popular science – Dr Andrew May

13 Apr 202613 Apr 2026

The Moon and me

As you’ll see in a moment, I’ve been fascinated by the Moon since childhood, but the picture above shows some of my more recent writings on the subject. There’s my book The Telescopic Tourist’s Guide to the Moon, written in 2017 for the Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series from Springer. A couple of years later, my very first contribution to How It Works magazine was an 8-page feature “Science Secrets of Apollo 11” in the July 2019 issue, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing. And now the latest issue of the same magazine has a cover feature by me, “Return to the Moon”, to coincide with this month’s Artemis II mission around the Moon.

As a general rule, magazine features like this don’t include personal anecdotes from the author, but the latter is an exception. When I told the editor that I avidly followed Artemis II’s predecessor, Apollo 8, back in December 1968 (the month of my 11th birthday) he suggested that I put something in about it. So I inserted a small inset image of a treasured souvenir of mine – a card I got back from NASA in response to a fan letter I sent immediately after the Apollo 8 flight. But as I admitted in the caption to the image, “the astronaut autographs are unfortunately machine-printed”!

The images sent back by the Artemis II astronauts were so spectacular I couldn’t resist putting together the following short video, with electronic soundtrack based on Schubert’s aptly named song “To the Moon”:

20 Jan 202620 Jan 2026

Out now – The Antigravity Enigma

This is my sixth contribution to Springer’s “Science and Fiction” series – and, like the previous one (How Space Physics Really Works), it deals with a personally favourite topic of mine. In this case, it’s the widely varied treatment of the topic of antigravity in science fiction, real-world physics and (perhaps its most active home at the moment) the weird world of ufology and conspiracy theories. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

From magic carpets to hoverboards and space drives, the human imagination has always seen antigravity as the ultimate aspirational symbol of power over nature. It featured prominently in the technologically optimistic science fiction of the mid-20th century, and remains popular with amateur theorists hoping to make a world-shaking breakthrough, and those seeking to explain UFO sightings in terms of alien technology. Yet the whole concept of antigravity is often derided by professional scientists. Is this a valid view, or are they missing something? This entertaining and thought-provoking book provides a wide-ranging survey of the whole field of antigravity, from science-fictional treatments by the likes of H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, through speculative research by NASA, universities and the aerospace industry, to the totally different mindset of ufologists, fringe researchers and conspiracy theorists. In a world where our understanding of physics is known to be incomplete, and which has been shaken by numerous paradigm shifts in the past, can we be certain that the discovery of antigravity isn’t just around the corner?

Brian Clegg has already posted a four-star review of the book on his Popular Science site, calling it “a rational look at the possibilities of antigravity and its place (fictional and otherwise) in our culture”. If you’d like a copy, you can get it in paperback or ebook format from Amazon.com, Amazon UK or any similar retailer.

2 Jun 20252 Jun 2025

Mars, the New Earth – Polish book and newspaper interview

Last year, as I wrote in a blog post at the time, I was pleased to have an article published jointly in the Observer newspaper and on the Guardian website. To match that, I’ve now had an interview in the print and online versions of Gazeta Wyborcza, a Polish newspaper which (as far as I’ve been able to ascertain) has a similar reputation and readership to the Guardian and Observer in the UK. This is in connection with the publication of a Polish translation of my book Destination Mars, originally published 8 years ago. The Polish version, pictured above, is called Mars, Nowa Ziemia: Historia eksploracji i plany podboju Czerwonej Planety, which according to Google means “Mars, the New Earth: A History of Exploration and Plans to Conquer the Red Planet” (despite having Polish family connections, I can’t read or speak the language, unfortunately).

The interview on the Gazeta Wyborcza site is behind a paywall, but you can read the beginning here. And here’s a screenshot of what is, as far as I know, my first appearance in the non-English-language media –

29 Dec 202429 Dec 2024

Another year, another 3 cover features

I’ve been writing regularly for How It Works magazine for over 5 years now, with at least one article in every issue this year. As last year, I’ve managed three cover features in 2024, as pictured above. Here’s a quick rundown of them:

Time (issue 187, February) – the history of timekeeping from the Antikythera mechanism to atomic clocks, together with a bit of relativistic theory on time dilation and spacetime
The Science of Eclipses (issue 188, March) – with a particular focus on the much-publicized 2024 solar eclipse, as well as ESA’s much less widely reported Proba-3 “artificial eclipse” mission, also launched in 2024
Quantum Physics Explained (issue 197, December) – covering all those things that used to give me nightmares as an undergraduate, such as the double-slit experiment, Schrodinger’s cat and the uncertainty principle, as well as newer developments like quantum teleportation and quantum-dot displays

12 Feb 202412 Feb 2024

Space Telescopes – book and Guardian article

I’m very pleased that yesterday’s Observer newspaper featured an article by me about space telescopes, which is now free to read – under the title Cosmic Time Machines – on the Guardian website. That’s one of the most prestigious mainstream news sites here in the UK, so hopefully I’ll reach a wider-than-usual audience with it.

The article ties in with my latest book, Eyes in the Sky, which was published last month by Icon Books. As with my previous books for them, it’s part of their “Hot Science” series – actually my 6th contribution to it. Here’s their blurb from the back cover of Eyes in the Sky:

Over 50 years ago, astronomers launched the world’s first orbiting telescope. This allowed them to gaze further into outer space and examine anything that appears in the sky above our heads, from comets and planets to galaxy clusters and stars. Since then, almost 100 space telescopes have been launched from Earth and are orbiting our planet, with 26 still active and relaying information back to us.

