Since writing How to Build a Time Machine/Build Your Own Time Machine , time travel has been a particular interest for me, so I was delighted to be offered a chance to have a preview of the new movie Looper  a few weeks ago. (No spoilers in the first part of this piece.) The premise is an interesting one. In the future, criminals send people they want to get rid of back in time around 30 years. There a hired killer shoots them as they arrive. But part of the contract is knowing that eventually the person who gets sent back with you. At that point the killer gets enough money to retire on and has 30 years left. But, of course, things get complicated when our hero, Joe, faces the future version of himself. (I'm not sure how he knows it's him as there is no resemblance, but hey.) I'll give you some general feelings here, safe, if you are going to see the movie, and then some detailed comments after the spoiler break. It's being promoted as this decade's Matrix . I ...

All the ebooks I can eat on my iPad There is little doubt - e-readers and ebooks are finally taking off. Whether pure e-readers like the original Kindle or tablets like the iPad, more and more people are reading books in this format. While I would scatter a little fairy dust of doubt over statistics that Amazon puts out comparing how many ebooks it sells with paper (bear in mind their ebook sales probably include all free downloads, which is a lot), there is no doubt that the market is finally becoming serious. Using the not-entirely-always-accurate service Novelrank , I can roughly compare sales on Amazon of my latest book that's both on Kindle and in paper format - The Universe Inside You . Roughly speaking it is selling twice as many ebook copies as paper. So the market is ripe for lots of different ebook readers, hence presumably the launch of US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble's Nook tablets alongside its e-readers in the UK. Only I'm not totally convinced. i...

A meteorite that went nowhere near a black hole It can be highly entertaining when a drama series attempts to incorporate science into the plot, so last night I watched Midsomer Murders , and the entertainment came thick and fast. In this particular case, the science in question was astronomy. We started with a dramatic scene. A total eclipse of the Sun. Many folk from kids to serious astronomers are gathering to a witness it. I was a little unhappy with the advice an expert gave a youngster (roughly 'don't look at it through binoculars or a telescope...' so far so good... 'unless you use one of these filters.' Not so good.) But we'll overlook that. What, though, about the eclipse itself? These don't happen randomly, after all. From the car registrations this clearly wasn't the last eclipse visible in the UK in 1999. Anyway, while the location of Midsomer isn't specified (it's filmed in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire), it clearly isn...

There has been a lot of fuss lately over what the Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell did or didn't say to a policeman at Downing Street. Leaving aside that I have some sympathy with Mitchell, as he wasn't talking to a policeman as defender of liberty, but rather a policeman as jobsworth refusing to do his job and open a gate, I find the reaction to one word fascinating. Mitchell is accused by the policeman (though he denies it) of calling him a pleb . This is being treated by parts of the media as if he had used the N word - but I would say there is a fundamental difference. I absolutely understand why those who take offence from the use of the N word get upset, because it links them to an unpleasant historical context. This isn't the case for pleb. 'Pleb' is short for 'plebeian' from the Roman distinction between a plebeius - one of the common people - and a patricius, a patrician, a member of the nobility or (post classically) a high ranking official. Practica...

Find me Bristol Airport and make it snappy (the new Maps app) There has been a lot of excitement in the Apple world in recent days with the launch of iPhone 5 and suchlike goodies. To accompany it, there has been an outbreak of new software - specifically iOs 6, the new version of the iPhone/iPad operating system. As usual this has quite a few nice goodies, but also one hugely controversial feature. Apple has replaced the excellent Google Maps with their own software. The Apple Maps app has some very swish 'fly over' features, which are toys that will be used twice and discarded. But it isn't as good as the old master on some of the basics. There has been much whingeing about the new app, as the occasional place gets mislaid etc, but I suspect that will be fixed fairly quickly. They are relying on TomTom for much of the UK mapping, and on the whole TomTom know their stuff. And they have added turn by turn directions, which is potentially useful. However, there is ...

A BMW, it seems If I'm honest I am not a big fan of BMWs. I can't imagine every buying one: while I know at least two really nice people who drive them, I experience an awful lot more unpleasant people driving them. They seem to be more pushy, nasty drivers for some reason. And for that matter, there isn't a BMW model where there isn't another car I'd rather have. However, even as a non-fan, I have to have admit that BMWs are superbly engineered - which is why I am so baffled about their attitude to security. Recently in the news there has been a lot of fuss about BMWs with those automatic key fob thingies being easy to break into. Despite being aware of this, apparently BMW don't feel it's their responsibility to sort things out. Which isn't good. Of itself, this is a one-off concern. But the fact is it's not the first time BMWs have been identified as being easy to break into. A good number of years ago, my car was broken into in a car park...

The media has a very mixed attitude to Twitter. Sometimes it is given totally over the top accolades for enabling something like the Arab Spring to take place (there is no doubt it made a contribution, but equally no doubt that things would have gone ahead much the same without it). At other times it is seen as a lowest common denominator means of spreading gossip and tittle tattle. Why wouldn't you tweet it? I personally think it's a great way for getting and giving instant reactions. It can be genuinely interesting to see live response to a TV show, for instance, as tweets come flying in. And although I personally am not particularly interested in what people had for breakfast, say, it is very valuable as a way of highlighting something interesting or amusing. So, for instance, when I spot a van with an entertaining spelling error on its artwork, or when I recently came across a slow worm on my walk to the Post Office, Twitter was a natural way to make a quick comment. ...

The last in the Nature's Nanotech series There is something stunning about the colours of a peacock feather. It’s not just a simple matter of the sort of coloured pigments an artist mixes up on a palette. The colours in the feathers almost glow in their iridescence, changing subtly with angle to catch the eye. To produce this effect, the feather contains a natural nanotechnology that has the potential to transform optics when this remarkable approach is adapted for use in human technology. Both the iridescence of that peacock’s tail and the swirly, glittering appearance of the semi-precious stone opal are caused by forms of photonic lattices. These are physical structures at the nano level that act on light in a way that is reminiscent of electronics, like the semiconductors that act to switch and control electrons, giving unparalleled manipulation of photons. The colours of the peacock feather bear no resemblance to those of a pigment. In blue paint, for example, the pig...

Yes, well worth saving There was a discussion on the radio the other day about endangered species. Specifically, that old chestnut of whether it really matters if a few species go extinct. One protagonist was arguing fiercely that it was essential to preserve every single species, though as usual, the arguments in detail were very flimsy. They came down to: It's our (moral) duty - Essentially, because it's our fault that they're dying out, we have a duty to prevent it. I really don't know if this is true or not. I can see a good argument for not going out of your way to destroy a species (take the passenger pigeon as an example), but this isn't something we do any more.  The world would be a less rich place without them - certainly true of, say, pandas. Sort of true of the 57th variety of almost identical shrew-like creature. Hard to argue for a beetle. Even harder for a bacterium. We don't know how we might benefit from them in the future - of cou...

I was writing something yesterday for a book I'm currently working on about thermodynamics. It sounds, frankly, a bit of a dull subject. The name implies it's about the way heat moves around. And it is, sort of. It sounds like the sort of old fashioned science that dates from the age of the steam engine. And it is, sort of. Part of its origins certainly came from the need to understand steam engines better. But it is so much more. One of the reasons for this is that surprisingly early on it was developed from thinking about engines to basics like atoms and molecules. How they interact and how we can look statistically at a whole bunch of them, because we certainly aren't going to be able to work on each one individually - there are just too many. I say 'surprisingly early' because when this theory was being developed a lot of scientists doubted that atoms existed at all, thinking they were just convenient mathematical models for working out the numbers. It was sai...

It is popular in the scientific community to be snarky about people who talk about science in the media. Particularly if it's a science journalist or correspondent, but even if it is a full blown practising scientist, there will be much tutting, muttering and general attacking of the idiocy of the way the science is presented. I saw it happening an awful lot, for example, over the Higgs boson results - not an easy thing to explain. One scientist was very sarcastic about the analogy someone (actually a politician) used on the radio, even though it was exactly the same analogy that Brian Cox (who, after all, works at CERN when he has a day off from posing) (sorry - snark attack) had used in print. I had a personal example of this last week. In my role as totally unpaid science correspondent for BBC Wiltshire (you pay peanuts...) I was asked in on the breakfast show to talk about ENCODE, the next generation human genome project that goes beyond the genes to look at how the rest of h...

Those of us with any sort of scientific bent have groaned for years over the misuse of sciencey words in  cosmetic adverts. Practically any cosmetic ad seems to try to do two things: To use emotional trigger words like 'natural' to make us think the product was practically squeezed out of a fruit or leaf, rather than blended in a vast industrial complex. Also words like 'nourish' however ridiculous this is when talking about something like (dead) hair. To use words that have real meaning in science, but removed from their context. So, for instance, putting 'DNA' into the description of your product, or some wonderfully obscure compound name like pro-boswellox-retinox-B. Now an oil company has got on the bandwagon (not an entirely strange jump, since most cosmetics contain a fair amount of processed oil of one sort or another). When selling petrol, the oil companies have a real problem, because petrol is a commodity. We don't really care what brand it ...

Sixth in the Nature's Nanotech series. Anyone who talks to young children about science knows that there are two things that really grab their attention – dinosaurs and space. While I’m not aware of any antediluvian nanotechnology, there is certainly an absolutely stunning potential space application that has some natural inspirations. (I’m aware, by the way, that the word ‘antedeluvian’ is both anachronistic and unscientific… but it’s a lovely word that we really shouldn’t lose from the language.) Nature has some amazing, extremely fine fibres. Take, for example, that everyday wonder, a spider’s web. The spider silk that makes up the web is a spun fibre constructed from proteins. Though light, these filaments are extremely resistant to fracture – tougher than steel. Spider silk is typically 3,000 nanometers across, but its toughness is down to its structure at the nano level. A team at MIT discovered that the unusual strength is down to a substructure of ‘beta sheet c...

