The 4 Percent Universe
Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
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Narrated by:
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Ray Porter
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By:
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Richard Panek
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.Listeners also enjoyed...
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How the Laser Happened
- Adventures of a Scientist
- By: Charles H. Townes
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In How the Laser Happened, Nobel laureate Charles Townes provides a highly personal look at some of the leading events in 20th-century physics. This lively memoir, packed with firsthand accounts and historical anecdotes, is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of science and an inspiring example for students considering scientific careers.
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Great for aspiring physicists
- By James S. on 10-06-18
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Einstein's Cosmos
- How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time: Great Discoveries
- By: Michio Kaku
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A dazzling tour of the universe as Einstein saw it. How did Albert Einstein come up with the theories that changed the way we look at the world? By thinking in pictures. Michio Kaku, leading theoretical physicist (a cofounder of string theory) and best-selling science storyteller, shows how Einstein used seemingly simple images to lead a revolution in science. With originality and expertise, Kaku uncovers the surprising beauty that lies at the heart of Einstein's cosmos
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Mix of science and the man
- By B. Ruple on 11-03-13
By: Michio Kaku
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Confessions of an Alien Hunter
- A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
- By: Seth Shostak
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This engaging memoir reveals the true story of the Search for ExtraterrestrialIntelligence (SETI), and discloses what we may very soon discover. Chronicling the program’s history with insight and humor, SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak assures us that if there is sentient life in the universe, we are within decades of picking up its signal.
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Somewhat Disappointed...
- By Tim on 11-12-10
By: Seth Shostak
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The Second Kind of Impossible
- The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter
- By: Paul J. Steinhardt
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s 35-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter - one that raises the possibility of new materials with never-before-seen properties but that violates laws set in stone for centuries.
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In anticipation of low review marks...
- By James S. on 05-14-19
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Our Mathematical Universe
- My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.
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Wow!
- By Michael on 02-02-14
By: Max Tegmark
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The Quantum Story
- A History in 40 Moments
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Mike Pollock
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Utterly beautiful. Profoundly disconcerting. Quantum theory is quite simply the most successful account of the physical universe ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the 21st-century technology that we now take for granted. But at the same time it has completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at its most fundamental level.
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who's the target reader?
- By Hannah on 09-17-11
By: Jim Baggott
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Spooky Action at a Distance
- The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time-and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything
- By: George Musser
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon - the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space - appears to be almost magical.
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Rambling but Asks Good Questions
- By Michael on 12-19-15
By: George Musser
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Einstein and the Quantum
- The Quest of the Valiant Swabian
- By: A. Douglas Stone
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light - the core of what we now know as quantum theory - than he did about relativity.
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educational and fun
- By Amjad on 12-04-13
By: A. Douglas Stone
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Paradox
- The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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Almost Useless
- By Michael on 06-19-19
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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About Time
- Cosmology, Time and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang
- By: Adam Frank
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Big Bang is all but dead, and we do not yet know what will replace it. Our universe's "beginning" is at an end. What does this have to do with us here on Earth? Our lives are about to be dramatically shaken again - as altered as they were with the invention of the clock, the steam engine, the railroad, the radio and the Internet.
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More fluff than science
- By Ivan the Reviewer on 04-15-13
By: Adam Frank
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The Age of Entanglement
- When Quantum Physics was Reborn
- By: Louisa Gilder
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliantly original and richly illuminating exploration of entanglement, the seemingly telepathic communication between two separated particles - one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics.
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Quite nice
- By Michael on 02-14-10
By: Louisa Gilder
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Good, yet disappointing
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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.
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Good but way too long
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An enjoyable easy listen
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Ripples in Spacetime is an engaging account of the international effort to complete Einstein's project, capture his elusive ripples, and launch an era of gravitational-wave astronomy that promises to explain, more vividly than ever before, our universe's structure and origin. The quest for gravitational waves involved years of risky research and many personal and professional struggles that threatened to derail one of the world's largest scientific endeavors.
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Absolutely Loved it.
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How to Speak Science
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As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.
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Wowzers!
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Breezy style, but some painful pronunciation
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Good, yet disappointing
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An enjoyable easy listen
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Absolutely Loved it.
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Today we are blessed with two extraordinarily successful theories of physics. The first is Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes the large-scale behavior of matter in a curved spacetime. The second is quantum mechanics. This theory describes the properties and behavior of matter and radiation at their smallest scales.
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Interesting but not Convincing
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Quantum theory is weird. As Niels Bohr said, if you aren’t shocked by quantum theory, you don’t really understand it. For most people, quantum theory is synonymous with mysterious, impenetrable science. And in fact for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly written account of this fundamental scientific revolution.
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Biographic facts not explanations.
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Is time an illusion? Is time travel possible? Could time end? In this audiobook, A Question of Time, we take an interdisciplinary look at the fourth dimension, exploring the latest thinking on the nature of time and the ways it dominates our physical and mental worlds.
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Semi-successful Discussion Difficult for this Layman
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In these brilliant essays, Lightman explores the emotional life of science, the power of imagination, the creative moment, and the alternate ways in which scientists and humanists think about the world. Along the way, he provides in-depth portraits of some of the great geniuses of our time, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, and astronomer Vera Rubin. Thoughtful, beautifully written, and wonderfully original, A Sense of the Mysterious confirms Alan Lightman's unique position at the crossroads of science and art.
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A Unique Take on the Scientific Project
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Author Jim Harrison has won international acclaim for his masterful body of work, including over thirty books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In his most original work to date, Harrison delivers an enthralling, witty, and expertly crafted novel following one man’s hunt for an elusive cult leader, dubbed the Great Leader.
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Are you an over-thehill guy with one last mission?
