The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter

by Katherine Freese

The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe--from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars--constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known as dark matter and dark energy, because their precise identities are unknown. The Cosmic Cocktail is the inside story of the epic quest to solve one of the most compelling enigmas of modern science--what is the universe made of?--told by one of today's foremost pioneers in the study of dark matter.

Blending cutting-edge science with her own behind-the-scenes insights as a leading researcher in the field, acclaimed theoretical physicist Katherine Freese recounts the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Fritz Zwicky--the Swiss astronomer who coined the term "dark matter" in 1933--to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists contend that dark matter consists of fundamental particles known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. Billions of them pass through our bodies every second without us even realizing it, yet their gravitational pull is capable of whirling stars and gas at breakneck speeds around the centers of galaxies, and bending light from distant bright objects. Freese describes the larger-than-life characters and clashing personalities behind the race to identify these elusive particles.

Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving the mystery. "The Cosmic Cocktail" provides the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind's quest to understand the universe.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Astronomy, Stem, Audiobook

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my favorite movies is Legally Blonde, an extremely clever balancing act that made Reese Witherspoon a superstar overnight. Throughout the whole story, she manages to leave you uncertain about how intelligent she really is. Maybe she's just an amiably airheaded blonde who spends her time reading Cosmo and getting her nails done? But she's studying law at Harvard and seems to be doing okay in class, and every now and then she does something that looks really smart, so there must be more to her than that? Witherspoon throws out just the right number of false clues and leaves you guessing until the final courtroom scene; I can watch it any number of times. In this book, Katherine (Katie) Freese seems to be trying to do something similar. As early as the second paragraph, she tells us that she worked for a while in a Tokyo hostess bar. This is rapidly followed by passages about how much she likes partying, skiing and dancing, and on page 5 there's a picture of her in her early 20s, sitting rather inappropriately close to her handsome and much older male supervisor. The writing is dreadful: the acknowledgements at the end include a tribute to "Mrs Selig", her eighth grade instructor, and indeed she barely seems to have advanced since then.

Whatever is going on? I thought she was a famous scientist? As the book progresses, it turns out that, like Elle Woods, Dr. Freese enjoys messing with your mind. She has fun for a while projecting the illiterate ski-bunny persona, but after a few chapters gets down to business and tells you about what's going on in dark matter research, where she is generally acknowledged as one of the top people in the field. Suddenly, the tone changes completely, and instead of inane anecdotes it's crisp, no-nonsense summaries of the key issues. I learned a lot from her presentation; I'd seen accounts in several other places, most recently in Panek's The 4% Universe, but Freese is much better. The field appears to be a bit of a mess at the moment, with apparently incompatible results coming in from several different projects. Freese gives you the necessary background, then provides insightful and balanced assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of the different arguments. It's exciting stuff. We may be close to determining the identity of the elusive dark-matter particle, which would have enormous implications both for cosmology and for particle physics; or, if we're unlucky, people may just have been chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. Freese would clearly prefer the first alternative, but she presents the facts dispassionately and lets you decide for yourself. The second half of the book is as good as the first half is bad.

Who is the real Katie Freese? This question still bothers me: just as in Legally Blonde, both sides come over as perfectly credible. Maybe, like Elle, she's both people at the same time, and if so it's an interesting combination. I found the book annoying in places but absolutely unputdownable, and finished it in a little more than a day. If you want to know more about what's happening in one of the hottest areas in modern science or just feel curious about this unusual person, it's well worth checking out. Recommended.

[G.R. Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's only one Katie. I honestly don't know another scientist who could have written this passage, from halfway down page 1:

Tokyo was the first stop. To earn money for the rest of the trip, I taught English for a while, then served drinks in a bar. It was as hostess in the bar that I learned to deflect men's advances and demand to be treated professionally - skills that later proved invaluable in the male-dominated physics world.

[Ami Iida · Rating 4 out of 5]

search for "dark matter and dark energy "and the study of them

[Miki · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of interesting material in this book, but it sorely wants a good editorial hand. The personal asides sprinkled throughout are sometimes interesting but often jarring and at best tangential. The second half does settle into an interesting treatment of contemporary thinking and research, but I'm a little surprised by the blasé treatment of lithium ratios. I do admire the attempt to combine the personal story with the science, though!

