Review of 'The 4-Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
There are several things Panek does well in this book: if you've seen, out of the corner of your eye, headlines about "universe inflation", "dark matter", "dark energy", he does a good job of explaining what those are (at least, the stuff that's known about these things; there are still a lot of unanswered questions, like "what the heck is dark energy, anyway?")
Just as importantly, he explains how scientists know what they know: the observations and experiments that led them to their conclusions. And he also talks about the people behind the science, their motivations and emotions, their doubts and rivalries, their hopes and arguments. And in the process, he shows us something about the process by which science is done, something we the public don't get to see very often.
Unfortunately, the cast of characters is rather large, and I couldn't keep them all straight, or remember who …
There are several things Panek does well in this book: if you've seen, out of the corner of your eye, headlines about "universe inflation", "dark matter", "dark energy", he does a good job of explaining what those are (at least, the stuff that's known about these things; there are still a lot of unanswered questions, like "what the heck is dark energy, anyway?")
Just as importantly, he explains how scientists know what they know: the observations and experiments that led them to their conclusions. And he also talks about the people behind the science, their motivations and emotions, their doubts and rivalries, their hopes and arguments. And in the process, he shows us something about the process by which science is done, something we the public don't get to see very often.
Unfortunately, the cast of characters is rather large, and I couldn't keep them all straight, or remember who was on the Princeton and who was on the Berkeley team, or even how the two teams differed in their approach and social structure. Some sort of chart would have been helpful, or at least photos of the main players, but the book offered no such help; at least, my ebook edition didn't.
The picture that emerges is one of a weirder universe than I imagined, where scientists are led to accept seemingly-preposterous ideas – like the idea of a type of matter other than our usual protons and neutrons; and that there is several times more of this stuff than of ordinary stuff – by the force of observation. Like it or not, that's where the data points.
