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Books like 13 things that don't make sense

13 things that don't make sense

13 Things That Don't Make Sense is a non-fiction book by the British writer Michael Brooks, published in both the UK and the US during 2008. It became a best-selling paperback in 2010.

The British subtitle is "The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Time" while the American is "The Most Baffling ..." (see image).

Based on an article Brooks wrote for New Scientist in March 2005, the book, aimed at the general reader rather than the science community, contains discussion and description of a number of unresolved issues in science. It is a literary effort to discuss some of the inexplicable anomalies that after centuries science still cannot completely comprehend.

The Missing Universe. This deals with astronomy and theoretical physics and the ultimate fate of the universe, in particular the search for understanding of dark matter and dark energy and includes discussion of: the work of astronomers Vesto Slipher and then Edwin Hubble in demonstrating the universe is expanding; Vera Rubin's investigation of galaxy rotation curves that suggest something other than gravity is preventing galaxies from spinning apart, which led to the revival of unobserved "dark matter" theory; experimental efforts to discover dark matter, including the search for the hypothetical neutralino and other weakly interacting massive particles); the study of supernovae at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Harvard University (under Robert Kirshner) that point to an accelerating universe powered by "dark energy" possibly Vacuum energy; and finally the assertion that the proposed modified Newtonian dynamics hypothesis and the accelerating universe disproves the dark matter theory.

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