[Mohamed al-Jamri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes I took while reading the book:

What is the universe made of? Story of Dark Matter research. Also personal story. Story of modern Cosmology starting with Einstein.

Dark Matter first proposed in 1933 with Ziwik. Confirmed in 1970s.

Matter 5%, Dark Matter 26% and Dark Energy 69%.

Chapter 1: The Golden Era of Particle Cosmology

Personal story of the Katherine Freese (author).

Finished undergraduate in physics. Travelled to Japan. Appendictomy. Spacetime physics by Tailor and Wheeler. Columbia University. Night clubs. Fermi lab. Cosmology at Chicago University. Gravitation and Cosmology by Steven Weinberg. Particle astrophysics under Prof. David Shram.

Harvard post doc, Dark Matter. In 1980s, MACHOs (faint stars) vs WIMPs theories.

Chapter 2: How do cosmologists know that dark matter exist

Fits Zwiki. The longest outstanding unsolved problem in all of science. Spiral galaxies, a disc. Dark matter is spherical in the halo of galaxies.

Evidence: Rotational curves (speeds of stars at the edge too fast, they should be lower if no dark matter existed). Gravitational lensing (from General Relativity). Hot gas clusters. The Bullet cluster (Dark Matter interaction very different from regular matter). The emergent view of the universe. Galaxy formation (hierarchical model).

Alternative ideas: MOND (modified newtonian gravity) in 1983. By Milgram and on very long distances only.

Dark galaxies? Dark stars? Cold Dark matter hypotheses.

All we know is that Dark Matter only interacts via gravity.

Chapter 3: The Big Picture of the Universe, Einstein and Big Bang.

General relativity and the geometry of space. Mass and curvature of spacetime. Geodesic (shortest path in curved space). Mass is energy. Friedman, La mètre, Ropertson and walkman, and homogeneity and isotopy of space. Cosmic constant of Einstein (static universe). Edwin Hubble expansion of universe (doppler effect). Return of cosmic constant as Dark Energy.

No central point of universe, everywhere around us moving away. Hubble also discovered other galaxies.

Geometry of space. Flat, hyperbolic or spherical. theoretical physicists always assumed flat. Astronomy data showed not enough mass for that.

CMB. Recombination era. Surface of last scattering. Temperature drops with increasing size. Prediction of CMB in 1948 by 3, among them George Gammov. Found by accident in 1964. Black body radiation spectrum confirmed by COBI in 1989. Homogeneity and isotopy confirmed. Small fluctuations due to quantum effects during inflation. These small density differences (known as Anasatropy) were long sought after with no results until COBI found them in 1991, they were as small aa 1 part in 100,000. This helped confirm flatness of the universe.

MATT. BOOMERANG. DAISY. WMAP. Lagrange points. Plank. WMAP and Plank gave us the geometry of space, age of universe and percentage of its components.

Chapter 4: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN)

This proves regular matter forms only 5% of the universe.
AKA primordial necleosynthesis.

Explains elementary particles.

Quarks to hadron transition.

Deuteriom and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. Helium 4 most stable. Neutron/Proton ratio 1/7. 3 minutes after the big bang. Helium 1/4 of the mass. Lithium 7 (1 in 10 billion). Helium 3 was made too.

The percentage predicted matches the astronomical data.

Also BBN requires the presence of non-atomic matter (Dark Matter). It also restricts the number of particle families to 4 at max. We already know 3, Dark Matter the forth?

Chapter 5: What is Dark Matter

History. Investigated rocks, ice, hydrogen, gas, dust. Antimatter. Conservation of energy, quarcks, leptons etc. Matter antimatter asymmetry is a mystery. Neutrinos (hot dark matter problem - they move too fast to allow galaxy formation). MACHOs (faint stars). Stellar evolution (red giant, white dwarf, neuutron star, black hole).

Super massive black holes. Solar mass black holes. Primordial black holes. Gravitational waves. Hawking radiation. Wormholes. WIMPs, Axions, sterile neutrinos. WIMPs and Axions most promising, followed by primordial black holes.

Axions arising from the Chromo Quantum Mechanics.

WIMPs. Super Symmetry. Extra dimensions.

