Heart of Darkness

<p><b>Humanity''s ongoing quest to unlock the secrets of dark matter and dark energy</b><br><br><i>Heart of Darkness</i> describes the incredible saga of humankind''s quest to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. Over the past forty 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. The story of how evidence for the so-called "Lambda-Cold Dark Matter" model of cosmology has been gathered by generations of scientists throughout the world is told here by one of the pioneers of the field, Jeremiah Ostriker, and his coauthor Simon Mitton.<br><br>From humankind''s early attempts to comprehend Earth''s place in the solar system, to astronomers'' exploration of the Milky Way galaxy and the realm of the nebulae beyond, to the detection of the primordial fluctuations of energy from which all subsequen