An award-winning science journalist details the quest to isolate and
understand dark matter--and shows how that search has helped us to
understand the universe we inhabit.
When you train a telescope on outer space, you can see luminous
galaxies, nebulae, stars, and planets. But if you add all that together,
it constitutes only 15 percent of the matter in the universe. Despite
decades of research, the nature of the remaining 85 percent is unknown.
We call it dark matter.
In The Elephant in the Universe, Govert Schilling explores the
fascinating history of the search for dark matter. Evidence for its
existence comes from a wealth of astronomical observations. Theories and
computer simulations of the evolution of the universe are also
suggestive: they can be reconciled with astronomical measurements only
if dark matter is a dominant component of nature. Physicists have
devised huge, sensitive instruments to search for dark matter, which may
be unlike anything else in the cosmos--some unknown elementary particle.
Yet so far dark matter has escaped every experiment. Indeed, dark matter
is so elusive that some scientists are beginning to suspect there might
be something wrong with our theories about gravity or with the current
paradigms of cosmology. Schilling interviews both believers and heretics
and paints a colorful picture of the history and current status of dark
matter research, with astronomers and physicists alike trying to make
sense of theory and observation.
Taking a holistic view of dark matter as a problem, an opportunity, and
an example of science in action, The Elephant in the Universe is a
vivid tale of scientists puzzling their way toward the true nature of
the universe.
