The 4% universe - review of Cosmology

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There isn't a lot to say about dark matter and dark energy - since everything we know about these prevalent universal items is from inferences. No one seems to have found or measured either yet. So reading a long scientific book about these alleged 'dark' ie unknown things isn't going to convince many people that they exist.
What IS convincing is Panek's social history of modern cosmology. How generations of scientists working around the planet both collaborating and competing with each other - as they still are - and yet independently coming to the SAME Conclusion!
Two competing teams trying to prove each other's findings wrong and failing. Amusing and convincing to laypeople like myself.
This book is not dry or boring like most science seems to like to be.
The concept of our universe [that which we perceive] being the equivalent of the froth on the coffee of the rapidly expanding universe is HUGE and I recommend this book to any science fiction writers to include these findings in your new work.
I would remind all scientists that science is far from scientific.
The topics studied and researched depend very much upon the very personal and far from objective decisions of the individuals involved. Not to mention the choices of funding organisations and institutions and even the time available on the telescopes!
No amount of pretentiousness can disguise these human subjective limitations to scientific processes and achievements.
'The 4% Universe' underlines for the reader the fact that personal choices, competition and rivalry have had more of an impact upon cosmological research and the results reported today, than any over-reaching humanitarian goal to benefit mankind with their 'objective' findings about the history of the universe.
Nobel Prize anyone?


View all my reviews

Houses people build at the beach - photo essay.

I visited a beach on the west coast of New Zealand - Mokau. It is one of four rivers which devolve on this part of the west coast. That means that there is a lot of driftwood on the beach, one of the delights of this part of New Zealand.
Over the summer people have constructed the most wonderful beach huts and 'houses' from this driftwood. Enjoy my photo essay.

 Large house side view and front view. I love the un-lit fireplace.

 Yummy dark cosy humpy.

 A lighter version of the beach house, the two limbs in the foreground have fallen in.

 Further down the beach clever use of a huge tree protruding from the beach.

 A tiny child's hut at the opposite end of the cosy humpy log above.

This is a total instinctive celebration of the feminine. An awesome minimalist construct centred around a 'yoni' at the upper edge of the tide.

Then today, a storm has arisen and has no doubt wiped them off the beach.