Cantitate/Preț
Produs

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality

Autor Richard Panek
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 18 oct 2011
“Fascinating . . . One of the most important stories in the history of science.”— Washington Post

In recent years, a handful of scientists has been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown.
Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of how scientists reached this cosmos-shattering conclusion. In vivid detail, he narrates the quest to find the “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy that make up 96 percent of the universe. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize. Based on hundreds of interviews and in-depth, on-site reporting, the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations, the eureka moments and blind alleys, that have redefined science and reinvented the universe.

“A lively new account of twentieth-century (plus a little twenty-first-century) cosmology . . . The book is as much about how the science got done as about the science itself.”—Salon

Citește tot Restrânge

Preț: 14241 lei

Puncte Express: 214

Preț estimativ în valută:
2728 2955$ 2340£

Carte tipărită la comandă

Livrare economică 06-11 mai

Preluare comenzi: 021 569.72.76

Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780547577579
ISBN-10: 0547577575
Pagini: 320
Dimensiuni: 135 x 203 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.32 kg
Editura: HarperCollins Publishers
Colecția Mariner Books
Locul publicării:United States

Recenzii

"The centerpiece of The 4% Universe is a compelling narrative of science at its best… serve[s] handsomely as an illuminating guide to the dark mysteries lying at the heart of the intersection of astronomy and fundamental physics."
The Wall Street Journal "Impeccably researched and highly readable."
New Scientist "A model for all would-be popular-science writers."
Physics World "Panek's passion for the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy wins the day. He succeeds because he recognizes that he's writing not just about red shifts and supernovae, but about people...the success of The 4 Percent Universe also stems from Panek's wisdom about how science works."
The Washington Post "The balance between lively characters and provocative ideas keeps the book moving as quickly as any high stakes thriller, but the pay-off here is an answer of truly cosmic significance...the universe is keeping secrets from us--big secrets. Dark secrets. Panek's joyful journey through the wilds of modern cosmology gives us good reason to care about those secrets, and their sure-to-be surprising answers."
Ad Astra, Magazine of National Space Society

"A superior account of how astronomers discovered that they knew almost nothing about 96 percent of the universe. Science writer Panek (The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes, 2005, etc.) points out that 50 years ago astronomers assumed they understood the cosmos and its history from the big bang to galaxy formation to its ultimate fate as expansion continued. One detail remained disturbing: Galaxies were moving too fast. Since gravity controls movements, they had to be heavier than predicted. By the 1980s, this "missing mass" problem became critical as it became clear that galaxies, including ours, were rotating so fast that missing mass far outweighs visible objects such as stars. Even after eliminating gas and dust, "dark matter" represents strange particles unknown to science. Astronomers also believed that gravity was slowing expansion of the universe but debated if galaxies would reverse themselves, continue to recede ever more slowly or (the favorite theory) simply stop. Panek describes frustrating struggles with high-tech detectors, complex computer algorithms and massive telescopes to search distant galaxies for the key. The answer came in the late '90s expansion wasn't slowing but speeding up. Flabbergasted astronomers understood that accelerating billions of galaxies requires immense energy. Since Einstein proved that energy and mass are equivalent, this "dark energy" makes up three-quarters of the universe. Dark energy added to dark matter reduces the familiar universe to 4 percent of the total. 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 cliche, but not in this case." 
—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

"There has always been more to the universe than we can see. Science journalist Panek (The Invisible Century) offers an insider's view of the quest for what could be the ultimate revelation: the true substance of the unseen dark matter and energy that makes up some 96% of our universe. The search for these hidden elements began in the 1960s with astronomers asking whether the universe would end in an infinitely expanding "Big Chill" or a collapse into a "Big Crunch"--or whether the universe is a just-right "Goldilocks" space that would nurture stars and galaxies forever. To answer this question, scientists calculated the universe's mass and discovered there was far more mass than we could see. But where is this "missing mass" and what kind of exotic "dark" stuff is it made of? Panek gleefully describes a 'Wild West of the mind, where —

Notă biografică