One of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Carl Friedrich Gauss, was painfully dismissive of the good old story that Newton dreamed up his theory of gravitation when an apple fell on his head. Gauss remarked: Silly! A stupid officious man asked Newton how he discovered the law of gravitation. Seeing that he had to deal with a child intellect, and wanting to get rid of the bore, Newton answered that an apple fell and hit him on the nose. The man went away fully satisfied and completely enlighted. I'm sorry, Herr Gauss, but that picture really doesn't hold up. Look at the account of the man to whom Newton told the story of the falling apple (no mention of it hitting him), related by the historian William Stukeley: After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, and drank thea [sic] under the shade of some apple trees; only he and myself. Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation...

I was recently a little rude about the French habit of adding a new requirement for drivers every year. But I ought in all fairness say that practically every time I go to France I spot something and think 'That's brilliant! Why don't we do that?' And it almost always involves taking something simple and familiar and giving it a twist. In the past it has been things like interspersing motorway service stations with cheap to build stopping places that just have loos and picnic facilities. Or making it possible to screw off crown corks on beer bottles - sheer genius. Boring British RDS display The latest was something simple but impressive. When we cross the channel we tend to press the button on the radio that finds a selection of stations, to get some authentic French sounds. And many of those French radio stations were doing something very clever. With an RDS radio, as fitted in most cars, a typical British radio station will display something like BBC R4. To...

One of the books I enjoyed writing most was A Brief History of Infinity , so when I got a chance to write an illustrated Introducing Infinity I jumped at the chance. It's now sunning itself in the shops for your attention. Part of the 'graphic guide' series it combines easy-to-absorb bite-sized chunks of text with superb illustration by Oliver Pugh (an all round nice guy). The pictures are very much part of the story, rather than being quick illustrations on the side - we worked closely together to ensure they got across the message. As for infinity - it's one of the subjects that simply boggles the mind, but there are some great human stories from its history, whether you look back at the likes of the Ancient Greeks and Galileo, follow the calculus wars between Newton, Leibnitz and Bishop Barclay, or take on Georg Cantor and his amazing visual proofs that there is more than one type of infinity, with one bigger than another. In the end, though, it's the mi...

Here's one I inflated earlier Like, I suspect, most drivers I don't check my tyre pressures anywhere near frequently enough. (This is not helped by the assumption of everyone else in my family that it's my job to look after their tyres too.) But when I do, as I did this morning, I feel a strong urge to get hold of the car maker and shake them until they rattle. Pretty well every car I've ever had has presented the driver with two different pressures, one for if you just have one or two people in the car, and one for when the car is full and so is the boot. As if anyone is going to modify the tyre pressure every time someone gets in the car. 'Sorry, Auntie Carol, you can't get in my car, I would need to increase the tyre pressure to cope with your weight.' It's just not realistic. What I need is a sensible inflation level (in bars, please - get over this pounds per square inch nonsense) that will do in all circumstances. It might not be ideal, but...

I loved Alan Garner's books as a teenager. And I'd still say that Elidor and The Owl Service are the best Young Adult fantasy books ever written for the younger and older ends of that spectrum respectively. I was also quite fond of his first two books, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath . They were also gripping fantasy adventures, and I loved the setting of Alderly Edge, which I knew quite well. Even at the time, though, I had slight reservations about them. So it was with some interest that I got a copy of Boneland , described as 'the concluding volume in the Weirdstone trilogy.' My issues with the originals, which feature a circa 12 year old pair of twins hurled into a Cheshire setting with supernatural goings-on, were two-fold. I was already a huge Lord of the Rings fan and I couldn't help feeling that the svarts that the children discover down the copper mines are extremely derivative of the orcs in the Moria scene in LotR...

Fifth in our Nature's Nanotech series Isaac Asimov was a great science fiction writer, but even the best has his off days, and Asimov’s low point was probably his involvement with the dire science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage . Asimov wasn’t responsible for the story, but provided the novelization – and he probably regretted it. The premise of the film was that miniaturization technology has made it possible shrink a submarine and its crew down to around 1,000 nanometres, sending it into a man’s bloodstream to find and destroy a blood clot on his brain. Along the way the crew have various silly encounters with the body’s systems – but strip away the Hollywood shlock and underneath is an idea that has been developed in a lot more detail by IT pioneer and life extension enthusiast Ray Kurzweil. Based on the idea of miniature robotic devices – nanobots – Kurzweil believes that in the future we will not have a single manned Proteus submarine as featured in Fantastic Voyag...