Heart of darkness : unraveling the mysteries of the invisible universe / Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton.

"Heart of Darkness describes the incredible saga of humankind's quest to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. Over the past thirty years, scientists have learned that two little-understood components--dark matter and dark energy--comprise most of the known cosmos, explain the growth of all cosmic structure, and hold the key to the universe's fate"--Jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-293) and index.

From myth to reality. Astronomy : the endless frontier ; Charting and modeling the heavens ; Copernicus : "the last of the Greek cosmologists" ; Galileo : a new approach to mechanics and cosmology ; The impact of Copernicus : Kepler's Laws ; Isaac Newton and gravity ; William Herschel discovers the universe ; Understanding the universe becomes a new kind of science -- Einstein's toolkit, and how to use it. Overconfidence among the cognoscenti at the dawn of the twentieth century ; Revolution in physics : the inception of quantum theory and relativity ; Special relativity ; General relativity ; General relativity is tested, passes the test, and is a sensation ; Cosmological solutions to Einstein's equations -- The realm of the nebulae. New instruments in a better climate unveil a new world ; A universe of galaxies is confirmed ; A cosmological model to fit the new data : enter, Georges Lemaître ; Physical cosmology and the expanding universe ; Lemaître's synthesis model foretells the contribution of dark energy ; Hubble's achievements ; Big science to attack the big problem ; The steady state model universe and the big bang -- Let's do cosmology! The big bang : a starting point that cannot be escaped ; Observational cosmology, the biggest puzzle to be solved with the biggest telescope ; The grand project was initially too difficult -- Discovering the Big Bang. Did our universe have an explosive birth? ; What makes the stars shine? ; Nuclear astrophysics moves to the cosmos ; The fireball in which the first chemical elements were made ; Direct radio observations of the big bang fireball ; Understanding the big bang -- The origin of structure in the universe. "In the beginning"--why an explanation is needed ; Structure within the expanding universe ; The elusive standard candle : Beatrice Tinsley changes the game ; Real cosmic structure found and cataloged by Fritz Zwicky ; Understanding the origin of structure becomes serious science ; Cosmic inflation ; The seeds of cosmic structure are discovered ; Closing the loop : how do seeds grow to galaxies? -- Dark matter, or, Fritz Zwicky's greatest invention. How the earth was weighed ; Finding the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy ; Zwicky finds dark matter in clusters of galaxies in the 1930s ; The rediscovery of dark matter in the 1970s ; Rotation curves confirm the case for dark matter ; More recent multiple lines of evidence for dark matter -- Dark energy, or, Einstein's greatest blunder. A curious situation ; Will gravity lead to a collapse of the solar system? ; Expected and unexpected motions of thrown stones and Hubble's universe ; The invention of the cosmological constant or dark energy : 1915 ; The revival of dark energy in the 1970s ; New arguments and new evidence--dark energy confirmed in the 1990s ; Dark energy fills the gap, allowing the flat, "just right" universe -- The modern paradigm and the limits of our knowledge. We have come a long way ; The matter and energy content of the universe ; The global cosmological solution and the cosmic triangle ; In the beginning ; Structure in the universe ; The supercomputer approach -- The frontier : major mysteries that remain. Dark matter ; Dark energy ; Inflation ; Giant black holes ; Fine-tuning ; Summing up.

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