Stardust
John Gribbin with Mary Gribbin Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 198pp, £18.99
ISBN 0713993367
This is a popular science book with a message. Human bodies and the stars are made from the same stuff. The basic ingredients of living molecules - hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen - were and are spewed out by exploding stars. This new understanding of the link between organic, reproducing matter and the gas and dust of the spheres is what excites the astrophysicist and acclaimed science writer John Gribbin in his latest book, Stardust. And excited he is.
The discovery in the Milky Way of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, is "one of the most profound discoveries ever made . . . and not just by science", Gribbin declares. Now we know that the Milky Way "is itself packed with the raw materials for life. We have answered the biggest question of them all - where do we come from?"
How non-life became life, Gribbin readily concedes, remains to be discovered. But that unsolved mystery does not prevent him concluding that, if the ingredients for organic molecules are universal, and if the same physical forces - spinning, squeezing, falling - exist throughout the universe, then life must exist elsewhere, perhaps (a big perhaps, this) in a form recognisable to us. As Gribbin exclaims again and again, "we are made of stardust, every one of us".
Us? The introduction of the first-person plural signals the arm around the shoulder, the scout-leader, follow-me approach to science writing. It is reminiscent of the broadcasting organisations that dutifully try to deliver serious international news by dressing it up as relevant to you and your life. Expressions such as "the process is remarkably slow, by human standards" when Gribbin is speaking of multiples of ten billion years, are patronising. So are "our own Sun" and "our own Milky Way". Why should we need a personal link to the vastness of space?
Even so, Gribbin's proselytising mateyness is forgivable because of the importance of his subject and the sincerity of his determination to dispel the supernatural from cosmology. He hopes that his meticulous evidence of the origin and diffusion of primordial matter will persuade those for whom the only possible source is a wise and paternal Creator.
But creationists are not going to read this book. Gribbin ought to relax. He is preaching to the converted - people with curiosity about the physical world and a willingness to work to understand it. The coming together of the scientific disciplines of cosmology and biology - stars and frogs, so to speak - is what they want to know about.
The heart of the book is devoted to the momentous achievement of Fred Hoyle, the Burbidges (Geoffrey and Margaret) and William Fowler, for their discovery known as B2HF, which explained the relative abundance of the elements and showed precisely how all the chemical elements with the exception of hydrogen and helium are manufactured inside stars by the process of hydrogen and helium capturing neutrons. These, the two simplest atoms, were created by the energy of the big bang: the hundred-thousandth-of-a-second fireball of 12 billion years ago.
The book ends with Gribbin's dizzying speculation that there is not one universe but many, evolving all the time from black holes (overweight, collapsed stars). This hypothesising, clearly marked as such, is followed by an admirable index, which lists not only proper names and major concepts such as "black holes" and "panspermia", but also simpler subjects, such as "space", "silver" and "water".
All in all, Stardust makes rewarding, if heavy, reading for the scientifically semi-literate and those who would become so. Two non-science points register easily, even without a physics O level. One is the gross arbitrariness of the Nobel prizes. Hoyle, one of history's greatest astronomers, has never received one. Indeed, of the four who did the seminal work on stellar nucleosynthesis, only Fowler, in 1983, was honoured. Another conspicuous omission is the Cambridge astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She discovered pulsars, but only her supervisor got the prize. These glaring injustices raise doubts as to whether the Nobel is a force for good, obscuring as it does the collaborative nature of scientific discovery.
Another telling editorial point is the failure of popular science journalism to convey news about discoveries of the arrival of life's chemicals on the young Earth through cometary impact. Gribbin is partial to astronomy. Yet it is hard not to agree that, with biology all the rage, the me-related news stories about DNA testing, genetic modification of foods, human cloning and so on are devoted so much print and screen time that astronomy gets short shrift.
What is needed is news of a comet heading for our planet and threatening to do for us what, 65 million years ago, a cosmic snowball did for the dinosaurs.
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