"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 remarkable book and 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" repr
