News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

Some things cannot be explained scientifically but yet they exist and may have an effect on our daily lives. In Michael Brooks book 13 things that don’t make sense : the most baffling scientific mysteries of our time, he reviews aspects of science that just shouldn’t happen. Homeopathic remedies have biological effects that cannot be explained by chemistry, gas has been detected on Mars that could only have come from carbon-based life forms and there’s no good scientific explanation for why we should die. Michael Brooks is not fazed by this – as he states science starts to get interesting when things don’t make sense.

It can be frustrating when a new scientific or health study contradicts the previous one. What is now healthy, what is the best way to reduce our carbon footprint and who has the answers we need? In Lies, damned lies and science : how to sort through the noise about global warming, the latest health claims and other scientific controver, journalist, science educator and author Dr Sherry Seethaler uses her expertise to guide the reader through the confusion.

Peter Macinnis, a science writer with a love of speed, has written a book full of facts, statistics and funny stories. The speed of nearly everything : from tobogganing penguins to spinning neurtron stars gives you everything you have ever wanted to know about this subject.

Read more about these titles plus other new books on Darwin’s Island, the search for living planets and freaks of nature via this month’s Science Recent Picks.