Eight Improbable Possibilities

A mind-warping excursion into the wildly improbable truths of science. Echoing Sherlock Holmes` famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: `Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.` With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science, Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science. For example: We know that the Universe had a beginning, and when it was - and also that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. We can detect ripples in space that are one ten-thousandth the width of a proton, made by colliding black holes billions of light years from Earth. And, most importantly from our perspective, all complex life on Earth today is descended from a single cell - but without the stabilising influence of the Moon, life forms like us could never have evolved.