13 Things That Don’t Make Sense

The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

Michael Brooks

ISBN 1861978170

ISBN 13 9781861978172

February 2009

Price £12.99

Paperback, 256 pp.

Buy this book at amazon.co.uk

View quote sheet

Subject: Popular Science

Other formats available: Paperback

Will we ever find the ninety-six percent of the universe that is missing? Will tomorrow bring an answer to the scientific mysteries of today? While taking readers on an entertaining tour d’horizon of today’s strangest scientific findings, Michael Brooks argues that the things we don’t understand are the key to what we are about to discover.

In 2008, science can only really account for four percent of our universe, and the rest, well, just seems to be missing. The effects of homeopathy don’t go away under rigorous scientific conditions. Thirty years on, no one has an explanation for a seemingly intelligent signal received from outer space. The speed of light seems to have changed over the lifetime of the universe. The US Department of Energy is re-examining cold fusion (a nuclear reaction in which atoms release more energy than they consume) because the evidence is too solid to ignore. The placebo effect is put to work in medicine while doctors can’t agree on whether it even exists…

In an age when science is supposed to be king, scientists are beset by experimental results they simply cannot explain. But, if the past is anything to go by, these anomalies contain the seeds of future scientific revolutions.

This mind-boggling but entirely accessible survey of the outer-limits of human knowledge is based on a short article Michael Brooks wrote for the New Scientist in 2005. It became the most circulated New Scientist feature ever. He has now dug deeply into these mysteries, and the results of his investigations point to an exciting future for scientific discovery.

‘Brooks is an exemplary science writer. His explanations have the sort of clarity you often yearn for when you about science, but rarely find. I’m relatively ignorant when it comes to science. But now I feel I can discuss complex things... This is the sort of science book one always hopes for. Learned, but easy to read. Packed with detail, but clear. Reading it will make you feel clever’
— William Leith, Daily Telegraph

‘Fascinating, bang-up-to-date... Like all the best science popularisers, Brooks reawakens us to the astonishing fact of our mere existence, the strangeness of the world around us, and the astonishing amount that science has yet to discover’
— Christopher Hart, Sunday Times