The 4% Universe: Dark Matter Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
The 4% Universe: Dark Matter Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
Author: Richard Panek
Desc: The epic behind-the-scenes story of an astounding gap in our scientific knowledge of the cosmos. In the past few years a handful of scientists have been in a race to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you me our books and every planet star and galaxy. The rest—96 percent of the universe—is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of how scientists reached this conclusion and what they’re doing to find this "dark" matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy. Based on in-depth on-site reporting and hundreds of interviews—with everyone from Berkeley’s feisty Saul Perlmutter and Johns Hopkins’s meticulous Adam Riess to the quietly revolutionary Vera Rubin—the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations the eureka moments and blind alleys that have fueled their search redefined science and reinvented the universe.