Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

by Lisa Randall

Overview

“A cracking read, combining storytelling of the highest order with a trove of information. . . . What’s remarkable is that it all fits together.”—Wall Street Journal

“Successful science writing tells a complete story of the ‘how’—the methodical marvel building up to the ‘why’—and Randall does just that.”—New York Times Book Review

“[Randall] is a lucid explainer, street-wise and informal. Without jargon or mathematics, she steers us through centuries of sometimes tortuous astronomical history.”—The Guardian

In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Professor Lisa Randall, one of today’s most influential theoretical physicists, takes readers on an intellectual adventure through the history of the cosmos, showing how events in the farthest reaches of the Universe created the conditions for life—and death—on our planet.

Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city crashed into Earth, killing off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the planet’s species. Challenging the usual assumptions about the simple makeup of the unseen material that constitutes 85% of the matter in the Universe, Randall explains how a disk of dark matter in the Milky Way plane might have triggered the cataclysm.

But Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs does more than present a radical idea. With clarity and wit, it explains the nature of the Universe, dark matter, the Milky Way galaxy, comets, asteroids, and impacts. This breathtaking synthesis, illuminated by pop culture references and social and political viewpoints, reveals the deep relationships among the small and the large, the visible and the hidden, as well as the astonishing beauty of the connections that surround us. It’s impossible to read this book and look at either the Earth or the sky again in the same way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062328502
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	254,474
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees. Professor Randall was included in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2007 and was among Esquire magazine's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century." Professor Randall's two books, Warped Passages (2005) and Knocking on Heaven's Door (2011) were New York Times bestsellers and 100 Notable Books. Her stand-alone e-book, Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space, was published in 2012.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part I The Development of the Universe

1 The Clandestine Dark Matter Society 1

2 The Discovery of Dark Matter 11

3 The Big Questions 25

4 Almost the Very Beginning: A Very Good Place to Start 35

5 A Galaxy Is Born 55

Part II An Active Solar System

6 Meteoroids, Meteors, and Meteorites 75

7 The Short, Glorious Lives of Comets 95

8 The Edge of the Solar System 117

9 Living Dangerously 123

10 Shock and Awe 147

11 Extinctions 155

12 The End of the Dinosaurs 189

13 Life in the Habitable Zone 219

14 What Goes Around Comes Around 237

15 Flinging Comets from the Oort Cloud 251

Part III Deciphering Dark Matter's Identity

16 The Matter of the Invisible World 271

17 How to See in the Dark 289

13 Socially Connected Dark Matter 303

19 The Speed of Dark 315

20 Searching for the Dark Disk 331

21 Dark Matter and Comet Strikes 347

Conclusion: Looking Lip 363

Acknowledgments 373

List of Illustrations 376

Supplementary Reading 377

Index 397

Editorial Reviews

Successful science writing tells a complete story of the ‘how’-the methodical marvel building up to the ‘why’-and Randall does just that.” — New York Times Book Review

“A cracking read, combining storytelling of the highest order with a trove of information on subjects as diverse as astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology and particle physics. What’s remarkable is that it all fits together.” — Wall Street Journal

“The universe, Randall eloquently argues, is an organic thing, a symphonic thing, with all its myriad parts contributing their own notes.” — Time Magazine

“Randall succeeds in guiding the reader through the history of the cosmos and the Earth from the Big Bang to the emergence of life as we know it in a fun and captivating way. . . . [This is] a very enjoyable read for both lay readers and scientists.” — Science Magazine

“The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

“Through Randall’s brilliant research we see a universe unfold that is far grander than anyone at any time could have imagined… She is a progressive thinker, a visionary capable of bridging the vast gulf between speculation and reality science.” — San Francisco Book Review

“Randall, a Harvard professor, is one of the world’s leading experts on particle physics and cosmology. In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, she takes readers on an illuminating scientific adventure, beginning 66 million years ago, that connects dinosaurs, comets, DNA, and the future of the planet.” — Huffington Post

“Brilliant and thought provoking…The greatest strength of Randall’s book is that it lacks any overly academic jargon and is reasonably easy to understand. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs illustrates beautifully that there is so much left to be discovered about ourselves and the universe that we call home.” — BUST

