Middle world : the restless heart of reality

Between the microscopic world of quarks and atoms, and the macroscopic (observable) one of pebbles, planets and galaxies, there is another world, strangely neglected by science since Isaac Newton.

It is inhabited by pollen, DNA and viruses - not to mention globules of paint, shampoo, milk and chocolate.

Its tiny denizens have one thing in common: they cannot keep still.

Physicist Mark Haw tells the pacy story of how scientists finally saw the restless middle world 200 years ago, having ignored it for so long.

How, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it spectacularly answered Einstein's most basic question about the nature of matter. And how we then ignored it again until the past decade or so.

Finally Haw reveals that, today, understanding the weird, jiggling 'mesoscale' has become central to nanotechnology, medicine and working out the origins of life.