the dark side

I stumbled across Iain Nicolson's Dark Side of the Universe book at my local library. I renewed the hard cover as many times as the TPL (Toronto Public Library) would allow. Not an easy read. You definitely need to be paying attention. Still, he presents the material well, and supports it with good illustrations and real world analogues.

It is remarkable how much things are changing, in the short time since this book's publication. As I was reading the book, produced in 2007, I was also reading web site articles updating some of the theories and numbers. That's like watching some first season episodes at the same as second or third season episodes. Shows how exciting and cutting edge this topic is! How much we still don't know.

As I read this work from John Hopkins University Press, I was very intrigued by some of the ideas presented. Briefly toyed with some exotic theories of my own. The most interesting thing to me was the number of large-scale experiments in progress right now searching for the tell tale signs of dark matter and dark energy. And how many of these have failed.