“The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.” — Physics World

“The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.” — WHYY Radio Times

“Mind-blowing. . . . If [Randall is] correct. . . . it would be a revolution in human thought every bit as gargantuan as that precipitated by Copernicus. — House of Speakeasy Blog

“The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.” — On Being with Krista Tippett

“[Randall’s] is a fascinating, tantalizing theory, linking life on Earth-or the extinction thereof-with the very origins of our universe.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Engrossing in its own right, this theory opens onto an illuminating survey of the cutting-edge science now deployed to test its components, including its daring redefinition of dark matter. As she did in Warped Passages (2005) and Knocking on Heaven’s Door (2011), Randall delivers intellectual exhilaration.” — Booklist, Starred Review

“Writing in a deceptively chatty narrative style, Randall provides a fascinating window into the excitement of discovery and the rigor required to test and elaborate new hypotheses. A top-notch science book from a leading researcher.” — Kirkus, Starred Review

Only Lisa Randall can take us on such a thrilling scientific journey—from dinosaurs to DNA to comets to dark matter and to past and future of our species. Randall’s research is so thorough, the story so powerful, and her storytelling so compelling that I could not put this book down.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of Emperor of All Maladies

“The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.” — Walter Kirn, author of Blood Will Out and Up In the Air

“The wonder and curiosity Lisa Randall so obviously feels about our world and the universe itself is evident on every page. [Randall] render[s] complex subject matter into a gripping page-turner that is impossible to put down. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a fascinating, mind-expanding experience.” — Augusten Burroughs, author of This is How and Running with Scissors

“Lisa Randall has produced an intriguing, insightful book that brilliantly weaves together the disparate subjects of cosmology and biology. . . . A simple, elegant theory that finally makes sense of mass extinctions. A must read for anyone interested in the precariousness of life on earth.” — Jack Horner, MacArthur Fellow and author of How To Build a Dinosaur

“Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is . . . a masterpiece of science writing: a detective story that illuminates the nature of scientific research while explaining how our very existence may be connected to unexpected properties of the dark matter that fills the universe.” — Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at CalTech

“A provocative and revealing account of how scientists like herself are uncovering deep connections between human existence and the wider universe. A terrific read.” — Timothy Ferris, author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way and Seeing in the Dark

“World-renowned physicist Lisa Randall brings a fresh twist to one of the world’s oldest murder mysteries, the death of the dinos. With lively writing and wonderfully accessible explanations, she now convincingly implicates a new suspect as ultimately responsible for the hit: a novel kind of dark matter.” — Max Tegmark, physicist and author of Our Mathematical Universe

“It’s a tall order to cover everything from the Big Bang to today’s ongoing Sixth Extinction in a consistently engaging way for a general audience. Particle physicist Randall delivers, peppering serious science with anecdotes about Roombas and fortune cookie messages.” — Discover Magazine

“By grounding one in the principles of cosmology, particle physics, geology, astrophysics, paleontology and meteoritics, Randall provides the reader with a broad spectrum look at not only the world around them, but the worlds around that world, the galaxies and galactic clusters, filaments, sheets and, eventually, the Universe.” — Paste

From the Publisher

The universe, Randall eloquently argues, is an organic thing, a symphonic thing, with all its myriad parts contributing their own notes.

TIME Magazine

Successful science writing tells a complete story of the ‘how’-the methodical marvel building up to the ‘why’-and Randall does just that.

New York Times Book Review

The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.

Physics World

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is . . . a masterpiece of science writing: a detective story that illuminates the nature of scientific research while explaining how our very existence may be connected to unexpected properties of the dark matter that fills the universe.

Kip Thorne

Mind-blowing. . . . If [Randall is] correct. . . . it would be a revolution in human thought every bit as gargantuan as that precipitated by Copernicus.

House of Speakeasy Blog

It’s a tall order to cover everything from the Big Bang to today’s ongoing Sixth Extinction in a consistently engaging way for a general audience. Particle physicist Randall delivers, peppering serious science with anecdotes about Roombas and fortune cookie messages.

