Hunting Down the Universe: The Missing Mass, Primordial Black Holes, and Other Dark Matters

The central theme of this scientist's theory is summarized in the last sentence of the book. "The stars and galaxies that fill our view as we survey the depths of the universe are really just a froth delineating the massive, dark unseen structures beneath." He is telling us that almost all of the matter of the universe is hidden from our view. All of the stars we see just account for 10% of the matter in the universe. The other 90% is invisible. How does he arrive at this conclusion? A certain amount of mass is necessary to provide enough gravitational force to balance the opposite force in the universe, the force that drives stars away from each other. Without this mass, the stars would be hurtling off into space, not forming galaxies. And the stars we can see only account for 10% of the necessary mass. What is the other 90%? He answers this too. The other 90% of the matter of the universe is composed of black holes the size of beach balls and the mass of Jupiter. What leads him to say that? He'll explain it all to you. It has to do with variations in the light of far-away quasars. He believes that this light is varying because it is being seen through the "lens" of a lot of little black holes that happen to exist in the line of sight between us and those quasars. What is a quasar? What does baryonic mean? What is a black hole? What is inflation? There is a terrific glossary near the back of the book. It might be the best part of the book. You will learn a lot just from taking your time browsing through the glossary. It is mind-boggling to me that all these millions of little black holes would have formed within the first millionth of a second of the universe's existence. If there is a creator, she was certainly not hurried by our conception of time. She came from a place that isn't hampered by time constrictions. He addresses the debate between the Big Bang and the Steady State theories, and he believes that the Big Bang necessarily supports the existence of a creator while the Steady State does not. I don't really see his point there. If you choose to believe in a creator (and I can't think of a reason why you should back away from that idea, except for being utterly fed up with the nonsense of Noah chasing around the arctic to kidnap polar bears and haul them to the Middle East in a damn hurry) you are pretty well stuck with her (the creator) even with the Steady State theory. Wouldn't she have been the one who made the stars in the first place? That's her job, no? This book also leaves us with the cheery thought that the world's scientists tend to be stubborn, jealous, impressed by status, rarely objective, and a bunch of annoying crapheads. Thank you for letting us know. It renews my faith in humanity.

British astrophysicist Hawkins presents his theory as to what makes up the missing mass (dark matter). Primordial black holes - small massive objects that are all but invisible to any attempt to perceive them. They are detectable only by their gravitational influence, which Hawkins believes he has found by examining the variability of light from quasars. All quasars apparently have this variability, which to this point has always been accepted as intrinsic to to the quasar.Hawkins treats us to the theory only after 130 pages of his own views of the evolution of cosmological thought, complete with his take on the feuds, backbiting, and troubled waters of academic squabbling. His insights are interesting and his book a pleasure to read, but I had the troubling impression that I was being treated to someone else's dirty laundry all the while, though that's the way science works I suppose. Among opinions he expresses that ring true is that of the "HST bias," that results which come from HST observations are somehow given automatic priority over those of ground-based observations, a bias which is clearly not always warranted.The most interesting part of his book, for me, was his detailed descriptions of his own observational programs - using a series of Schmidt plates of a single patch of sky, accumulated over a period of years, to search for faint variable stars. His hopes were to find microlensing events to bolster his theory. He ended up finding lots of previously unknown quasars, and finding new patterns of quasar variability spanning years, not months or weeks.Hawkins is an unabashed UK promoter. I had to grin at many of his descriptions of the superior astronomy of the UK. He has a lot to brag about though.

Pretty good if your scientist! It isn't really a good source of information about blackholes, but if your looking for a nice scientific debate...this is the book for you! It mostly discusses arguments. Thats about it. See what you think.

Hawkins spends the first nearly two-thirds of the book going over some of the history of cosmology and astronomy and the personalities of some of the great historical figures. He clearly shows that if an idea is not acceptable to the "community" (of astronomers, cosmologists, physicists, etc.), it will most likely be rejected out-of-hand regardless of its potential validity or usefulness. The last third of the book is an explanation of his own theory of the missing matter question. While this book is interesting and historically enlightening, Hawkins spends a good deal of time taking pot shots at the powers -that-be. It is evident after the first couple of chapters that his theory is not taken seriously enough. One cannot help but agree with Hawkins that certain scientists are unpublished and/or unpopular because their ideas conflict with or diametrically oppose the accepted main stream. This close-mindedness and protectionist attitude toward scientific theories needs to be made public and Hawkins expresses himself in a manner that is not off-putting or whiney; he is always professional. If one is looking for a good, easy to read insider's view of historical and current astronomy, cosmology and physics, this is a good book with which to start. I gave it a 9 only because it took him so darned long to get to his theory.