Book Review: Space Oddities By Harry Cliff

  This is my first Non-Fiction book of the year, and one that falls into my outer space theme for 2026. 

I did love it!  I learned a lot, and laughed a bit, and felt like I had my mind blown a few times as well! 

Dr. Cliff is an experimental physicist at CERN and also well known as a science presenter.  This second fact is probably the most important, as Cliff was able to hold my attention, even while discussing a great deal of very complicated math. 

     Cliff describes an evolving debate in Physics, Cosmology, Astronomy and I suppose "science" in general, revolving around the "Standard model" of  physics.  Now, I took Astronomy 101 back in the day at the University of Rochester.  Secretly, I hoped against hope that I would be discovered as a savant of the stars. 

     I WAS NOT A SAVANT OF THE STARS.  That remains the most difficult class I ever took.  I pity the instructor for having to teach all of us, who could not reliably learn how to calculate the distance of a star from another fixed point.  As a group we were dismal. As an individual, unfortunately, I was also dismal, and sadly, the class did nothing to spark my actual interest in the stars, planets and the universe.  I could not really grasp the calculation, (not totally surprising as I had never had a class in trigonometry or calculus etc) and the instructor, as I recall, wasn't able to really communicate in any compelling way how amazing this was that we could sit in a classroom and  with reasonable assurance we could know distances, mass, composition of objects so far away in the universe. 

I gave up on being a universe savant, but never really gave up on being curious. 

Harry Cliff was able to engage my sloth-brain, teach me something and have me thinking about current issues in physics with some excitement! 

In this very readable book, Cliff helps readers understand one of the current hot debates in cosmology.  The Standard Model faces challenges from new data coming from the James Webb Telescope- and other sources. There is disagreement within the world of physicists from various disciplines on the rate of expansion of the universe. I admit, I am always kind of confused about the whole idea of the universe constantly expanding, expanding to where? It's a mind bending concept. 

   As a lay person, I have been captivated by the JWST images.  I was a bit deflated to learn that they are often cleaned up by artists, but, even so, they are still so compelling and interesting.

Take a look here at a few Slide shows from JWST 

Cliff discusses in fairly easy to understand terms the work being done by various teams to decipher data, how the data is obtained, cleaned, used and discussed. He provides what seems to be a fairly even handed view of the current debate, the research teams, and their processes, while teaching a bit of physics for use dismal folks on the side. 

  Overall, I really enjoyed this book which provided just the right amount of detail to make my brain work, but not so much that it shut off. I know that I'm going to have my ear tuned for more news of the Standard Model and it's challengers in the future.  I did the audio book which was read by the author, which I found to be a bit charming. I felt like I was just sitting in his office, asking a lot of questions and very much enjoying his explanation of the beauty and charm quarks...and how they shape my world completely. I was amused that he did provide a "trigger warning" for some of the maths! 

I enjoyed this book, I felt like I'm much more in the know now about things and I am definitely looking to read more on the debate and will be looking for more news from this area. 

STATS

                                                First Published : 3/26/24

Pages: 288

Available as an Audio Book : Yes ~ 8 hrs 

Trigger Warnings: Math, complex view of the universe (not a complete list- be responsible!)