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The World's 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems
Not here are such questions as how to find world peace, the relative influence of nature and nurture, or why a few people are so filthy rich while so many are dirt poor. Rather Vacca, an information technology consultant with a background at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, looks at current debates in astronomy and cosmology, physics and astrophysics, biology and paleontology, neuroscience, geology, chemistry, and energy. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
- GenresScienceNonfiction
Paperback
First published July 7, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 2, 2019
Fascinating despite some repetition and some fuzziness
The problems range from dark matter and dark energy through attempts to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics to problems associated with DNA and proteins, to neuroscientific concerns about free will and consciousness to what to do about nuclear fusion and its waste.
There are other books on cutting edge problems in science that I have read, e.g., John Malone's Unsolved Mysteries of Science: A Mind-Expanding Journey through a Universe of Big Bangs, Particle Waves, and Other Perplexing Concepts (2001) or The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century (2002) edited by John Brockman; but there is only one other that is anywhere near as ambitious as this work. That book would be Magic Universe: The Oxford Guide to Modern Science (2003) by Nigel Calder.
To compare these two books for the reader I would say that Calder's book is not only longer but covers more ground, is better edited and relies on a greater range of scientific authority. But Vacca's book has the virtue of narrowing in on just where the scientific action is while he does a good job of presenting the various opinions. That is, insofar as I, personally, can tell. To be honest, much of the material in all these books is above my level of expertise. Consequently I take most of what I read at face value. Clearly I cannot choose between cosmological models of inflation and quintessence. Nor do I have any firsthand experience with the complications of protein folding, etc. But neither will most readers. However we needn't be critical readers. It is enough to read appreciably about the wonders of science and how such wonders inform our beliefs and enrich our lives.
As for the repetition in the book and the typos and the other errors pointed out by other readers, it is good to understand that Vacca wrote this book by himself (although he interviewed and relied on the work of many scientists) and probably did so in a first draft/correct it mode (judging again from the repetition and some of the unpolished prose). Let's face it, life is short and a book like this needs to be written fast or it will become outdated before it hits the book stores. Furthermore, although he had editors to check for technical errors, editors to check his spelling and such, and had the benefit of the professionals at Prentice Hall, it is in the nature of a book like this that no single person with the exception of the author can really be close enough to the content to adequately edit it.
Now I want to look at a couple of the problems that Vacca discusses.
He talks about traveling back into the past and asserts that the usual paradoxes relating to killing your grandfather before your parents were born, etc. can be overcome by having you go back to a past in a parallel universe. Relying on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (which he seems to favor), Vacca finds this reasonable. The problem, however, is that Vacca has already in a previous chapter made it clear that there is no interaction between postulated parallel universes, so he ends up justifying travel to the past by making it doubly difficult: not only do you have to violate causality but you have to go to a parallel universe to do so! I imagine he would say in response that by going to another universe you actually avoid the violation of causality since you do not in any way affect the universe you are in. However to go back in time in the other universe you have to be in that universe.
Vacca suggests that the dark matter that cosmologists are now utterly convinced exists because of its gravitational presence is perhaps an example of a parallel universe. Actually he takes the opposite perspective and asks if a parallel universe exists (parallel to the dark matter) and answers that it does. It is us. (p.115)
Since gravity that makes us aware of the existence of that dark universe (and remember there is no evidence of any information about the dark matter via the electromagnetic force or the weak or strong nuclear forces) could it not make them aware of us? (Assuming there is somebody there to be aware.) Perhaps some day we will communicate with other universes through some type of gravitational mechanism. (Huh?--Well, maybe.)
On free will Vacca uses basically three authorities, Timothy O'Connor, Miroslav Backonja, and Paul J. Bertics, and from them constructs what he sees as the current understanding by neuroscience. I wasn't even aware that neuroscientists had a position on free will. I thought it was a purely philosophic or religious question. The opposing camps of naturalism (no such thing as free will) and libertarians (humans have free will) are reconciled in the neuroscientific community through the idea of "compatibilism," a word I encountered here for the first time. What it means is that the lack of free will (which most neuroscientists, Buddhists and myself, among others see as obvious) is made compatible with the societal and human psychological need to believe in free will (for punishment and criminal deterrence) by realizing that in an Orwellian way we can say that free will does not exist, but in order for society to run smoothly we must pretend that it does. Vacca discusses the ramifications from this doublethink and concludes that whether free will is an illusion or not depends on your point of view. Your free will is obvious, but that of others has to be taken on their say so.
Here's an example of Vacca's sometimes strikingly expressive prose: "As much as free will exposes humans to the threat of unlimited retaliation for wrong-doing, it nevertheless compensates them by making them the lords of their little domains, the micro-gods of their minds." (p. 394)
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
The problems range from dark matter and dark energy through attempts to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics to problems associated with DNA and proteins, to neuroscientific concerns about free will and consciousness to what to do about nuclear fusion and its waste.