Higgs and LHC. Particles spin and other info about them (also mentioned in more detail in The Particle at the End of the Universe).

Chapter 7: The experimental hunt for dark matter

3 ways. colliders, direct and indirect. complimentary.

Details on search projects for WIMPs.

Chapter 8: Claims of detection, are they real?

DAMA group in Italy. 9 Sigma results [5 sigma are enough to announce a particle has been found as was the case with Higgs boson]. 10 GeV WIMPs.

They didn't share the data at first.

COGENT experiment. CREST experiment. CDMS experiment. Xenon (LUXS) and CDMS gave null results, other gave positive results. Conflicting results. CDMS gave positive ones.

WIMPs self-annihilation leads to particles such as electrons, positrons, gama rays, photons, quarcks and neutrinos. These are the ones observed.

Fermi telescope. a 130 GeV finding?

Future DNA based experiments to detect WIMPs. Head-tail distinction. Newer methods under development.

Chapter 9: Dark Energy and the fate of the universe.

69% of the universe. Anti-gravitating.

Discovered due to type 1A supernovae (standard candles). They result from a White dwarf eating up another star (any type), until the white dwarf size is 1.4 solar mass (Chanda limit). This is why they are uniform and standard. There are some minor differences due to they being made of different components, but these can be corrected for. Light dims 2 times with distance.

In 1998 it was found that 8 Billion old Supernovae were 20% fainter than excepted. This meant the universe expansion was accelerating rather than decelerating.

Empty space (vacuum) and virtual particles. The Cosmological constant. Its story. The problem in its calculation (10^120 mistake). Weinberg in 1987 and the anthropic principle about cosmological constant. Multiverse. String theory.

Expansion led to Dark Energy taking out Dark Energy (due to dilution of matter while vacuum energy remained same), and this meant accelerated expansion. This takeover occured 6 Billion years ago.

Coincidence problem (fine-tuning).

Modified gravity equations.

USA losing ground to other countries in science (LHC and ow Euclid telescope for dark energy).

Vacuum energy model for dark energy is the best one.

Due to accelerated expansion of universe, far galaxies will disappear from our horizon.

Fate of the universe. Big Crunch. Big Chill.

While dark matter might be solved soon, dark energy might need a paradigm shift.

Dark stars idea for early galaxy formation.

Some inaccuracies: Gravity and not weak nuclear force is the weakest. Higgs field and not boson gives particles mass, and not all mass, but part of it. Dark matter interacts only via gravity and not weak force too(?).

Sean Carroll explanations are clearer. Freese explains stuff several times, all inadequate. Giving it once as good as positive would've been better.

[Dennis Swanger · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. First of all, physicists have no idea what 'dark matter' actually is. Its existence has been predicted due to the excessive rotational speed of many galaxies. Galaxies are spinning so fast they should fly apart; since they don't, it's assumed that some extra, 'unobserved' matter holds them together gravitationally. Scientists say dark matter has got to be there, but so far they've obtained no direct experimental proof of its existence. Physicists think these undiscovered particles are not made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and they don't appear to interact with regular matter in any way we can measure. Some like to call the new particles WIMPs or weakly interacting massive particles; sounds great, but no one's ever found a WIMP. This entire book is a rambling, somewhat disjointed, discussion about 'things' that can't be located with a composition that can't be determined. You knew nothing when you started the book, and you'll still know nothing when you finish it. If reading about nothing is your idea of a good time, this is your book.

[Becky]

I saw Katherine Freese give a lecture to the public on dark matter and her new book. Her talk was ok but not super engaging. I got the sense that she is someone who loves physics but she didn't seem particularly excited to be speaking to a lay audience. I learned a couple things from her talk. I picked up her new book to flip through it, and found a section describing Hawking radiation, which is the radiation emitted by black holes. I had recently read The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene that also has a section explaining Hawking radiation. Greene's description of this phenomenon was engaging and creative. In comparison, I found the passage in Freese's book to be flat and inaccessible. So for the most part I would recommend Greene's books over this Cosmic Cocktail book. Unless you are particularly interested in dark matter because Freese definitely knows a lot about this topic and the story of the different theories and detection methods of dark matter.

