3/8: THE UNKNOWN UNKNOWN: The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter by Govert Schilling (Author), Avi Loeb (Foreword)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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3/8: THE UNKNOWN UNKNOWN: The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter by Govert Schilling (Author), Avi Loeb (Foreword)
https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Universe-Hundred-Year-Search-Matter/dp/0674248996
In The Elephant in the Universe, Govert Schilling explores the fascinating history of the search for dark matter. Evidence for its existence comes from a wealth of astronomical observations. Theories and computer simulations of the evolution of the universe are also suggestive: they can be reconciled with astronomical measurements only if dark matter is a dominant component of nature. Physicists have devised huge, sensitive instruments to search for dark matter, which may be unlike anything else in the cosmos―some unknown elementary particle. Yet so far dark matter has escaped every experiment. Indeed, dark matter is so elusive that some scientists are beginning to suspect there might be something wrong with our theories about gravity or with the current paradigms of cosmology. Schilling interviews both believers and heretics and paints a colorful picture of the history and current status of dark matter research, with astronomers and physicists alike trying to make sense of theory and observation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS, I Am the World. |
| 0:07.2 | I'm John Batsow with Goverch-Shilly, his wonderful new book, The Elephant and the Universe, |
| 0:11.6 | 100-Year Search for Dark Matter. |
| 0:13.4 | It also travels and conversations with astronomers and researchers in deep minds in the beautiful |
| 0:22.6 | Chilly High Desert of Chilly. |
| 0:25.1 | And also back in time, Goverch is going to take us to the Big Bang and why it is that that's |
| 0:31.7 | important to make part of the search for dark matter. |
| 0:35.9 | What happened in the first moments? |
| 0:37.5 | What is it? |
| 0:38.5 | How can we imagine it, Goverch? |
| 0:40.8 | It's an extremely complicated topic, but we see now that space is expanding because |
| 0:45.6 | all the galaxies get farther and farther away from each other. |
| 0:49.1 | So the empty space between galaxies is expanding. |
| 0:52.6 | That's something that we have measured over and over again. |
| 0:56.1 | So if you try to work that back in time, you must realize that in the past everything |
| 1:01.6 | all the matter in the universe was closer together. |
| 1:04.6 | And if you go back in time, then it must have started in a very dense state and a very |
| 1:09.3 | hot state. |
| 1:10.3 | And that's what the astronomers call the Big Bang, which is actually the birth of our current |
| 1:14.6 | universe. |
| 1:15.6 | Obviously there are many, many riddles about the Big Bang. |
| 1:18.7 | We don't know why it started or how it started. |
... |
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