The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter

by Govert Schilling, Avi Loeb (Foreword by)

Overview

A Seminary Co-op Notable Book
A BBC Sky at Night Best Book

“An impressively comprehensive bird’s-eye view of a research topic that is both many decades established and yet still at the very cutting edge of astronomy and physics.”
—Katie Mack, Wall Street Journal

“Schilling has craftily combined his lucid and accessible descriptions of science with the personal story of those unlocking the finer details of the missing mass mystery. The result is enthralling…A captivating scientific thriller.”
—BBC Sky at Night

“Fascinating…A thorough and sometimes troubling account of the hunt for dark matter…You will come away with a very good understanding of how the universe works. Well, our universe, anyway.”
—Michael Brooks, New Scientist

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.

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. It 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. Govert Schilling interviews believers and heretics and paints a colorful picture of the history and current status of dark matter research. The Elephant in the Universe is a vivid tale of scientists puzzling their way toward the true nature of the universe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674295490
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2024
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	416,518
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Govert Schilling is the author of dozens of popular astronomy books, including Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy. He received the Eureka Prize from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the David N. Schramm Award from the American Astronomical Society. In 2007 the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid, 10986 Govert, in his honor.

Avi Loeb is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University. He is Founding Director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

Foreword Avi Loeb ix

Introduction 1

Part I Ear

1 Matter, but Not as We Know It 11

2 Underground Phantoms 23

3 The Pioneers 34

4 The Halo Effect 48

5 Flattening the Curve 60

6 Cosmic Cartography 71

7 Big Bang Baryons 82

8 Radio Recollections 94

Part II Tusk

9 Into the Cold 109

10 Miraculous WIMPs 121

11 Simulating the Universe 133

12 The Heretics 146

13 Behind the Lens 158

14 MACHO Culture 171

15 The Runaway Universe 184

16 Pie in the Sky 197

17 Telltale Patterns 208

Part III Trunk

18 The Xenon Wars 223

19 Catching the Wind 236

20 Messengers from Outer Space 249

21 Delinquent Dwarfs 262

22 Cosmological Tension 274

23 Elusive Ghosts 286

24 Dark Crisis 298

25 Seeing the Invisible 310

Notes 323

Acknowledgments 347

Image Credits 349

Index 351

Editorial Reviews

With this book, Schilling offers us a clear and entertaining update on the quest to understand the nature of dark matter. The way he tells this story beautifully captures the sense of mystery that those of us working in this field experience every day.

Dan Hooper

A lively book by a skilled science journalist on an important topic in cosmology: the dark matter.

Robert Kirshner

Fascinating…A thorough and sometimes troubling account of the hunt for dark matter…Schilling is an expert guide not only to dark matter and the equally baffling dark energy, which gets a good outing here, but to particle physics and cosmology…You will come away with a very good understanding of how the universe works. Well, our universe, anyway.

New Scientist - Michael Brooks

Expertly explains what we’ve learned about dark matter, and what we have yet to learn.

Space Review - Jeff Foust

The book is both an advertisement for the thrill of scientific discovery and the visionaries who pursue the big questions simply because they are there. Schilling has craftily combined his lucid and accessible descriptions of science with the personal story of those unlocking the finer details of the missing mass mystery. The result is enthralling…A captivating scientific thriller. Future generations will no doubt be grateful for this fascinating contemporary account.

BBC Sky at Night

Govert Schilling brings his longtime experience of writing about astronomy and its history to this exciting volume. Newcomers to the field will find much to learn in these pages, and experts much to discuss.

