Heart of Darkness by Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton

December 17. 2013, South Amboy, NJ.

Hardcover 2013, 299 pages.

Subtitle: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe

This book in the Science Essentials series where scientists prominent in their fields are invited to bring "cutting-edge science" to a general audience.  No doubt a great disappointment to those that expected a thriller.

The authors go through the history of cosmology (from second century BC) to the current thinking of dark matter and dark energy.  Even for a (former) student of science, the concepts are at times difficult to follow.  The gist is the different scientific theories and experiments are consistent with a world where dark matter and dark energy make up the bulk of the universe (what we call "baryonic matter" constitutes only 4 or so percent) in the "Lambda Cold Dark Matter" model.  Since I started off knowing that already, the book in some sense did not add much to my understanding of the subject.

While the authors seem to be quite satisfied with the extent of scientific knowledge, I find such level of satisfaction unwarranted.  After all, 95% of "stuff" in the cosmos is dark (i.e., unknown) beyond some basic properties (gravity for dark matter, repulsive force for dark energy).

I do wonder if the authors' description of the universe is consistent with Stephen Hawking's description in the book Grand Design.