At the time of writing of the book there was a growing speculation as to whether this phenomenon could be explained by a yet-undetermined fault in the rockets' systems or whether this was an unidentified effect of gravity.

Both sets of data are subject to ongoing investigation and debate but, Brooks suggests, may indicate that the behaviour of matter and energy can vary radically and essentially as the conditions of the universe changes through time.

This chapter describes efforts to define life and how it emerged from inanimate matter (abiogenesis) and even recreate artificial life including: the Miller–Urey experiment by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago in 1953 to spark life into a mixture of chemicals by using an electrical charge; Steen Rasmussen's work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to implant primitive DNA, peptide nucleic acid, into soap molecules and heat them up; and the work of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter at the University of California.

Brooks discusses whether or not the signal spotted by astronomer Jerry R. Ehman at the Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University in 1977 was a genuine indication of intelligent life in outer space.

This was a remarkably clear signal and Big Ear was the largest and longest running SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) radio-telescope project in the world.

Brooks goes on to discuss the abandonment of NASA's Microwave Observing Program after government funding was stopped by the efforts of senator Richard Bryan of Nevada.

Brooks describes the huge and highly resistant Mimivirus found in Bradford, England in 1992 and whether this challenges the traditional view of viruses being inanimate chemicals rather than living things.

These include the studies of Peter Medawar and George C. Williams in the 1950s and Thomas Johnson, David Friedman and Cynthia Kenyon in the 1980s claiming that ageing is a genetic process that has evolved as organism select genes that help them to grow and reproduce over ones that help them to thrive in later life.

Brooks discusses efforts to prove this by laboratory experiment and goes on to discuss alternative theories including the work of Joan Roughgarden of Stanford University who proposes that sexual reproduction, rather than being driven by Charles Darwin's sexual selection in individuals, is a mechanism for the survival of social groupings, which most higher species depend on for survival.

This is a discussion of the role of the placebo in modern medicine, including examples such as Diazepam, which, Brooks claims, in some situations appears to work only if the patient knows they are taking it.

He describes the paper by Asbjørn Hrobjartsson and Peter C. Gøtzsche in the New England Journal of Medicine that challenges use of placebos entirely, and the work of others towards an understanding of the mechanism of the effect.

Brooks supports the investigation of documented anomalies even though he is critical of the practice of homeopathy in general, as are many of the scientists he cites, such as Martin Chaplin of South Bank University.