杏吧原创

I HAD great hopes for this book. It said it was a Field Guide to the
Invisible (Henry Holt, $23, ISBN 0805050698). It promised a catalogue
of the ingredients of life that are 鈥渓iterally out of sight鈥�. From noise to
neutrinos, radio waves to radon, gamma rays to God. What a great idea for a
book.

Oh, I learnt some interesting facts along the way, the sort of things that
stop conversation dead at parties. Did you know that the total biomass of
bacteria that have ever lived is greater than the mass of the Earth? Or that, by
middle-age, the average person has accumulated 9 nanograms of everyone鈥檚
favourite chemical dioxin per kilogram of weight? Or that a well-fed dairy cow
jets (that鈥檚 a very polite word for it) about 500 litres of methane a day?

Bacteria, dioxin and methane are all examples of author Wayne Biddle鈥檚
鈥渋nvisible things鈥�. So, too, is radioactivity, a subject which is clearly close
to his heart since it pops up under numerous separate headings including alpha
rays, beta rays, gamma rays, background radiation, cosmic rays and radon.

Would you believe that the father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller, was fond of
pointing out that, since we are all irradiated by the radioactive potassium-40
in our bodies, snuggling up to your sweetheart in bed is more dangerous than
lying next to a nuclear reactor? Yeah, maybe, if your sweetheart鈥檚 Loretta
Bobbitt.

But all in all, there鈥檚 not enough whimsy to lighten what is a stodgy pudding
of a book. Great idea, great title. OK gift, but perhaps only for someone who
likes to collect random facts.