Science starts to get interesting when things don’t make sense.
Science’s best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar "anomalies" have revolutionized our world, like in the sixteenth century, when a set of celestial anomalies led Copernicus to realize that the earth goes around the sun and not the reverse, and in the 1770s, when two chemists discovered oxygen because of experimental results that defied the theories of the day. Thus if history is any precedent, we should look to today’s inexplicable results to forecast the future of science.
In 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet thirteen modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
MICHAEL BROOKS, Ph.D., is formerly senior features editor, and now a consultant for New Scientist, in which the wildly popular article on which this book is based first appeared. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, and the Observer. He lives in England.