As a result of these space-based instruments, such as NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope, we know much more about the universe than we did half a century ago. But why is Hubble, orbiting just 540 kilometres above the Earth, so much more effective than a ground-based telescope? How can a glorified camera tell us not only what distant objects look like, but their detailed chemical composition and three-dimensional structure as well?

In Eyes in the Sky, science writer Andrew May takes us on a journey into space to answer these questions and more. Looking at the development of revolutionary instruments, such as Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, May explores how such technology has helped us understand the evolution of the Universe.

31 Aug 202331 Aug 2023

Three More Cover Features

In a previous post, I mentioned that I had three consecutive cover features in How It Works magazine between November 2021 and January 2022. I’ve just come close to repeating that feat, making the cover for three out of the four issues between June and September this year. As pictured above, the topics this time were near-Earth asteroids, gravity and the solar cycle. The first two are particular favourites of mine, having previously covered the asteroid threat in my book Cosmic Impact, while my PhD thesis was all about gravity and its effects on stellar orbits. Around 15 years after that, in the late 1990s, I had some peripheral involvement with BAE Systems’ “Project Greenglow” on the possibility of gravity control (or antigravity, if you like) – something I’ve written about on a number of occasions, for example in this blog post from 2015. As I said there, my link to the BAE project came through its leader, Ron Evans, who I’ve remained in touch with ever since. So I was really pleased when the magazine editor asked me to include something about “antigravity” in the How It Works feature, as it gave me the opportunity to include a brief Q&A with Ron as a sidebar at the end of the article.

17 Jul 202329 Dec 2024

New book: How Space Physics Really Works

This is my fifth contribution to Springer’s “Science and Fiction” series, and in some ways my favourite so far, because it deals with a subgenre of SF that particularly appeals to me. The full title is How Space Physics Really Works: Lessons from Well-Constructed Science Fiction, and that really sums up what I’m talking about – SF stories that take the trouble to get their physics right. Here’s the blurb from the book’s back cover:

There is a huge gulf between the real physics of space travel and the way it is commonly portrayed in movies and TV shows. That’s not because space physics is difficult or obscure – most of the details were understood by the end of the 18th century – but because it can often be bafflingly counter-intuitive for a general audience. The purpose of this book isn’t to criticize or debunk popular sci-fi depictions, which can be very entertaining, but to focus on how space physics really works. This is done with the aid of numerous practical illustrations taken from the works of serious science fiction authors – from Jules Verne and Arthur C. Clarke to Larry Niven and Andy Weir – who have taken positive pleasure in getting their scientific facts right.

The book has just been published and is available from all good bookshops, as well as online retailers such as Amazon.com and Amazon UK (paperback: ISBN 978-3-031-33949-3, ebook: 978-3-031-33950-9).

18 Mar 202318 Mar 2023

New book out now – The Science of Music

My 5th and latest contribution to the “Hot Science” series from Icon Books has just been published, The Science of Music: How Technology has Shaped the Evolution of an Artform. This is a book I’ve written about a couple of times previously (here and here) – but not to be confused with The Science of Sci-Fi Music, which is a completely different book that I wrote a few years ago!

Here is the publisher’s blurb for the new book:

How can music – an artform – have anything to do with science? Yet there are myriad ways in which the two are intertwined, from the basics of music theory and the design of instruments to hi-fi systems and how the brain processes music. Science writer Andrew May traces the surprising connections between science and music, from the theory of sound waves to the way musicians use mathematical algorithms to create music. The most obvious impact of science on music can be seen in the way electronic technology has revolutionised how we create, record and listen to music. Technology has also provided new insights into the effects that different music has on the brain, to the extent that some algorithms can now predict our reactions with uncanny accuracy, which raises a worrying question: how long will it be before AI can create music on a par with humans?

6 Feb 20236 Feb 2023

Astrobiology Illustrated Edition

Icon Books have just brought out a new edition of my Astrobiology book, originally published in their series of ‘Hot Science’ paperbacks. This is a double first for me – the first time any of my books has made it to a genuine ‘second edition’ (for the same market as the original, as opposed to translations for other markets) and my first ever hardback book. It looks really great – packed with informative graphics and colourful photographs. I had very little to do with this, which was all done by the book-packaging professionals at UniPress. My only input was to update the text in a few places and offer suggestions for some of the image captions.

The book shown in the above photo is the ‘British and Commonwealth’ edition published by Icon Books, which is out now – details here. I believe UniPress are also doing a separate North American edition, which should be out in May 2023.

16 Jan 202316 Jan 2023

Science of Music playlist

My new book The Science of Music will be published by Icon Books on 16 March 2023. I’ve already alluded to some of the musical works used as examples in the book (in this post from last year) and there’s a fuller “playlist” in the back of the book – running in chronological order from Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet and Beethoven’s Battle Symphony to Miss Anthropocene by Grimes and Djesse vol. 3 by Jacob Collier.

On a more self-indulgent note, I’ve created another short playlist on YouTube of compositions I wrote myself while trying to get my head round some of the techniques discussed in the book – particularly algorithmic (i.e. computer-assisted) composition and electronic music production using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Here is a link to it: