How do scientists take abstract research findings that require well over a decade of training to understand and turn them into appealing books for a wider audience? A gift for vivid explanation is required, but to keep the average nonspecialist turning the pages, authors must also tell engaging stories. In principle, these stories might take shape within any number of genres, but in practice by far the most common is mystery: the quest for a solution to a puzzle, a quest that draws out and develops the character of the investigators, witnesses, and suspects. The author's task is to make the puzzle and its solution exciting, while also making the surrounding human drama compelling.

Two recent books, both dealing with questions of cosmic significance, start with first-rate scientific material and spin it into stories that reveal much about the human drama behind the scientific process. In The Extravagant Universe, Robert P. Kirshner tells the story of the discovery that the universe consists not only of the matter and energy that we can perceive through our senses and scientific instruments, but also of a mysterious "dark energy" and "dark matter" that we cannot currently observe. As Kirshner writes, "The universe we see is controlled by the universe we do not see: dark matter that is not like the neutrons and protons that make up our bodies, and an enigmatic dark energy that shows itself in the runaway expansion of the universe."

In Faster than the Speed of Light, Joao Magueijo describes his efforts to answer some of the unresolved questions posed by Big Bang cosmology, the idea that the universe began in a primordial explosion from a single point. Although Big Bang cosmology is now well established, it does not explain exactly how that explosion played out in the opening seconds, before the earliest time that can be directly observed by astronomers. The core of Magueijo's idea is that the speed of light may have been faster in the early universe than it is now, thereby solving some of the "Big Bang riddles" (including one related to dark energy).

The advantage of direct observation, of course, is that it has an empirical solidity that theory lacks. The "dark energy" discoveries of Kirshner and his colleagues are based on astronomical measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe. Their measurements have been widely accepted and agree with the findings of another team of astronomers. The journal Science named the work of both teams the "Breakthrough of the Year" in 1998. Consequently, the scientific plot of Extravagant Universe has the satisfying quality of a well-crafted whodunit: the mystery presented at the beginning of the book is solved (admittedly opening up more questions in the process). Magueijo is a theoretical physicist, so his work is in the realm of ideas and mathematics, and his theory, as indicated by the title of his book, is still a "speculation," not yet validated by experiments or observations. As the constancy of the speed of light is a pillar of Einstein's theory of general relativity, Magueijo's proposal is considered unlikely by many of his peers. Thus the second half of his book describes not only how his ideas unfold but also his struggle to have those ideas taken seriously by the rest of the scientific community, a goal which he accomplishes only in part.

In spite of having a less tidy story to tell, Magueijo is a more successful teacher than Kirshner. Magueijo's writing is clear and engaging, and the first half of Faster than the Speed of Light is an outstanding conceptual introduction to relativity and related ideas in cosmology which provide the background and context for his own ideas. Kirshner covers much of the same ground as Magueijo, but less successfully, partly because he tries to cover more, and partly because Kirshner's explanation of this material is repeatedly interrupted by astronomical digressions and personal anecdotes. Kirshner falls prey to a common problem of authors of scientific books for the nonscientist: he attempts to provide too much background, and at the same time leaves many difficult topics unexplained. On the whole, however, both Kirshner and Magueijo succeed in making scientific detective work seem just as suspenseful and significant as the forensic kind.

The human drama of both books revolves around the process of producing, scrutinizing, and accepting or rejecting new scientific discoveries. Here Kirshner and Magueijo paint starkly different pictures. Through Kirshner's eyes we see science as a friendly yet competitive enterprise, requiring ample self-assurance and a thick skin. Kirshner writes, "Observational cosmology is not exactly a contact sport, but it helps to be tough and competitive if you are working in the same field as Allan Sandage … and especially if you get a different answer." He adds that Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Observatories "used to play on the University of Toronto's women's hockey team—as an experienced right wing, the rough and tumble of astronomy doesn't bother her too much."

At the turning point of Extravagant Universe's plot, Kirshner and his coworkers, who had up to this point been studying supernovae for other reasons, discover a way of analyzing their data that would permit them to measure the rate of expansion of the universe. This measurement will reveal the nature of the matter and energy that make up the universe, resolving the long-standing controversy over whether or not dark energy exists. However, another team, the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, is already attempting the same measurement, with a method of data analysis that involves substantially greater errors, but also with much more data. Kirshner's team embarks on a race to catch up.

Kirshner and his team ultimately won the race, publishing their results nine months before their competitors. But why exactly did there need to be such a race? Before Kirshner set out himself to measure cosmic expansion, he had served as an advisor to the Supernova Cosmology Project. In another scientific world, another scientific culture, perhaps Kirshner and his colleagues could have joined forces with the Supernova Cosmology Project. Instead of a race, there could have been a collaboration. But not in the culture of American science.

If Kirshner portrays science as congenially competitive, Magueijo's picture is considerably more cynical. The second half of Faster than the Speed of Light is filled with griping that ranges from petty complaints to crude, infantile attacks. One of the many objects of his spleen is the process of obtaining grants for scientific research. According to Magueijo, middle-aged scientific bureaucrats, threatened by new ideas, try to frustrate the work of their few genuinely productive colleagues by burdening them with administrative duties. He writes,

[Scientific funding agencies] are controlled by ex-scientists well past their prime, so that these institutions wield a lot of power but otherwise function as a sort of intellectual scrap yard. … I like to call grant proposal forms "old-fart certificates of existence," since as far as I can see their only purpose is to create a supposed necessity for these parasites. Why doesn't someone just set up a geriatric home for scientists who have stopped doing good science?

Along with similarly adolescent complaints about university administration and the peer review process for scientific journals, he also insults numerous individuals, some by name and some anonymously (including referring to one unnamed female string theorist as a "stringy little bitch").

Magueijo admits near the end of the book to having a chip on his shoulder, writing that even the development of his scientific ideas has been shaped "in part by a physical need to insult the hypocrisy and corruption of the scientific establishment." Although some of Magueijo's critiques contain a tiny element of truth, his tone is that of a talented but spoiled child. It is hard to take the narrator of this story seriously.

Strangely, in his epilogue Magueijo writes, "I hope I have shown that science is above all a rewarding human experience." He then ends, "It is we—who love the unknown beyond any trends, politics, or party lines—who have the last glorious laugh. We love our work beyond anything that words can describe. We have all the fun in the universe." Given the bitter tone of his story, we can only hope that there is some "dark fun" that he has not yet discovered.

Perhaps it is possible to love one's work and find it rewarding even if all one hopes for is to have the last laugh. But if one hopes for life to include real joy and satisfying work, Magueijo's depiction of being a scientist is grim indeed. Kirshner's is only somewhat more attractive. I, for one, hope for yet another way.

Catherine H. Crouch is an assistant professor of physics at Swarthmore College. She thanks her husband Andy for helping the story told in this review take shape.

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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