There are other books on cutting edge problems in science that I have read, e.g., John Malone's Unsolved Mysteries of Science: A Mind-Expanding Journey through a Universe of Big Bangs, Particle Waves, and Other Perplexing Concepts (2001) or The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century (2002) edited by John Brockman; but there is only one other that is anywhere near as ambitious as this work. That book would be Magic Universe: The Oxford Guide to Modern Science (2003) by Nigel Calder.
To compare these two books for the reader I would say that Calder's book is not only longer but covers more ground, is better edited and relies on a greater range of scientific authority. But Vacca's book has the virtue of narrowing in on just where the scientific action is while he does a good job of presenting the various opinions. That is, insofar as I, personally, can tell. To be honest, much of the material in all these books is above my level of expertise. Consequently I take most of what I read at face value. Clearly I cannot choose between cosmological models of inflation and quintessence. Nor do I have any firsthand experience with the complications of protein folding, etc. But neither will most readers. However we needn't be critical readers. It is enough to read appreciably about the wonders of science and how such wonders inform our beliefs and enrich our lives.
As for the repetition in the book and the typos and the other errors pointed out by other readers, it is good to understand that Vacca wrote this book by himself (although he interviewed and relied on the work of many scientists) and probably did so in a first draft/correct it mode (judging again from the repetition and some of the unpolished prose). Let's face it, life is short and a book like this needs to be written fast or it will become outdated before it hits the book stores. Furthermore, although he had editors to check for technical errors, editors to check his spelling and such, and had the benefit of the professionals at Prentice Hall, it is in the nature of a book like this that no single person with the exception of the author can really be close enough to the content to adequately edit it.
Now I want to look at a couple of the problems that Vacca discusses.
He talks about traveling back into the past and asserts that the usual paradoxes relating to killing your grandfather before your parents were born, etc. can be overcome by having you go back to a past in a parallel universe. Relying on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (which he seems to favor), Vacca finds this reasonable. The problem, however, is that Vacca has already in a previous chapter made it clear that there is no interaction between postulated parallel universes, so he ends up justifying travel to the past by making it doubly difficult: not only do you have to violate causality but you have to go to a parallel universe to do so! I imagine he would say in response that by going to another universe you actually avoid the violation of causality since you do not in any way affect the universe you are in. However to go back in time in the other universe you have to be in that universe.
Vacca suggests that the dark matter that cosmologists are now utterly convinced exists because of its gravitational presence is perhaps an example of a parallel universe. Actually he takes the opposite perspective and asks if a parallel universe exists (parallel to the dark matter) and answers that it does. It is us. (p.115)
Since gravity that makes us aware of the existence of that dark universe (and remember there is no evidence of any information about the dark matter via the electromagnetic force or the weak or strong nuclear forces) could it not make them aware of us? (Assuming there is somebody there to be aware.) Perhaps some day we will communicate with other universes through some type of gravitational mechanism. (Huh?--Well, maybe.)
On free will Vacca uses basically three authorities, Timothy O'Connor, Miroslav Backonja, and Paul J. Bertics, and from them constructs what he sees as the current understanding by neuroscience. I wasn't even aware that neuroscientists had a position on free will. I thought it was a purely philosophic or religious question. The opposing camps of naturalism (no such thing as free will) and libertarians (humans have free will) are reconciled in the neuroscientific community through the idea of "compatibilism," a word I encountered here for the first time. What it means is that the lack of free will (which most neuroscientists, Buddhists and myself, among others see as obvious) is made compatible with the societal and human psychological need to believe in free will (for punishment and criminal deterrence) by realizing that in an Orwellian way we can say that free will does not exist, but in order for society to run smoothly we must pretend that it does. Vacca discusses the ramifications from this doublethink and concludes that whether free will is an illusion or not depends on your point of view. Your free will is obvious, but that of others has to be taken on their say so.
Here's an example of Vacca's sometimes strikingly expressive prose: "As much as free will exposes humans to the threat of unlimited retaliation for wrong-doing, it nevertheless compensates them by making them the lords of their little domains, the micro-gods of their minds." (p. 394)
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
January 22, 2020
This book points you to several big directions of science, but that is pretty much it. The language is convoluted and should be much more simple and easier to read. As a Geoscience professional, I find the geology and paleontology chapters rather boring and lack of insight. This book was published in 2005, and I just read it in 2020. I am a little biased by the more modern standard on major science problems. This book is trying to too much in a short, awkward summary, but the author does not have the ability to fully digest what he is trying to say. If you are interested in science, you can simply read some intro-level books on any of the scientific subjects, or just flip through some scientific websites. By doing that, you will probably understand more in less time!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews