You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but can you judge it by its blurbs?  If I find a book that looks interesting, a few blurbs by respected authorities can often convince me to take the plunge.  My copy of The 4% Universe, by science writer Richard Panek, features glowing blurbs by such luminaries as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Alan Lightman and Timothy Ferris that had me enthused.   Unfortunately, this time around, the blurbs failed me. 

The title of Panek's recent work explores some of the current confounding theories of modern physics and alludes to the idea that ordinary matter like stars, planets, cosmic dust and the ordinary items we encounter in our daily lives - Donald Trump's hair piece excluded - account for only 4% of the substance of the universe.   The missing 96% is made up of dark matter and dark energy, substances that physicists and astronomers are struggling mightily to explain, with only limited success. 

A few decades ago, when astronomers were first able to observe neighboring galaxies in detail, the stars within were noted to revolve around the galactic center at much higher speeds than expected.  These anomalous gravitational findings could not be explained given the estimated mass of the galaxies under study.  A huge amount of invisible mass had to be invoked to fully account for these surprising observations.  The inscrutable dark matter.   Panek explores the many ways that scientists have been trying to produce evidence of dark matter in the laboratory setting, often bringing together the efforts of "big picture" cosmologists and "nano picture" particle physicists.

In addition, recent observations reveal that rather than gradually decelerating following The Big Bang 14 billion years ago, galaxies throughout the universe are actually accelerating away from each other at increasing speeds, seemingly under the power of an unknown force.  The mysterious dark energy.  

Before I read this book I knew next to nothing about these two new substances, but I am annoyed by the amount of effort I had to put forth to understand these two straight-forward concepts.   As the gentle reader may know, I read plenty of nerdy science books, usually with pleasure and minimal struggle or suffering.  Regrettably, I found myself slogging through Panek's work with persistent misery.

Let's see if I can dredge up some specifics:

The author focuses more on the scientists than on the science.   In other books this technique can create an effective narrative, especially when featuring a few interesting or charismatic characters, but in this case I couldn't keep track of dozens of different theorists and researchers.  Panek fails to bring them to life on the page in anything more than a superficial manner.

More annoyingly, the book includes no charts, diagrams or equations.  It doesn't take a genius to know that scientists use these visual or logical devices to help explain or clarify complicated topics.  Apparently, Panek thinks that the descriptive power of his words is enough to explain some of the most complicated ideas in science - like general relativity, Hubble's constant and cosmic microwave background radiation - to an audience of lay people.  His failure to accomplish this goal makes for confusing reading.

The 4% Universe tackles an amazing topic.  The fact that the universe consists primarily of substances that are literally inconceivable is about as mind bending as it gets.  The deeper scientists look into these questions the more they're enveloped in mystery.   While I learned just enough from this book to inspire continued interest in the topic, Panek's effort left me disappointed and more wary of the well crafted blurb.  Maybe in some parallel universe he has written a more engaging book, but I recommend looking elsewhere for "dark" enlightenment. 


Other astronomy and space books:

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
Packing for Mars
Earthrise

Recommended: No