[Steve Gross · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and repetitive. This is a poorly written book. I must have seen the phrase "dark energy is 70%" at least a dozen times. Chapter 9, which is supposed to discuss dark energy, never really gets around to defining it; Wikipedia can do it in one sentence. Also, why does the author constantly refer to her ex-fiance as "my ex-fiance"? Really, who cares?

[Kernyuy Larisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a bit hard to keep up with. There were so many terms that made little sense to me because my background knowledge in physics is limited. But I persisted and finally finished the book.
In the book, Katherine talks about working with different scientists in this search for dark matter. She also talks about numerous experiments that have been/are being/are to be carried out and which ones show promising results. In the beginning, I honestly thought that cosmology was bogus. I had trouble stomaching the idea that dark matter, let alone dark energy exist. What I found even harder to believe was that atomic matter is only 5% of the universe. I also had trouble believing that other particles besides protons, neutrons and electrons exist. I'd heard about neutrinos and positrons but even those I was doubtful about their existence. This book has inspired me to want to read other books on the subject of cosmology. The list of books Katherine suggests for further reading at the end looks good to me.
Reading about these experiments that seek to prove that dark matter exists, I kept wondering why huge sums of money are being invested in them when the results of only a few of them show promise. The chapter on what the existence of dark matter could imply for the future of the universe got me hooked. Briefly, the writer touched on questions about the universe that have always bogged me. The question of how the universe will end is one that has been with me since I was a kid, way before I knew that knowledge in physics could possibly explain this. To tell you the truth, I'd always thought that cosmology was all spiritual and in no way scientific. But now I think otherwise. It's a subject that I'm excited to explore further.
The one thing I like about this book is how Katharine is able to effectively communicate how passionate she is for her chosen field and how much promise she sees in it. I hope more scientists take the time to write books like these to show lay people what their field is all about. I also hope that some 14 year old somewhere out there in the world reads this book and decides ro become a cosmologist. I read this book at 22, but if I'd read it earlier on in my life, I would have seriously considered becoming a cosmologist.

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly disappointing. This is a pretty high-level overview of the state of modern cosmology, with a focus on the elusive dark matter. We also touch on dark energy, the big bang and the ultimate fate of the universe; as well as getting some glimpses into Freese's life and experience working in the field of cosmology and some of the characters there.

On the science side of things, we get a lot of information dumped at us very quickly, with no room spared for context. I fully understand that dark matter and cosmology are broad concepts, but the book would have benefited greatly from slowing down every once in a while to really go into the implications of a certain idea, rather than rushing right past it to the next big thing. For someone who already has knowledge of the topics at hand, it would be a recap at best. For someone who was brand new to cosmology, I struggle to believe that they'd get that much out of this book- it did not feel particularly beginner-friendly.

On the personal side, it really did not feel like Freese's personality and life experience shone through. Freese is genuinely a famous personality in the dark matter sphere, who I'm confident has some truly fascinating anecdotes to tell. The ones we get in the book tend to fall flat, and at worst come across as insipid. "There were three of us pioneering this field, so they called us 'The Three Musketeers'!"- hardly an original or fascinating joke there. This isn't helped by the sheer number of names that are thrown at us, very few of which ever return to the narrative. This just contributes to the feeling of information overload that I walked away from the book with.

While Freese's technical writing is undeniably excellent, and she is a genuine leader in the field of cosmology, her popular science writing leaves a lot to be desired.

[Eli Harmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alright, so you’ve gotta be pretty intelligent to comprehend this book, but most readers are. In addition, you’ve gotta understand at least a little bit about physics.

Once you meet those prerequisites though, this book was awesome. It’s incredible to see what the collective scientific mind can produce in terms of both theory, and experimentation to test those theories. Not only that, but multidisciplinary experimentation to detect dark matter using biology, particle astrophysics, cosmology, and chemistry?

Wild. Loved it.

[Saku Mantere · Rating 4 out of 5]

An up to date introduction to dark matter and dark energy. Anecdotes about the social lives of physicists, while at times somewhat whimsikaö and jarring, do serve as on information about the work involved in expanding the frontier of human knowledge. My favorite part was the vivid description of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN.

