This Week: Our Annual Holiday Book Show

FromThe Real Planet of the Apes, to Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, to10 Billion Tomorrows, our book show takes us on a whirlwind tour of controversial scientific ideas, from 66 million years ago to the future.

First up ... Fans of science fiction might be a little disappointed by how disappointing the future has turned out to be - with no flying cars or humanoid robots. But in his new book,10 Billion Tomorrows, British science writer Brian Clegg shows the subtle and significant ways that science fiction has shaped our present, and continues to shape our future.

Next up ... every school child knows that an asteroid or comet wiped out most of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. But where did that asteroid come from, and what sent it hurtling towards Earth? Well, noted Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall suggests that a disk of Dark Matter - lurking in thefarthestregions of our solar system - might have been the culprit.

And finally ... we all know that the ancestors of modern humans evolved in Africa, right? Wrong, says University of Toronto paleo-anthropologist David Begun. He argues thatapes evolved the most important hallmarks of our human lineage - such as dexterous hands and larger brains - in Europe, millions of years ago, before returning to Africa.

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