DON鈥橳 believe what you read on a cover: The Search for Extraterrestrial
Life isn鈥檛 a book devoted to the search for extraterrestrial life. It makes
a brief appearance but as one among many essays. This is, instead, a record of
the Friday Evening Discourses delivered at London鈥檚 Royal Institution in 1997,
edited by Peter Day (Oxford, ISBN 0198504144).
Here鈥檚 my pick of the best. In one essay, on the importance of measurement,
Andrew Wallard, deputy director of the National Physical Laboratory, remarks
that 鈥減etrol pumps are accurate to only 0.03 per cent, which translates to 50p
or so a year for the average motorist鈥�. So when the gauge clicks over to
拢20.01, forcing you to accept a pile of unwanted change, you may not even
get that extra 1p of petrol!
And discussing the radar mapping of Venus, Magellan scientist Dan MacKenzie
confesses that all NASA discovered, after spending $1 billion, is 鈥渢hat
Venus is dry鈥�. It does matter: this is the often-overlooked spin-off of
planetary research, the discovery taught us a great deal about our own planet.
Venus, with no water, has little tectonic activity, whereas Earth, with a lot of
the stuff, has plenty. Now geophysicists believe that water, subducted down into
the Earth, lubricates plate motion by lowering the mantle鈥檚 viscosity.
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Other plums include the antiquity of the theory of television鈥攊t
originated in 1875鈥攁nd how the leaning tower of Pisa would have fallen
over before its completion without a number of lengthy breaks in its
construction. A bit of a ragbag of ideas, but it鈥檚 an interesting lucky dip.