I have ever heard him say that we should all become scientists.

That’s not really what I want to go into in this post. What stunned me was this:

As a concrete proposal, I would suggest that Brian Cox team up with the San Diego-based best-selling physician Deepak Chopra, who promotes ‘quantum medicine’, in order to sell quantum physics as something in which members of the public should take an active interest.

Yes – Cox should work with Chopra. I ridiculed this a few times on Twitter. The author spotted those Tweets and challenged me:

@kashfarooq I've been following your outrage but other than smears, you seem to offer no arguments against the Cox-Chopra connection.—
Steve Fuller (@ProfSteveFuller) February 07, 2013

Rather than reply in 140 characters, I thought I’d write this post. [I'll get to what those "smears" where later].

First, if you don’t know who Deepak Chopra is, here’s a handy reminder.

Deepak – please can you tell me how telepathy/psychic healing/remote viewing/Ayurvedic medicine works?

Yes, Deepak Chopra is one of those people. He uses the word quantum to make things sound sciencey. And he uses his “knowledge” of quantum physics to sell a lot of books and what one may refer to as “woo”.

Here is physicist Leonard Mlodino having an “enlightening” conversation with Chopra about quantum physics:

Chopra even has his own Skeptic Dictionary page, which is well worth a read.

And there’s more. Tom Williamson has created a Wisdom of Chopra website (and accompanying Twitter account) that generates “quotes” by randomly sticking together words from Deepak Chopra’s Twitter stream. It is hard to distinguish between a real quote and a randomly generated one:

"Knowledge depends on existential destiny" wisdomofchopra.com—
Wisdom of Chopra (@WisdomOfChopra) February 07, 2013

The universe exists in awareness alone. #CosmicConsciousness #Atheism #Theism—
Deepak Chopra (@DeepakChopra) February 07, 2013

All this has been building up to explain why I was “outraged”. I think that suggesting that Cox work with Chopra on a quantum physics sci-comm project is…a little odd. I initially thought that the article was a spoof!  You know what?…. to be honest… erm…. I don’t believe Chopra actually knows much about quantum physics, so might not be the best person to communicate the science of it.

In fact, it’s a comedy collaboration! I Tweeted a few more comedy collaborations during the day with the hashtag #fullerlogic – I think these are the “smears” being referred to above.

So, here are some comedy collaborations. Come on – who wouldn’t want to see these happen?

• Dr Ben Goldacre can work with homeopath Dana Ullman to ensure science-based medicine follows homeopathy’s lead and finally stops treating the symptom and gets round to looking at the cause.
• Astronomer Dr. Chris Lintott can work with astrologer Erich von Daniken to explain how a 12th of the world’s population will be lucky in love today.
• Evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins can work with Young Earth Creationist, and founder of Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham to finally explain why ”the Creator had an inordinate fondness for beetles“.
• Mary Beard can team up with Erich von Daniken to show how the Great Pyramids actually were made by ancient alien astronauts. (Thanks Rob!)

Are there any more collaborations that you’d like to see?

Today we’re talking about tiny microbes, usually so small that a microscope is required for any chance of seeing them. But it’s possible to see some microbes without a microscope. Actually, it’s even possible to see them at a great distance. I’m not talking a few feet, I’m talking miles. It’s possible to see microbes from space. Yes, you read that correctly. SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE.

I admit, this seems a little far-fetched. After all, we’re talking about organisms that are called “microscopic” for a reason. Where are these microbes? You can see them where we always find the world’s most interesting organisms…

Photograph by Sebastian Meckelmann.

Source

The oceans are full of life. Viruses are the most abundant organisms in the oceans (if you count viruses as organisms), but other microorganisms make up most of the biomass. Amongst the sheer biomass of microbes in the oceans, the whales and sharks are almost non-existent. Living terrestrially is tough, but that doesn’t mean life in the oceans is a breeze. Marine microbes have evolved countless adaptations to help them survive in a marine environment. Most of the oceans are relatively cold. This poses a problem for our tiny ocean friends because it directly affects their metabolism and growth. Even worse, cold temperatures affect their membrane “fluidity” and cytoplasm/water viscosity, which in turn restricts their swimming/movement. Many have evolved alternation in their fatty acid composition and modified enzymes that are more efficient at lower temperatures.

As most people are aware, the oceans are also salty. This causes a strong osmotic effect, it can impair enzymes, and alter how proteins fold. But microbes even manage to work around those problems. Adaptations include specialised cell walls, improved salt tolerance, and some species have actually evolved to require the high salt levels! There are many other problems. They have to avoid drying out and sinking, they have to protect themselves from intense UV on the water surface due to reflection, and they have to survive in a low-nutrient environment. It’s a tough life.