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From one of the founders of the beat generation and the 1960s counterculture comes this opening novel of a series available now in audio for the first time. An opium addict is lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces his execution; and the world's population is infected with a radioactive epidemic. These stories are woven together in a single tale of mayhem and chaos.
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absolutely timeless. thank you Ray Porter!
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Space Oddities
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Something strange is going on in the cosmos. Scientists are uncovering a catalogue of weird phenomena that simply can’t be explained by our long-established theories of the universe. After decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of our physical world? Or are we being fooled by cruel tricks of the data? In Space Oddities, Harry Cliff, a physicist who does cutting-edge work on the Large Hadron Collider, provides a riveting look at the universe’s most confounding puzzles.
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as compelling as a mystery novel and very informative
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Irreligion
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Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? Mathematician and best-selling author John Allen Paulos thinks not. In Irreligion he presents the case for his own worldview, organizing his book into 12 chapters that refute the 12 arguments most often put forward for believing in God's existence.
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Would probably be more understandable in print.
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It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs.
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Lacking in many aspects
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
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The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.
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Too Political
- By Allan on 12-14-11
By: Lisa Randall
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Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs
- The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
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Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city descended from space to crash into Earth, creating a devastating cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. What was its origin? In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Lisa Randall proposes it was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit as the solar system passed through a disk of dark matter embedded in the Milky Way. In a sense it might have been dark matter that killed the dinosaurs.
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remarkable book with a caveat
- By Kindle Customer on 10-29-15
By: Lisa Randall
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Why Does E=MC2 and Why Should We Care
- By: Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
- Narrated by: Jeff Forshaw
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In one of the most exciting and accessible explanations of The Theory of Relativity in recent years, Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein's most famous equation, exploring the principles of physics through everyday life.
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Needs a few Diagrams
- By Roy on 06-13-11
By: Brian Cox, and others
What listeners say about The 4 Percent Universe
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Greg A. Miller
- 01-27-15
Interesting for those interested in Dark Matter
I enjoyed this, although I did at times feel a little bogged down by the details of this story.
Anyone with an interest in astronomy, cosmology, phyics and the history behind modern science and developing scientific tbeory, will enjoy this book. It is told well but I imagine that the more intimately the reader knows the characters in the accounts given, the more enjoyable this book will be.
Ray Porter provides a very commenfable performance of narration. I am glad to have listened. Time well spent.
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2 people found this helpful
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- J.B.
- 06-19-15
Bound to Eternity
This book is about the birth of Cosmology; the astrophysical study of the history, structure, and constituent dynamics of the universe. We can consider it as two books in one. First it is a history of the study of the universe during the last century, particularly concerned with “inflation” the expansion of the universe and second about the competition between the men and woman in two distinct research groups and their competition to determine just why the universe is expanding. Well perhaps that would be better said, whether it was expanding and if so, where and what is the stuff making it expand?
There is so much data here about the science – all given in layman’s terms, that I think this book is a twice read to get its contents. Not the best story I have ever read but the knowledge about our universe, dark matter, dark energy and its endless nature is so intriguing that it is easily a two time listen book.
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- Victor Aguilar
- 01-09-15
Don't make this one your first book...
Don't make this book your first on this subject. It's more like an intermediate level or you could struggle a bit.
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1 person found this helpful
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- MC
- 08-23-16
More history and politics than science
Book focused a lot on the dates and politics of the discoveries, specially towards the end, no so much on the science
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- Luis Quinones
- 10-30-18
The most exciting scientific discovery story!
Having previously returned another scientific book (Ignition!), I was skeptical to try another possible dry retelling of formulas and scientific principles. This is not dull. This is more of a race between generations of research groups in a tale that reminds of Carl Sagan's Cosmos!
I fully recommend this for anyone who wishes they understood either the people or the universe as a whole better!
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- Shayne
- 08-17-16
Good book.
I feel like; I'm pretty up to date on my cosmology now. This book is for the common folk. It is not for someone who has already studied cosmology. It is basically a well written history. I loved the way it was written. I loved the way it was narrated. The content was interesting, but I couldn't help think what is the utility of any of these discoveries. Oh well perhaps in the future we will find some use, but it seems it would be very distant.
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- SAMA
- 01-03-15
A history of modern astronomy
This audiobook takes us through a journey of discovery about the cosmos, what we know, and the social and professional competition between astronomers to make sense of the universe.
I highly recommend this book.
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- Pradheepa
- 06-17-13
Listen, Learn, Love
One of the best science books I have listened to on Audible. Richard Panek is a master storyteller. I was enthralled by the story of how dark energy and dark matter were discovered and how scientists reluctantly came to accept their existence. The quest to understand the story of our universe: its origin, present and possible future was as engaging as any well written adventure story.
What I liked best about this book was how it described the rare brush with the ineffable, which is one of the high points of scientific research. Perhaps these sublime moments keep some scientists going despite the many somber episodes of frustration and disappointment.
Ray Porter's narration was perfect for this book. I would strongly recommend this book.
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- douglas f patenaude
- 10-16-20
Wow
What a great story of modern cosmology and the human quest for understanding. More please!!
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- Mark Davey
- 01-24-11
The recent history in Astronomy / Cosmology
What this book is not, 1) a text book or 2) detailed explanation of Astrophysics.
What this is a history of Astronomy for the last 40 years.
Richard Panek is a journalist and this book is a detailed account in the personalities in Astronomy for the last 40 years that lead to the ideas that we can see only 4% of the Universe and how we see inflation.
Given that i've been out of school for 30 years my math can't follow the detailed cosmology text book but this book provides a clear reasoning why we believe the universe is accelerating and the problems that provides for theatrical physicists. If you love Astrophysics/Cosmology books give this a read.
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63 people found this helpful