Book – La matière noire

Book– La matière noire

Full title : La matière noire, à la recherche de la plus grande inconnue de l'Univers

Original title :  Un paseo por el cosmos

By: Alberto Casas Gonzaléz

Also: Vianney Aubert (Adaptation) ; Magali Mangin (Translation ) ; Alain Bouquet (scientific re-reading) ; Tiphaine Diaconu (correction) 

Score : 10/10

Year: 2016

Publisher : RBA France

ISBN 978-2-8237-0399-3

Pages: 159

Language: French (translated from Spanish)

4th book finished in January (2024) but only pages 36-154 were read this month (details at the end).

Completed the 'Incognito' challenge (cover without characters) at LucieBulle.

Science book - Astronomy. See at the end and in key words, the associated tags.

Before starting my review, I will copy - then comment on - the back cover, which is confusing.

"Over the last few decades, scientific observations have apparently detected the presence in the cosmos of a new category of matter. Described as "black", because it is very difficult to detect, it is much more abundant than its ordinary counterpart. With the no less mysterious “dark energy”, it represents 95% of the total content of the cosmos. Its density is such that it conditions the future of the entire Universe. Research carried out to identify its nature promises to open new horizons to our understanding of reality."

First, scientists have not actually detected the presence of either dark matter or dark energy. In fact, the book is about the research to find what they suppose represents them.

Second, the 95% does not correspond to dark matter, but to its combined value with that of dark energy.

I now move on to details/critique:

the book traces the history of discoveries and theories which led to the supposition that the known matter in our universe is ultimately only a tiny part, or 5% of the total, while the rest is made up of 27% of matter black and 68% black energy.

In detail, the book begins, pages 5-6, with Hubert Reeves' preface to the collection Voyage Dans le Cosmos, which includes this work.

Followed by an Introduction (p. 9-12),

Then, chapter 1 (p.13) ""à la découverte de la matière noire" discusses the mass of the Earth, how it was determined; the discoveries of Newton in 1665 (law of gravitation), the questions of planetary orbits, and how we "weigh" the sun and galaxies, up to the research of Vera Rubin and Kent Ford, in the 1960s and 70s .

In chapter 2 (p.37) "des expériences cosmiques" discusses the modification of Newton's law, goes through the theory of relativity and as Einstein himself modified it, the curvature of space-time which makes it part, gravitational lenses and their role in astronomical research.

Chapter 3 (p.59)"la trace de l'invisible dans les reliques du Big Bang" bounces back and continues the previous subjects, putting them in the light of the Big Bang, of primordial nucleosynthesis - that is to say the syntheses of atomic nuclei, in a period which goes from the Big Bang to the first 380,000 years of our universe.

We continue with the discovery, in 1969, of the irregularity in the cosmic diffuse background.

This chapter also talks about the 'sound' of the early Universe and how researchers used the sound spectrum to track evolution and an oscillation period of 760,000 years.

The 4th chapter (p.93) "la nature de la matière noire : à la recherche de la particule X" 

This chapter uses the analogy of a criminal investigation and how scientists develop the supposed criteria for dark matter, and ends with an overview of the research and tools used for this purpose.

Finally, chapter 5 (p.127-154)  "l'énergie noire et le destin de l'Univers" explains a little more the stretching of galaxies - part of the expansion of the universe - and compares the approaches at the age that we gave it before 1998 and the discoveries which led to the various new theories - those of dark matter and energy - and what age we obtain with the formulas which result from the suspected presence of these "new things". We go from 12 billion years if dark matter and energy do not exist (but with a major problem: it is also the age of the oldest known stars, which would be illogical) to 13.8 billions if we assume these existences.

The chapter ends with theories of the future of our Universe - according to still unknown variables - and this results in 3 possibilities (increasingly rapid extension, with a preponderance of dark energy), or, if it does not exist not, we will either slow down but the extension continues, or, slow down until the Big Crunch, the collapse of the Universe.

And the very last discussion covers the theory of the Multiverse, the multiple universes.

The whole thing is illustrated with mathematical formulas, generally simplified/shortened if necessary, spatial figures and photographs; as well as boxes giving short biographies (see the tags at the bottom) or even on specific tools.

The last stages of the book, especially scientific, are recommended readings (p.155) and Index (p. 157-159)

Tags:

Popular works (except that I think it is relatively advanced, and nevertheless contains jargon necessarily accessible to neophytes)

Universe

Rubin, Vera (1928-2016)

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)

Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)

I said I read pages 36-154 in January 2024. I actually started this work on 10/10/2023 (up to page 12), then December 27 (up to p.36)