Rhizosolenia diatom. Image credit: Marine Biological Laboratory.

Source

This is Rhizosolenia, a diatom. Notice the scale? That little scale bar represents 0.005 cm. Rhizosolenia has to deal with all the problems I’ve already mentioned, from low temperatures to low-nutrient supply. Their best solution is location, location, location. This next image shows where Rhizosolenia live in the Pacific ocean.

Source

A northward current is coming in from the left, and a southward current is coming in from the right. When they meet, the cooler water from the south moves deeper into the ocean, which stirs up the warmer waters. Between them, a front is created by convergence of the water masses of different temperature and density. The southward current is nice and warm, and the northward current brings delicious nutrients. The Rhizosolenia live on the warmer side of the front, using the nutrients that come from the colder waters. Rhizosolenia thrives here, and can be found wherever this front occurs in the Pacific. You can see them if you look closely at the next image.

Source

Now that’s a lot of Rhizosolenia! No microscope required there. But that photograph was taken from a boat. Here’s something a bit more spectacular…

Source

That line you can see is Rhizosolenia. Each individual is only a few micrometers across, yet that line is approximately 57 km long. You’re looking at microbes, as seen from the space shuttle Atlantis. Here’s my favourite image…

Source

The line of Rhizosolenia running through the centre of this image is 100 km long. This photo was taken 230 km above the Earth’s surface. Carl Sagan spoke of gazing upon our lonely blue planet from deep in the solar system and being unable to see any evidence of humans.

“And yet there is no sign of humans in this picture, not our reworking of the Earth’s surface, not our machines, not ourselves. We are too small.”

It seems just as likely that microbes would be invisible to observers hundreds of kilometres above the Earth’s surface. But there they are, photographed by the astronauts of the space shuttle Atlantis on the 7th of August, 1992. Recently, Atlantis was retired safely, but you may have noticed on the news that yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disintegrating during re-entry. I’d like to take a moment to remember the explorers that lost their lives. They will always be remembered. Once again, I leave you with Carl Sagan.

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die.”

Reference:
Yoder, J.A., Ackleson, S.G., Barber, R.T., Flament, P. and Balch, W.M. (1994). A Line in the Sea, Nature, 371, pp. 689-692.

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I wasn’t going to write about this but have started feeling that I was missing out on all the fun!

Royal Institution of Great Britain (Credit: user “Gryffindor”, Wikimedia Commons)

So, the Royal Institution have said they may have to move from their home in Mayfair London. Their £22 million project to “to re-fit the 18th Century buildings, and provide an upmarket restaurant and bar” have left them with a debt of £7 million. Their annual income doesn’t match their outgoings and they are in trouble.

For more details about this, see the BBC article. And there are links with various differing points of view at the bottom of this post.

This week I have discovered that people can actually visit the Royal Institution. I didn’t know. There is a museum!

From the RI’s “Who we are” section:

The Royal Institution is an independent charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science.

Well, I’d suggest they aren’t doing that very well. In fact, they are doing that terribly. I’d only (ONLY) heard of the RI through the fantastic Christmas Lectures. And I’d read about people like Faraday and Davy working there. That’s it. I didn’t know anything more than that. I had never heard of the RI Channel.

Whenever I have some spare time in London, I try to do something sciencey. I do some Googling and look for something geeky to do. In 4-5 years of doing this, I’ve never discovered that you can visit the RI and wander around. None of my friends have mentioned this as a place to visit.

I used to work in London during the week (returning up north at the weekend). I was always on the look out for sciencey things to do in the evening. I found loads of fantastic free (or very cheap) Sci Comm events that were perfect; things like Skeptics in the Pub, PubSci, Science London, Wellcome Collection.

I didn’t know that the RI had science engagement evening events at the RI. Having just had a look at their website now, there are loads. Not as cheap (or free) like the events I mentioned above, but they certainly exist.

Did everyone else know this? Is it just me? Perhaps my Google-fu was lacking. It’s as though they were trying to keep it a secret.

The British Science Museum does things brilliantly – I was a regular at the Science Museum lates (last Wednesday of every month). Free to get in, no kids, wander around the exhibits with a drink in hand, perhaps go to a talk, perhaps do the pub quiz.

Why isn’t there a RI lates? Oh, perhaps that wouldn’t work with their new “upmarket restaurant and bar”. Or perhaps there is a lates night and, again, my Google-fu failed me.

