Selected as a Book of the Year by Mail on Sunday and Financial Times
66 million years ago, a ten-mile-wide object from outer space hurtled into the Earth at incredible speed and destroyed the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet.
Where did it come from, and why? And how is this connected to dark matter – the most mysterious, elusive stuff in the universe, that interacts with gravity like ordinary matter but doesn’t emit or absorb light. Astronomers know it’s there but it is literally invisible.
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs tells the story of Big Bang theory, cosmological inflation, the makeup of the universe and our solar system’s place in it; it’s about mass extinctions through the ages, what we know has hit the Earth and what might hit us in the future. And it explores the radical idea that dark matter might ultimately have been responsible for the dinosaurs’ extinction.
A horizon-expanding tour of the cosmos that blends what we know about the universe with new thinking, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a book full of wonders, from a gifted scientist and writer.
Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University. Randall's studies have made her among the most cited and influential theoretical physicists. She has also had a public presence through her writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. Her book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions was included in the New York Times' 100 notable books of 2005. Professor Randall was included in the list of Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People' of 2007 and was featured in Newsweek's 'Who's Next in 2006' as 'one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation'. Randall has received numerous awards and honors for her scientific endeavors. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Randall is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics.