What do physicists study? It seems a simple enough question, but if you talk to a modern physicist who isn't in 'speak slowly for ordinary folk' mode, you might suspect it's not the world as we know it. I'd say about nine times out of ten when I ask a friendly physicist to elucidate some aspect of modern physics, what they say provides no light on reality. And this thought has been around a long time. In effect the idea that we aren't talking about reality is the picture Plato had, often summed up in the image of the cave - that we are in a cave and can only study the shadows of reality on the wall of the cave, not the 'true' world that is not part of our world. Plato took this viewpoint from an arbitrary philosophical basis that the 'real' world was perfect - so, for instance the real world might contain the perfect archetype of 'dog' where in our cave we just experience a shadow of dogness. Something closer to modern science comes...

Those of us who enjoy science fiction - and all the indications are that a good proportion of those who are interested in science do enjoy it - might have felt a little depressed at the recent announcement that the discovery of a new shape for an atomic nucleus could 'ruin our hopes of time travel.' According to Science Alert (an outfit, I must admit I hadn't heard of), 'Physicists have confirmed the existence of a new form of atomic nuclei'. Now, putting aside that unwanted plural, they reference the BBC , which also makes the claim that this discovery 'may [..] end hopes of time travel.' What the discovery actually shows is a nucleus with an unusual symmetry, and a Dr Scheck of the University of the West of Scotland says that this Radium-224 nucleus 'violates the theory of mirror symmetry and relates to the violation shown in the distribution of matter and antimatter in our universe.' Now that's interesting and important stuff (if veri...

I'm what you might call a middling fan of Apple. I use Apple products, for which I think it's worth paying a premium. I've had so much more fun with my iMac than any PC, and after over 3 years it is still running well, unlike every PC I've ever had. However, I'm not a total Apple fanboi - I couldn't justify buying an Apple Watch (though I'd be very happy to have one if Apple would like to give me one) and similarly I've never seen the point of buying an Apple Thunderbolt monitor. Admittedly they're stylish and sit well alongside an iMac, but at £899 for a 27" screen, they are only on the shopping list of those with more money than sense. When I got a second screen for the Mac, I never thought of lashing out even half as much. So, although it's sad in a way, it's no surprise that Apple appears to be dropping its monitors  - most Apple products, though expensive, can at least justify that expense because of what they do and are. But,...

I get a little thrill whenever I see the word 'science' in a place of entertainment - I'm always happy to see new ways of communicating science, and when a science gig reaches a mainstream theatre, for example, that's brilliant. But when I saw the entry below in my local theatre's events programme, my reaction was not excitement, but concern. As you can see, the S word is prominent. Now, one of the performers is the spirit medium Derek Acorah - hence, presumably the 'psychic' bit - but the other is Richard Felix, described in the programme as a 'Ghost and Scientific Historian'. I assume that means that he studies the history of ghosts and of science, rather than that he is a ghost who also happens to be a scientific historian. As a science writer I get to communicate with a lot of historians of science, but I'd never come across his name, so I looked up his profile on his website. Confusingly, this only describes him as a historian - th...

I've read one of Hugh Aldersey-Williams books, and enjoyed  Periodic Tales , and the Popular Science Anatomies , but I hadn't come across his 2015 title The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century and when coming across its existence in an interview with Aldersey-Williams in the Guardian , I was thinking about paying money to get hold of a copy, but then I came to this rather remarkable paragraph: site has reviewed another, While The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century was much praised, Aldersey-Williams now feels its message was missed by readers of popular science. “There’s no point in making ultra-subtle points about how science is done,” he says. “You have to bang them over the head with it. They want scientific facts and they want science explained to them, which I’m less and less interested in.” Frankly, I think that is profoundly condescending and insulting to the readers of popular science. The best popular science writing manages to gi...

I'm reading a book called  Bayes' Rule by James V. Stone for review, which has reminded me of the delightful case of the mathematician's coloured balls. (Mathematicians often have cases of coloured balls. Don't ask me why.) This is a thought experiment that helps illustrate why we have problems dealing with uncertainty and probability. Imagine I've got a jar with 50 white balls and 50 black balls in it. I take out a ball but don't look at it. What's the chance that this ball is black? I hope you said 50% or 50:50 or 1/2 or 0.5 - all ways of saying that it has equal chances of being either white or black. With no further information that's the only sensible assumption. Now keep that ball to one side, still not looking at it. You pull out another ball and you do look at this one. (Mathematicians know how to have a good time.) It's white. Now  what's the chance that the first ball was black? You might be very sensibly drawn to suggest t...

