Wow factor absent as Ireland exile drags on

WHEN your correspondent isn’t busy reporting on groin strains, I like nothing better than to relax with a book written by someone who holds a PhD in quantum physics.

After all, if you have spent too much of your adult life writing about the FAI’s club licensing scheme, you need to chill out once in a while with a little light reading.

So here’s a tip of the hat to the eminently qualified Michael Brooks, author of a recently published tome called 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, a stimulating crash-course in some of the most intriguing scientific mysteries of our times. Here be bracing essays on such mind-bending puzzlers as life, death, sex, cold fusion, dark matter, free will, the placebo effect and, my personal favourite, the so-called “Wow!” signal – a celebrated transmission from outer space picked up by Ohio State University’s Big Ear telescope in August 1977.