[Can I just say...what the?!? Who decided that a place that is "dedicated to connecting people with the world of science" needs, more than anything else, an upmarket restaurant and bar? Unless the only people they want to connect with are people that are suitable for the upmarket restaurant and bar.]

I’ve been on Twitter for a while. Today was the first time I have ever seen an RI tweet in my timeline (this may be confirmation bias). I didn’t even know they had a Twitter account. It’s as though someone has recently thought “we’d better start doing that engagement stuff we’re supposed to do”.

Having got all that off my chest….I think that the RI needs to be saved. I don’t want it to be sold and turned into a hotel (or whatever).

Why?

For the history. Yes, I’m on that side of the “discussion”.

When I visited the home of Sir Isaac Newton (which is now a National Trust property)….without wanting to sound too sentimental…it was moving. It was fantastic wandering around imagining Newton doing the same. This is where he formulated his law of universal gravitation! This is where he split light with a prism! This is practically where modern physics was born!

I imagine visiting the RI would give me the same feeling. 10 chemical elements were discovered there! All the work that Faraday did on electricity was done there!

So, I’d like it preserved as a cultural heritage site. We already have places important to engineering preserved as cultural heritage sites, and places like Newton’s Woolsthorpe Manor. So why not the RI?

And it definitely needs to be opened up the public better. Why not let, for example, Science London have their meetings there? (I’m not suggesting that they want to have their meetings there, or need a venue, I just picked a SciComm organisation at random).

This is probably rather naive, and it’s probably a bit more complicated than that, but I’d like the building to be given to the National Trust. Or to Wellcome. Or perhaps even bring it into the Science Museum Group.

Whatever happens, just get it away from whoever decided to create an upmarket restaurant and bar.

Related articles and audio

• Rebekah Higgitt: Heritage and the Royal Institution.
• Michael Brooks: The Royal Institution doesn’t represent my kind of Britishness in science.
• Martin Robbins: Royal Institution: ‘Nobody cares about your stupid history!’
• Tania Browne: The Royal Institution building should be saved for everyone.
• Mary Perkins – let’s save the RI!: The Pod Delusion Episode 171.
• Dr* T - why bother?!: The Pod Delusion Episode 172. (<- Listen to this!)
• Dr* T – why bother?!: The Pod Delusion Episode 172 transcript (<- or, non-podcast people, read this!)
• Prof Bruce Hood: Does Science Have a Soul? The Potential Sale of a Sacred Site of Science.
• Stephen Curry: Do not read this blogpost about the Royal Institution.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Update: here is the list I compiled from all the suggestions: A List of Must Read PopSci Books. Thanks everyone!

This is a blog post inspired by a Tweet from @Stephen_Curry:

Hivemind: got a favourite #popsci book that comes in at no more than 200-250 pages? Pls RT—
Stephen Curry (@Stephen_Curry) January 07, 2013

Basically, I’m stealing the idea. Thanks Stephen! Here is his Storify of the responses to his Tweet.

I’d like to compile a list of recommended Popular Science books. Books that you think everyone needs to read. Books that you would recommend to people that would not normally read a science book. Books that you would recommend to someone who is already knowledgeable about, say, physics, but knows very little about about, say, human evolution.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of Popular Science books out there – and some are a lot more accessible than others. I remember reading Brian Cox’s Why Does E=mc²?: (and Why Should We Care?), loving the first few chapters, but then struggling after that. I’d decided that I’d have to come back and re-read it after I’ve done some more of my physics degree! A friend at work read it as her first ever physics book and gave up. I responded with a Marcus Chown book she should read instead – and she loved it.

So, I’m after books for situations like this. Books you can recommend to people possibly as their first ever read in a particular area of science. Perhaps someone at work tells you that they loved the latest Wonders episode – you can respond with a book recommendation.

Requirements

• Like Stephen’s suggestion, not too many pages – but it can be longer than his requested 200-250 pages. Just remember that recommending a 500-600+ page to someone may just put them off!
• Accessible to someone who hasn’t studied the subject before.
• You can recommend as many books as you want, but I really want to see your favourite books. I want you to really think carefully about you book: “would I recommend this book to someone who knows nothing (or very little) about <insert subject area here>?”
• Stephen also suggested that the book should be relatively cheap and readily available.

