As the giant cloud receded from the binary stars of Sirius A and B, it cooled in the frozen wastes of interstellar space to minus 270 degrees Celsius. Its molecular structure tightened and drew closer together. The incredible size of the cloud shrank but its mass became all the greater. As its mass increased, so did its velocity; from one-tenth to one-fifth of the speed of light.What?! Firstly, reducing the volume that a quantity of matter occupies increases its density, not its mass. Secondly, although objects seem to gain relativistic mass when speeds approach that of light (when viewed from a different frame of reference), all of the special relativity equations rely on the invariant mass of an object. Quite a spectacular piece of rubbish, no?
It should be irrelevant that the book was written by a manager, not a scientist, since we all have our hobbies and passions, and cosmology could very well be his. But I can't get over the niggling feeling that a scientist - or, in fact, anyone with a modicum of physical science knowledge at secondary school level - would have avoided that stinker. Failing that, a halfway decent editor versed in the genre should have spotted it. Looking over the publisher's offerings, though, they strike me as a bit of a vanity press which, if true, would explain it. There really should be a disclaimer across the front of their books, though.
There are some other choice ham-handed attempts at camouflaging the writer's apparent ignorance of simple science, like the pole-switching electromagnet perpetual motion machine fib, or the quick glossing-over of a simple geology lesson, that keep sticking in my mental craw. I'm ploughing on regardless, as elements of the story are rather fun, but I fear it's going to be an airport read, in the end.
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