I'm going to attempt to be controversial, but I'm not very good at it. I think people should consider recycling books if they don't want to keep them. And by recycling, I don't mean taking them to Oxfam or a second hand bookshop, I mean putting them in the recycling bin. What a waste! Absolutely. Not green at all. But if people don't do this, there are two problems. One is the world will gradually choke with books as more and more come into the world and fewer and fewer ever leave the circuit. The other, more serious, concern is that if someone wants to read one of my books I would far rather they either bought a new copy or borrowed it from a library. In part this is because it means I can afford to live, and in part because if people don't buy new books (which are still incredibly good value compared with cinema, theatre, opera etc.) then publishers will go bust and there will be far less good quality reading available. There are plenty of other things...

Fred Hoyle's script featuring 'big bang' (source St John's College, Cambridge ) The origins of snappy terms for scientific events and concepts is sometimes very clear. We know, for instance, that English astrophysicist Fred Hoyle came up with 'big bang' in a BBC radio broadcast in 1949. Others are somewhat less clear. Although many identify the American physicist John Wheeler as the originator of 'back hole' they appear to be incorrect - and we aren't sure who did coin the term. It seems to have been first used at at an American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in January 1964, as a result of which it first appeared in print in a Science News Letter article by Ann Ewing. No one is sure who thought of it. Another term that is popular these days that has some mystery over its origin is where Goldilocks came from. Not the children's story itself, but rather the idea of applying the 'not too hot, not too cold, just rig...

I am pleased to say that the third of my Stephen Capel murder mystery novels A Spotless Rose is now available as a paperback and on Kindle. In the sequel to A Lonely Height and A Timely Confession , vicar Stephen Capel is on his first holiday after joining his first parish in the village of Thornton Down. In Brighton with his girlfriend, Vicky Denning, Capel hopes to get away from it all. Taking a stroll on the beach, he sees a woman fall from the ruined pier. He rescues her, but discovers that she is dead - stabbed - and soon finds himself suspected of her murder. Each day, as Capel tries to untangle himself from suspicion, another woman dies. The race is on to prevent yet another death. It may seem that I've been coming out with these books rather quickly - it's because the first three were written a number of years ago. They came close to publication, but were considered rather too mild for the blood-and-guts preferences of the time. Now, I think, they make an excell...

At the weekend I was saddened to see someone post on Facebook: [the] EC debate has reinforced how out of tune I feel with any nationalistic sense of being "English" For me, this statement was a genuine paradox in the proper logical sense. Because the only people I know who are embarrassed by their nationality are English. I don't know a single Scottish or Welsh person who isn't proud to be - Scottish or Welsh. I delight in my part-Irish background. Yet there is something in the poor tortured English soul that produces a kind of national self-loathing. So bizarrely, by proclaiming that you don't feel English... you show how English you are. It's time we grew up in England and realised that being proud of your nation is not the same as fascist-style Nationalism. People who assume this are falling into a classic either/or logic error. Such people assume that if you don't loathe your nationality you have to be a Nazi - but, of course, the vast majority ...

I was always a fan of Pseud's Corner in  Private Eye.  These days, the most purple prose I receive is often in the form of press releases for books being offered for review. I will provide an irregular series of these, both for your entertainment and, I hope, as pointers of what not to do with the press releases for your own books.  Note that the books themselves could be brilliant... or not. But a poor press release is unlikely to generate many reviews. Names will be omitted to protect the innocent and guilty alike.  I suspect the problems are fairly self-evident, but just in case here's a few key pointers to look out for: Do critics really ask 'When is film coming?' [sic] Do readers want to be embroiled? Or just parboiled? So most writers don't really try with their first book? I can't see anything in the release that suggests this book 'redefines the YA/Adult crossover fantasy genre'. Fierce ability? Really? It has all the same old conc...

I am very fond of scientists, but I have to admit that their discipline tends to make them pedantic (I suspect even I can be occasionally) - which is fine when assessing science, but rubbish when thinking about use of English. Scientists should realise this. Suggesting language should have a fixed set of rules that always apply and never change is a bit like saying all species should be as they were 6,000 years ago and never change. Language is far more like biology than physics. The particular bit of scientific pedantry that gets my back up is the instance that the word 'data' should be treated as plural. So scientists will pedantically insist on writing 'the data support the hypothesis' rather than 'the data supports the hypothesis.' To every normal person, the scientists' version is clearly wrong. Because language evolves, and the way we use the word 'data' has evolved too. I would argue that data has become the same kind of singular colle...

There are some stores like Tesco and Asda that, frankly, we expect to deploy every sales trick in the book. But there are others, notably John Lewis/Waitrose and Marks & Spencer where you may pay a bit more, but you expect to get - and usually do get - ethical treatment. However, I may have just spotted the dirty tricks department at M&S in action. I was in a hurry and grabbed a two-pack of sausage rolls, taking them straight to the till. And didn't suspect anything until the server rang up £3 (he may have accidentally put them through twice, but even if that's true, there was clearly something odd going on.) It was only then that I noticed that I had picked up gluten free sausage rolls. Now, looking at the packaging you might think it was obvious, but all I saw was 'Sausage rolls'. So I went back and replaced them with ordinary sausage rolls - they were 75p for the two pack. So I nearly got hugely overcharged. Like 99% of the population, I a...

Perhaps because of my Northern working class family background, I struggle when presented with what appears to be pretentiousness. I know, for instance, that caviar is a horrible, salty waste of money, I prefer a good draught beer to wine with a meal, and I have real trouble with the literary scene. The vast majority of the time I prefer to read genre fiction, whether crime or SF, rather than reading literary fiction. I'd go further - I think good genre writing is better fiction than most literary fiction. So I have real mixed feelings about seeing the quotes alongside in the Adam Roberts book By Light Alone , which I recently reviewed . On the one hand I absolutely agree that Roberts is a brilliant writer. And I think it's true that the literary types (I would hardly describe them as mainstream (or even 'mainstram') will pick up on Roberts just as they did, for instance, with Ray Bradbury, and will do all their power to try to persuade themselves and the rest of ...

Hardly a day seems to go by without some egotistical musician proclaiming they don't want some individual or some organisation they happen not to agree with to use their music at an event. I suspect this reflects the general feeling that being a musician is being an 'artist' and as such, one should retain control of one's work. As far as I'm concerned this is rubbish. A song is a commodity. If someone buys it and pays the appropriate reproduction fees it should be entirely up to them how they use it. There is no sense that it suggests the artist is supporting the cause or an individual who is playing it. It's just background music. Think how bizarre it would be if I said that I don't want people using my book, say, to prop up the leg of a wonky table. Feel free to do so - buy as many as you like for this purpose. For that matter, provided you don't misquote me, and pay attention to copyright/copying fees etc., feel free to use text from my books as...

I have only relatively recently discovered Adam Roberts, with the likes of Jack Glass and The Thing Itself , but every one of his books I've read has been excellent, so it seemed time to start filling in the gaps. I went for By Light Alone because of its interesting sounding premise. It's a cracker (as they say). The idea is that science has produced a mechanism where people can get all the energy they need from sunlight, thanks to a bug that turns their hair into super-photosynethic light absorbers. All they need to live is some water and a few essential nutrients. A clever (if technically verging on the impossible) idea, certainly. But where Roberts triumphs is in going into the unexpected implications of the change - the absolute heart of what makes science fiction, and which so few literary types who do SF down, and think it's all about spaceships and ray guns, appreciate. One implication considered is that for the first time ever it's possible to have a gr...

I read in the i newspaper that Britain's Got Talent 'recorded the lowest audience figures in the show's ten year history.' How do they know? Because 'on average 8.5 million viewers watched the final... [recording] a peak audience of 10.5 million viewers.' But how can they know that? They can't - and worse still, the method of discovering it is far less reliable than it used to be. These numbers are based on a sample. A few thousand brave volunteers register what they watch on little boxes - the data is then aggregated and multiplied up by various esoteric factors to try to make the sample truly representative. As polls often show, this kind of multiplying up has many problems and often doesn't work very well. But at least it was relatively simple when this system first started to be used. You either watched some or all of a programme, or you didn't. Now the viewing audience is painfully splintered. We, for instance, hardly ever watch anything...