The temperature of heaven and hell

Abstract

Writing for this section a few months ago (February p72), Malcolm Cornwall of the University of Brighton recalled how the world's media went into overdrive after discovering that he had worked out the number of pebbles on Brighton beach. Although he had merely performed an order-of-magnitude calculation, which he had included in his scientific booklet On Brighton Beach, the media were amazed that someone had worked out such an apparently intractable quantity. Despite his protestations, they were convinced diat he had in fact spent years on his hands and knees sifting through tons of pebbles. Cornwall's cautionary tale served as a warning to all science popularizers