My recommendations

I’ll start off with:

• Your Inner Fish - by Neil Shubin (256 pages). “The amazing discovery of our 375-million-year-old ancestor”. At times it reads like a thriller. I’ve read it twice – not because it was hard to understand, but because it was so good.
• The Code Book - by Simon Singh (402 pages). The history of code breaking from Ancient Egypt to the modern day. A wonderful, fascinating book.
• Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You - by Marcus Chown (224 pages). Everything explained brilliantly, and full of “wow” moments.
• The Selfish Gene - by Richard Dawkins (384 pages). Whatever your feelings about him…he’s still a damn good writer!
• Supersense: From Superstition to Religion – The Brain Science of Belief – by Bruce Hood (320 pages). Another book full of “wow” moments, this time brain related.
• Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts – by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (304 pages). I think the title explains it all. A cracking read.
• Antimatter – by Frank Close (176 pages). A superb look at everything to do with these particles.

Please add a comment below with your book recommendations.

And feel free to recommend a book that has already been recommended - I’ll leave this blog post running for a while and then compile the comments down into an ordered list of books into another blog post. I’ll also take the book recommendations from Stephen’s Storify page.

UPDATE: Book recommendations via Tweets and Google+

I’ve had a few recommendations sent to me via Tweets and on the Google+ post for this blog. I thought I’d keep track of them here:

• Robin Ince: Six Easy Pieces: Fundamentals of Physics Explained - by Richard Feynman (176 pages).
• Robin Ince, Alun Salt: Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - by Nick Lane (352 pages).
• Robin Ince, David Steele: The Demon-haunted World - Carl Sagan (436 pages).
• Rob: Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution - by Richard Fortey (256 pages).
• Alun Salt: Last Chance to See - by Douglas Adams and Mark Cawardine (224 pages) [I agree, this is a fantastic book that I highly recommend. However, does it count as a Popular Science book? I mean, are science books supposed to make you laugh out loud?!]
• Martin Orman: Paranormality - by Richard Wiseman (336 pages).
• Mark Lewney: The Origin of Virtue - by Matt Ridley (302 pages).
• Doug Cairns: The Phenomenon of Man - by Pierre Theilhard de Chardin (319 pages).
• Mike Ward: How to Lie with Statistics - by Darrell Huff (128 pages).
• Mike Ward: The Ambidextrous Universe - by Martin Gardner (416 pages).
• Mike Ward: Afterglow of Creation: Decoding the message from the beginning of time - by Marcus Chown (288 pages).
• Mike Ward: We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe - by Marcus Chown (288 pages).
• John Tweedie: Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum - Richard Fortey (320 pages).
• Sam Hawkswell: Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth - by James Lovelock (176 pages).
• Ed Yong: Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures - by Carl Zimmer (288 pages).
• Ed Yong: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - by Rebecca Skloot (384 pages).
• Ed Yong: Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA - by Maryn McKenna (288 pages).
• Ed Yong: Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us - by Maggie Koerth-Baker (304 pages).
• Sam Hawkswell: The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History - by Jan Zalasiewicz (256 pages)
• Rob Sharp: Chaos: Making a New Science - by James Gleick (368 pages)
• Andrea Sella: Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements - by Hugh Aldersey-Williams (448 pages).
• Andrea Sella: H₂O: A Biography of Water - by Philip Ball (400 pages).
• Bob: Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body – by Armand Marie Leroi (320 pages).

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The Neanderthals are an extinct species of the genus Homo named after the site of the first discovery – the Neander Valley in Germany.

A path through the forest and a creek through the Neander Valley. Image credit http://www.cordula.ws

They are the most closely related species to modern day humans. They were around at the same time as humans, probably going extinct around 30000 years ago. That’s incredibly recent. We probably shared the Earth with them for a 100,000 years or so.

Comparison of Modern Human and Neanderthal skulls from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

There are a couple of hypotheses to explain why they went extinct. Perhaps they didn’t cope with climate change as well as Homo sapiens? With grasslands replacing forests, perhaps their hunting techniques failed. Or perhaps they were killed off and out competed by modern humans? DNA analysis of Neanderthal remains has revealed that modern humans share some nuclear DNA with the extinct Neanderthals – so we may have got on OK at some point!

This week, Professor George Church spoke to the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel about cloning Neanderthals. He is a well-respected Harvard professor of synthetic biology; he was involved with Human Genome Project. When asked:

Will you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?

He answered:

That depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think so.

Scientists have recovered DNA from Neanderthal fossils and this would form the basis of any cloning attempt. In this book he writes that an “extremely adventurous female human” could serve as the surrogate mother. He also told Der Spiegel that “the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society.”

The idea is that parts of the Neanderthal genome would be introduced into human stem cells, a foetus would be created and then implanted into the “extremely adventurous female human”.

And why would we want to do this? One of the reasons he gives is:

Well, Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it’s conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.

OK….

I’m going to ignore whether cloning a Neanderthal is technically feasible. It isn’t feasible today, but synthetic biology research is progressing rapidly. Who knows what will be possible in 10 to 20 years? I’m also going to ignore the Professor’s suggestion that Neanderthals could help us build some sort of spaceship or whatever he’s suggesting.

I’m going to focus on the ethics.

The idea of cloning extinct species is fascinating. I’m sure we’d all love to be able to go to a zoo and see a sabre-toothed Tiger or a woolly mammoth. But cloning a Neanderthal? Ethically that doesn’t sit very well with me.

Neanderthals were intelligent. They created and used tools. They were social. What kind of psychological pressure would a Neanderthal be under if it knew that it was the only one of its kind? And would we class them as human with the same basic human rights? They evidently have bred with humans in the past, if the cloned Neanderthal wished to breed consensually with Homo sapiens, would it be allowed to? Would we forcibly prevent this? Basically, my question is: would it be ethically sound to create an intelligent species just for scientific curiosity?

And would our clone survive on modern Earth, anyway? Would we be creating an intelligent species for it to die from the common cold? Their genome would have evolved in response to ancient pathogens and would not be able to handle the various microbes we deal with every day. Humans also carry around millions of genes in symbiotic organisms. Where would we get their symbiotic organisms from? Would we actually have to keep our intelligent clone isolated in a “clean room”?

Though anatomically similar to modern humans, Neanderthals do have some strikingly different features. Their heads were shorter; they had a less pronounced facial front. Their chins and foreheads sloped backwards; their nose region protruded forward more. Is it ethically sound to essentially create a modern day version of a 19^th century freak show?

A Neanderthal model – reconstructed by the BBC for their “Prehistoric Autopsy” series.

Some humans find it impossible to be decent to other humans with a different skin colour. Can you imagine how a Neanderthal would be treated?

Related articles

Tom Chivers: Spare Neanderthals this modern freak show.

Der Spiegel: Interview with George Church: Can Neanderthals Be Brought Back from the Dead?

MSN: Scientist: I’m NOT seeking a mom for a Neanderthal.

Alun Salt: Neanderthal Ethics.

All images from Wikimedia Commons.

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I recorded a version of this blog post for Episode 171 of The Pod Delusion – a podcast about interesting things.

Thanks for Peter Harrison for some of the text above!

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Following on from @noodlemaz’s lead, I thought I’d publish The Thought Stash 2012 report that was created automatically by the WordPress.com stats helper monkeys.

Click here to see the complete Thought Stash report.

Items from the report that interested me:

• A blog post I wrote in July 2011 about the massive fee changes at the Open University was the most viewed post in 2012! In fact, since the blog has existed, in total about 14% of all visits are to this particular blog post. On a daily basis it is still frequently the most viewed post. They arrive at the blog post by using search terms such as “open university fees”, “open university too expensive” and “why is open university so expensive?”. Incidentally, I received a big increase in hits to the blog post in January 2013. Hits resulting from people’s New Year’s Resolutions perhaps? If so, these people will be disappointed to discover that the Open University is essentially unaffordable for “hobby students”. However, they can always try Learning for Free.
• There have been a lot of hits for the Space Scenery series. This is pleasing. It’s fun hunting for the best images for a certain astronomical area, and nice that people seem to like it. And thank you to all the amateur astronomers that gave permission to use their images.
• People from 170 countries visited this blog! 170! There are 193 members of the United Nations! The most hits come from the UK, the US and Canada. Here are some random countries from across the world that didn’t provide many visitors:
  • Kyrgyzstan (3 visitors)
  • Bolivia (2 visitors)
  • Mali (1 visitor)
  • Bhutan (2 visitors)
  • Brunei (7 visitors)
  • China (2 visitors! Is The Thought Stash blocked from China?! I assume WordPress.com is blocked from China?)
  • Montenegro (4 visitors)
  • North Korea (0 visitors. I thought I’d add this to the list out of interest. Has anyone ever had a hit from North Korea?)
• Most common search terms (and hence why there are a lot of Space Scenery hits):
  • The Moon
  • Nebula
  • Orion
  • Mars panorama
  • Carina nebula

In all, 82288 views in 2012. Amazing. When the blog started in July 2010, there were 315 hits that month!

Continuing my Space Scenery series…

In a relatively short period of time – basically since the 1970s – we’ve progressed from only having ground-based telescope images of Jupiter to having thousands of stunning images captured by spacecraft. Jupiter has been explored by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft flyby missions. It has been orbited by the Galileo spacecraft. The Cassini and New Horizons spacecraft went by Jupiter recently. The Juno spacecraft is in transit to Jupiter right now. More missions are people planned – ESA have announced funding for their Juice spacecraft, which will explore the icy moons of Jupiter.

There are a lot of images to choose from, so I’ll try not to get carried away!

I’ll start with the approach of Voyager 1. The project scientists must have been overjoyed when this data came through. At the time it was probably the best image of Jupiter ever seen (the technology on the Voyager spacecraft was obviously superior to the earlier Pioneer spacecraft).

First close-up view of Jupiter from Voyager 1 (January 6th 1979).

There are also stunning animations of the Voyager 1 approach:

Voyager 1 Jupiter approach, animated. You can occasionally see the shadows belonging to the moons of Jupiter flash across the disc.

Or how about a video? This video is by Bjorn Jonsson and he writes:

This movie is different from similar Voyager movies because I’m keeping Jupiter’s size constant. This is accomplished by reprojecting the source images to simple cylindrical projection and then rendering everything using the same viewing geometry. I also sharpened the images a bit to better reveal various details.

 

As always, all NASA’s data is available to the public. Anyone can go back to data collected decades ago and do something with it. Bjorn Jonsson is someone who does amazing things with that data. For example, here is his stunning reprocessed image of the Great Red Spot.

Great Red Spot, image processing by Bjorn Jonsson. The Great Red Spot is a storm that has existed on Jupiter for a long time. Possibly over 300 years. It is huge – large enough to contain two or three planets the size of Earth!

It’s like a painting! I highly recommend you click the image to see the beautiful full image. And for comparison, take a look at the original image released by NASA - nice, but I think Bjorn wins artistically!

And now to show what we can do from Earth (or at least, from orbit around the Earth). Here is an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The moon you can see is Ganymede:

Jupiter and Ganymede imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Impressive. Click to see the full size image. And even more impressive when you realize that Hubble took this image from about 750 million kilometres away!

Just like we see aurora on Earth (the Northern and Southern Lights), Jupiter also has aurora. Here are a couple of images captured by Earth-based Hubble and Chandra space telescopes (click to see the full size images):

Auroras at Jupiter’s poles – both bigger than the entire planet Earth (image created from x-ray Chandra and optical Hubble data).

Electric-blue aurora on Jupiter (imaged by Hubble).

You don’t need a fancy space telescope (or spacecraft) to take amazing pictures of Jupiter. This one was taken by *amateur* astronomer Damian Peach:

Jupiter and moons Io and Ganymede imaged by amateur astronomer Damian Peach (image used with permission – click for full image and more details).

As I mentioned earlier, the Cassini spacecraft passed Jupiter (on its way to Saturn). It took a lot of images. In the image below, many images have been stitched together to create a cylindrical map. You can see a variety of features: colourful clouds, the bands, the Great Red Spot, white ovals and many small vortices (click the image for the huge 3600 pixel wide image):

Jupiter cylindrical map, created with Cassini data.

And finally, this is probably my favourite image of Jupiter:

True colour mosaic of Jupiter constructed from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera, on December 29, 2000.

All images not already credited above are from NASA’s image archive and Wikimedia Commons.

Related posts

Space Scenery series

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Not intelligent: Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

A very quick blog post.

This amused me.

I’ve recently completed the excellent Open University course S283: Planetary science and the Search for Life. One of the chapters discusses SETI – the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The Allen Telescope Array: a joint effort by the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. It is a Radio Interferometer that will be dedicated to astronomical and simultaneous search for extra-terrestrial intelligence observations.

SETI projects search for intelligent life by, for example, looking for meaningful messages in electromagnetic radiation; SETI is looking for radio transmissions from civilizations on other worlds. This implies that life is considered to be intelligent if it can transmit information using radio electromagnetic radiation.

Humans have only been able to do this for 100 years or so. Therefore, before we achieved this ability, by SETI standards, humans would not be considered intelligent. ;)

Sorry Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin!

In seriousness though, this shows the difficulty projects like SETI face. 100-odd years is such a minuscule period of time relative to the age of the Galaxy. If we have only been broadcasting for such a small period of time, what are the chances of detecting some other intelligent broadcasting civilization?

All images from SETI institute and Wikimedia Commons.

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