Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Even today there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: In the sixteenth century for example, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse.
In 13 Things That Don't Make Sense Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow's breakthroughs.
Is ninety six percent of the universe missing?
If no study has ever been able to definitively show that the placebo effect works, why has it become a pillar of medical science?
Was the 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization?
Spanning fields from chemistry to cosmology, psychology to physics, Michael Brooks ... more

Stephen Hawking described it as 'the discovery of the century, if not of all time', yet the scientists who first detected the cosmic radiation that was identified as the afterglow of the big bang had to admit that it was more by accident than intention. At first its discoverers mistook the readings for the disruption caused by the droppings of pigeons that had nested in their telescope, and yet they went on to win the Nobel prize.
In the mid-1990s New Scientist writer Marcus Chown drove across America to interview the key scientists who had made this astonishing discovery. Their account and Chown's description of their achievement was published to much acclaim. But now, over a decade later, in this new and fully revised edition he goes behind the hype and the hysteria to provide a clear and lively explanation of ... more