Virginia Trimble

03/14/2022

Journalist Schilling (Ripples in Spacetime) chronicles the decades-long search for dark matter in this fascinating history. Sophisticated experiments are being conducted to document the existence of dark matter, which Schilling describes as “one of the biggest enigmas of modern science”: though it is believed to hold “the universe together,” he writes, its “true nature” remains a mystery. The author outlines the work of key players in the field: there’s Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, who “was the first to come up with a description of the shape and size of the Milky Way, a description that included a role for dark matter” in the 1920s; Phillip James Edwin Peebles, “godfather of the theory of cold dark matter,” who was prominent in the 1970s and ’80s when “dark matter burst onto the scene”; and Vera Rubin, whose 1980 paper on “missing mass” revolutionized the field. Along the way, Schilling convincingly argues that even without proof of its existence, dark matter has increased people’s understanding of the world—the search for it has led to greater knowledge of galaxies, gravity, and the big bang, among other phenomena. It makes for a solid introduction to an elusive topic. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Takes the reader on a vivid and entertaining journey through the history of the search for dark matter…Through interviews with personalities on both sides of historical controversies, the book is a colorful account of science in action, and is thoughtfully balanced to be engaging for a general audience as well as detailed enough to satisfy readers with a more technical background.

Nature Astronomy - Morgan Hollis

A non-technical, historical, personal, up-to-date, correct, balanced, well-written, and well-researched book.

The Observatory - Phillip Helbig

Schilling takes readers on a journey through the stories of a veritable army of physicists from around the globe as they have sought to understand the dark matter and dark energy that appear to make up 95% of our Universe.

Science - Catherine Heymans

A genuine page-turner. Schilling masterfully tells the stories of some of the greatest—and quirkiest—minds ever to probe the cosmos.

Rick Fienberg

Govert Schilling has written a riveting narrative that brings you up to date on the research into astronomy's most long-standing and frustrating mystery: What is the universe's main ingredient? Thoroughly researched and highly enjoyable.

Marcia Bartusiak

From a revered science writer, a clear, wide-ranging account of one of the deepest and most fascinating mysteries in astronomy.

Martin Rees

An impressively comprehensive bird’s-eye view of a research topic that is both many decades established and yet still at the very cutting edge of astronomy and physics. Along the course of this whirlwind tour, we catch glimpses of the lives and motivations of many of the key thinkers and builders who have defined the dark matter problem, as well as those who hope, sooner or later, to solve it.

Wall Street Journal - Katie Mack

2022-01-26
A veteran science journalist delves into one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries.

Stars and other visible objects make up about 15% of solid matter in the universe; the other 85% is invisible. Astronomers have known this since 1932, but only recently has the hunt for dark matter taken off. Schilling begins with a disclaimer of sorts: “Despite decades of speculation, searching, studies, and simulations, dark matter remains one of the biggest enigmas of modern science.” Rather than follow the traditional format by beginning with the history (and easy concepts) and proceeding toward more complex ideas, the author offers a series of interesting chapters, many of which could stand alone. He chronicles his interviews with scientists around the world and often rewinds the clock to earlier discoveries that foreshadow today’s massive but still frustrating efforts. Early in the last century, astronomers discovered that stars were moving too fast. Just as planets circle the sun, stars circle their galaxies. Since gravity diminishes with distance, outlying planets move more slowly, but this wasn’t true in galaxies. Outlying stars were not slowing. Gravity controls movements, so galaxies had to be much heavier than predicted. At first, astronomers assumed that gas, dust, and small solid bodies made up the difference, but these were never found. By the 1980s, scientists concluded that this “missing mass” represented particles unknown to science. They’re still unknown, but researchers keep searching. Curious, indefatigable, and a fine writer, Schilling clearly relays the work of astrophysicists, some of whom denigrate the work of colleagues. Great telescopes and other instruments on Earth and in space work their magic, but they reveal only hints of dark matter. The discovery of dark energy created yet another significant enigma. “Over the past two decades,” writes the author, “the pie diagram of the composition of the universe—68.5 percent dark energy, 26.6 percent dark matter, and 4.9 percent familiar stuff—has become an iconic representation of our cosmic ignorance.”

An entertaining account of a scientific quest that has failed—so far.

Kirkus Reviews