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

The 4 Percent Universe is classic PBS-bait. I mean that as a good thing: it is the story of the High-Z Supernova Search Team that competed against the Supernova Cosmology Project in order to determine the answer to the question: What is the ultimate fate of the universe?

Panek brings his own philosophy of science to the book: experiments are necessary to prove things. He isn't going to throw around theory like Kaku or Krauss or Greene. He has no desire to explain to us the latest permutation of quantum gibberish being thrown around in theoretical departments. He wants to give us the chronology from Newton to where we are now, and he does a wonderful job. Experiment by experiment he conveys to us the chronology of cosmology up to the present state:a universe that has an accelerating expansion drive by dark energy, and giant filament structures of galaxies bound by dark matter halos.

My favorite part of the book was about the trials and tribulations of Vera Rubin, a lady born around the time my grandmother who nailed down the evidence that made dark matter an indisputable fact of reality. She continually gets crap in the male dominated field of astronomy, but never gave up her interest in understanding the universe.

I would call this book "a romp." If you've been missing the NOVA of 2008, when Brian Greene helped start the cascade of science documentaries that would end up in the Cosmos flop and YouTube taking over as physics-knowledge-distributor, this book is for you.