[Rachad Chazbek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is THE BOOK to read to understand the fundamentals about particle physics, and how experiments evolved to reach the outer space and help us discover crazy phenomenas like Dark Matter. The author does a great great job at describing something very scientific, complexe and detailed in an easy language without spinning your head too much.

[Odo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5.0

[Todd C · Rating 3 out of 5]

More theories on what dark matter and energy might be. My theory is they are results of the multiverse - universes interacting with one another.

[Robin Tobin (On the back porch reading) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent audio book exploring all thing of "matter."

[Nick Van Lente · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Freese is a fascinating character. She brings a charm to even the most mundane of topics. She makes cosmology a blast.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfinished because it was due at the library
I found it thoroughly delighted even the parts I didn't understand

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable but not as good as other physics books I've read recently.

[Nick Gotch · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I wasn't a fan. The beginning of The Cosmic Cocktail starts with what felt like an overly long introduction to the author's life. When reading about Newton, Einstein, or Dirac I look forward to a biography but Dr Freese's background wasn't anything I had immediate interest in. This was my first introduction to her and I wanted to know more about her research and what she had to say about dark matter before I decided if I cared to know more. I suppose the thinking was to introduce the person first, then the subject matter but that didn't work for me.

Fortuntately, after getting past that one complaint, the book picked up greatly. Freese does an excellent job explaining the origin, mystery, and science behind dark matter. She covers a variety of the views and theories, regardless of whether she agrees with some of them or not, and admits on more than one occasion to having been forced to change her mindset when evidence pointed toward something else (the mark of great scientists.)

Although later in the book she continues with bits of her own history, by this point I actually ~was~ interested in what she was saying and it read much more enjoyably. In fact, I liked reading about the incidents she had at conferences and the personal interactions with other notable physicists.

Most importantly I do feel I got a lot of great information from the book, on not only dark matter itself but the experiments, theories, people, and history surrounding it. A great physics read I would easily recommend.

[Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I graduated with my bachelor's degree in astrophysics in 2004 and have worked primarily in particle physics and systems engineering for most of my career. Dr. Freese's book has caught me up on what has happened in the field in the last 15 years. It is an excellent book from a technical perspective but also still accessible to non-physicists. I think I would really like to be friends with the author!

[University of Chicago Magazine]

Katherine Freese, PhD'84
Author

From our pages (Sept–Oct/14)—
Dark matter and dark energy make up an estimated 95 percent of the known universe, yet they remain one of modern science's most enduring enigmas. Research physicist Katherine Freese tells the inside story of the pic quest to understand these elusive particles—from the early predictions and discoveries of scientists such as Fritz Swicky, who coined the term "dark matter" in 1933, to the deluge of data from today's laboratories, satellites, and particle accelerators.

[Carolyn Sabol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this on audio. I did miss some of the science by not having access to the graphs but enjoyed the way the content was presented. The search for dark matter is quite intriguing and having Dr. Freeze insights a d description of the science of looking for it is an interesting tale. I hope there will be a follow up in ten years on what and how they found the three parts of dark matter!

[Jordi de Paco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Damn, this book was boring. The two stars may be unfair though, because I learned a lot about the universe, formation of galaxies, dark matter, dark energy, dark stars... But, if you're not a hardcore cosmology sucker it can be quite dense and full of math that will make the reading process a pain in the brain.

[Van Le · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pros: At times you will feel like Einstein and crying out loud Heureka!, for actually getting what the author's trying to say. This is a book where you need to sit straight up to read with other words. Cons: This is not a book you'd like to pick up, first thing in the evening/at night, after a day of works.

[Olof · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, yes. But I Think I should have read this book AFTER physicists of the world has solved the dark matter-problem. Since the book basically just descibe the problem - very thouroughly - and not it's solution, I WANT TO KNOW MORE! :)

[Steve Stanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This highly technical book details the history of research into dark matter and dark energy and the exciting discoveries on the horizon in this fascinating field. Acclaimed theoretical physicist Katherine Freese intersperses the text with personal anecdotes to add her characteristic flair.

[Russ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple, straightforward explanation of developments in cosmology. It is an easy to read, lightly scientific read.

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great Acknowledgment: Thank Isabelle Anderson for helping me to find my voice to tell my tale.

[Mills College Library]

523.1126 F857 2014