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The 4 Percent Universe

Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality

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The 4 Percent Universe

Written by: Richard Panek
Narrated by: Ray Porter
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About this listen

Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only four percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown.

Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called “dark energy”. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize. Based on in-depth reporting and interviews with the major players—from Berkeley’s feisty, excitable Saul Perlmutter and Harvard’s witty but exacting Robert Kirshner to the doyenne of astronomy, 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.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Our view of the cosmos is profoundly wrong, and Copernicus was only the beginning: not just Earth, but all common matter is a marginal part of existence. Panek’s fast-paced narrative, filled with original reporting and behind-the-scenes details, brings this epic story to life for the very first time.

©2011 Richard Panek (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Astronomy & Space Science Physics String Theory Witty Solar System Interstellar Black Hole
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What the critics say

“It’s the biggest mystery of all: why is the universe expanding at an accelerated rate? At its heart is a search for what forces and particles make up reality. It baffled Einstein, and it now obsesses a cadre of fascinating cosmologists. By brilliantly capturing their passions and pursuits, Richard Panek has made this cosmic quest exciting and understandable.” (Walter Isaacson, New York Times best-selling author of Einstein: His Life and Universe)
“A superior account of how astronomers discovered that they knew almost nothing about 96 percent of the universe…. Panek delivers vivid sketches of scientists, lucid explanations of their work, and revealing descriptions of the often stormy rivalry that led to this scientific revolution, usually a media cliché, but not in this case.” ( Kirkus Reviews)
“Science journalist Panek offers an insider’s view of the quest for what could be the ultimate revelation.... This lively story of big personalities, intellectual competitiveness, and ravenous curiosity is as entertaining as it is illuminating.” ( Publishers Weekly)

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Drier than a popcorn fart

Hey kids! Have you ever wondered what size shoes astrophysicist George Smoot wears?

How about how 55 different proposed technical names for dark matter, painstakingly listed out in their entirety?

Have you ever gazed into the starry heavens at night, and thought to yourself: ”I wish I had access to the exact wording of the entire email chain between two of the members of the High-Z supernova search team and the competing Supernova Cosmology Project sent on April 17th, 2007”?

If so, you’re in luck! With near-criminally obsessive detail, Panek takes us through the history of the discovery of expansion of the universe, from the initial search for supernovae to the proposal of dark matter and dark energy, and beyond.

This is interesting stuff, to be sure, but the problem is that the author so completely buries the reader with such a dizzying amount of detail that following the story requires sifting through the mess to extract the important elements. This is an unfair burden for the reader, and the finishing the book requires a Herculean amount of patience.

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