Discover Magazine

World-renowned physicist Lisa Randall brings a fresh twist to one of the world’s oldest murder mysteries, the death of the dinos. With lively writing and wonderfully accessible explanations, she now convincingly implicates a new suspect as ultimately responsible for the hit: a novel kind of dark matter.

Max Tegmark

Engrossing in its own right, this theory opens onto an illuminating survey of the cutting-edge science now deployed to test its components, including its daring redefinition of dark matter. As she did in Warped Passages (2005) and Knocking on Heaven’s Door (2011), Randall delivers intellectual exhilaration.

Starred Review Booklist

The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.

On Being with Krista Tippett

A provocative and revealing account of how scientists like herself are uncovering deep connections between human existence and the wider universe. A terrific read.

Timothy Ferris

By grounding one in the principles of cosmology, particle physics, geology, astrophysics, paleontology and meteoritics, Randall provides the reader with a broad spectrum look at not only the world around them, but the worlds around that world, the galaxies and galactic clusters, filaments, sheets and, eventually, the Universe.

Paste

A cracking read, combining storytelling of the highest order with a trove of information on subjects as diverse as astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology and particle physics. What’s remarkable is that it all fits together.

Wall Street Journal

The universe, Randall eloquently argues, is an organic thing, a symphonic thing, with all its myriad parts contributing their own notes.

Time Magazine

The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.

WHYY Radio Times

Lisa Randall has produced an intriguing, insightful book that brilliantly weaves together the disparate subjects of cosmology and biology. . . . A simple, elegant theory that finally makes sense of mass extinctions. A must read for anyone interested in the precariousness of life on earth.

Jack Horner

Only Lisa Randall can take us on such a thrilling scientific journey—from dinosaurs to DNA to comets to dark matter and to past and future of our species. Randall’s research is so thorough, the story so powerful, and her storytelling so compelling that I could not put this book down.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

The wonder and curiosity Lisa Randall so obviously feels about our world and the universe itself is evident on every page. [Randall] render[s] complex subject matter into a gripping page-turner that is impossible to put down. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a fascinating, mind-expanding experience.

Augusten Burroughs

The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.

Walter Kirn

Through Randall’s brilliant research we see a universe unfold that is far grander than anyone at any time could have imagined… She is a progressive thinker, a visionary capable of bridging the vast gulf between speculation and reality science.

San Francisco Book Review

Randall, a Harvard professor, is one of the world’s leading experts on particle physics and cosmology. In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, she takes readers on an illuminating scientific adventure, beginning 66 million years ago, that connects dinosaurs, comets, DNA, and the future of the planet.

Huffington Post

Brilliant and thought provoking…The greatest strength of Randall’s book is that it lacks any overly academic jargon and is reasonably easy to understand. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs illustrates beautifully that there is so much left to be discovered about ourselves and the universe that we call home.

BUST

Randall succeeds in guiding the reader through the history of the cosmos and the Earth from the Big Bang to the emergence of life as we know it in a fun and captivating way. . . . [This is] a very enjoyable read for both lay readers and scientists.

Science Magazine

The nature of the impactor remains unknown, but if it was indeed a comet dislodged from the Oort Cloud, then Randall’s book provides an entertaining and radical explanation of the events leading up to their ultimate extinction.

Philadelphia Inquirer

…[Randall] is an excellent explainer, and her affection for her subject matter is infectious…Randall's work, which she approaches with equal parts passion and precision, is perhaps best described as creative computational cosmology. Although she is one of the world's most prominent working scientists, her theory is essentially a thought experiment in the tradition of philosophy, bridging metaphysics with the most strenuous experiment and observation of science. What emerges is an imaginative and ambitious model of how we ended up where we are now. Science, after all, isn't merely about advancing information—it's about advancing understanding. Its task is to disentangle the opinions and the claims from the facts in the service of truth. But beyond the "what" of truth, successful science writing tells a complete story of the "how"—the methodical marvel building up to the "why"—and Randall does just that.

