life on the edge jim al khalili and johnjoe mcfadden

But that doesn’t make this a triumph of popular science. Which isn’t to say that Al-Khalili and McFadden’s metaphors aren’t excellent: many of them are ingenious vignettes that tackle fundamental tenets of chemistry. For while they explain, with breathless enthusiasm, that a plant’s leaf behaves like a quantum computer, it takes a further 30 pages of intense explanation before it’s possible to get a grip on what that entails. But whether the meatier revelations will elicit the resounding gasp that the authors clearly expect is another matter. Throwaway asides prove equally intriguing: “A sheep with extremely short legs was born on a New England farm in the late 18th century and was bred to produce a short-legged variety called Ancon sheep that are easier to manage because they cannot jump fences,” the authors note in one of their lighter moments. Indeed such phenomena account, among other things, for the ability of our enzymes to speed up chemical reactions that could otherwise take millennia, and might even be behind our olfactory prowess, allowing us to recognise the waft of limonene molecules as the scent of an orange.ĭig into the science and this book offers fascinating insights – not least that the mirror image of a limonene molecule smells not of oranges, but turpentine. Which form predominates, and hence which outcome is more likely, is influenced by the angle of the Earth’s magnetic field, allowing the robin to detect if it is heading towards the equator or away from it.Īnd it turns out we, too, harness quantum effects. This shuffling creates a system that exists, thanks to some quantum jiggery-pokery, in two forms at once – each of which leads to a different outcome in the reaction that follows. The theory goes that the eye of a robin contains a chemical that, when it absorbs light of the right energy, can shuffle its electrons around. Indeed the internal compass that enables female robins to migrate in the winter relies on a curious capability that wouldn’t sound out of place in an X-Men line-up: magnetoreception.

Life on the edge jim al khalili and johnjoe mcfadden