The New York Times Book Review - Maria Popova

★ 09/07/2015
Using accessible writing and vivid examples, Randall (Higgs Discovery), a theoretical particle physicist and cosmologist at Harvard University, examines the indirect role dark matter may have played in the extinction of the dinosaurs, as just one example of the unlikely connections to be found in the universe. She builds her argument methodically, moving from discussions of the big bang and galaxy formation, through prehistoric extinction events, and into the way dark matter interacts with other forces and particles. Scientists detect dark matter indirectly, Randall says. In space, a massive object bends light as it zips past, so that object’s mass can then be determined by measuring the bend. Its gravity can also perturb the motion of other bodies passing through the area. Randall proposes the existence of a dense disk of dark matter inside the galactic disk of the Milky Way. As stars—including our sun—rotate around a galactic center, they and their planets cross the dark disk. On Earth’s pass-through, the dark disk’s gravity could have perturbed an icy rock in the Oort Cloud, sending it on a collision course with Earth. Randall covers a lot of ground, but does so smoothly even when addressing some of science’s most abstruse subjects. Hers is a fascinating, tantalizing theory, linking life on Earth—or the extinction thereof—with the very origins of our universe. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

A cracking read, combining storytelling of the highest order with a trove of information on subjects as diverse as astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology and particle physics. What’s remarkable is that it all fits together.

Wall Street Journal

By grounding one in the principles of cosmology, particle physics, geology, astrophysics, paleontology and meteoritics, Randall provides the reader with a broad spectrum look at not only the world around them, but the worlds around that world, the galaxies and galactic clusters, filaments, sheets and, eventually, the Universe.

Paste

05/01/2015
Dark matter: it's hard enough to understand as it is, and now Randall draws on original research to suggest a new kind. But as author of the recent New York Times best-selling Knocking on Heaven's Door, Harvard physicist Randall can talk to the less scientifically proficient. Here she theorizes that the huge comet that purportedly knocked out the dinosaurs and perhaps three-quarters of Earth's other species 66 million years ago was shaken from its orbit as the solar system passed through a disc of dark matter embedded in the Milky Way. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

So what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? As Lisa Randall tells us, narrator Carrington MacDuffie provides a straightforward narration, which is all this book requires. Such is the case with most fact-based nonfiction audiobooks. The author posits that the gravitational influences of dark matter had a role in pushing a large rocky body, probably a comet, into a collision course with the Earth. If you have any interest in the subject, this is as good an audio presentation as could possibly be done. The science, though, is speculative. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2015 - AudioFile

★ 2015-09-03
Randall (Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology/Harvard Univ.; Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World, 2011, etc.) explores the causes of the fifth major extinction event, which occurred 66 million years ago and wiped out terrestrial dinosaurs and three-quarters of all other species living on Earth.Dinosaurs dominated life on Earth for 135 million years. Geologists and paleontologists now agree that their relatively sudden extinction is attributable to the impact of a comet or asteroid hitting the Earth and precipitating major climate change. The author seeks to test her hypothesis that "a disk of dark matter in the plane of the Milky Way was responsible for triggering the meteoroid's fatal trajectory." For Randall, the role of dark matter in the evolution of the universe is the next scientific frontier. Dark matter constitutes 85 percent of the matter in the universe. It is not composed of atoms or electrons (the stuff of ordinary matter), and it does not interact with light or other radiation. We only know of its existence because of its measurable gravitational effects. Randall believes that it may have played a significant role in the existence of life on Earth not only by triggering a major climate-changing meteoroid collision, but by precipitating smaller impacts that deposited the heavy elements necessary for life (e.g., carbon) and possibly even amino acids. Now that the existence of the Higgs boson has been confirmed, the author is setting her sights on this exciting scientific area, which is built on the advances in scientific understanding of cosmic events over the past 50 years. Specifically, this involves establishing the possibility that there was a periodicity in the five extinction events reflective of still-unknown cosmic events possibly involving dark matter. Writing in a deceptively chatty narrative style, Randall provides a fascinating window into the excitement of discovery and the rigor required to test and elaborate new hypotheses. A top-notch science book from a leading researcher.

Kirkus Reviews