Understanding Dark Matter and Dark Energy I’m currently reading Richard Panek’s The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality that tells the story of the standard cosmological model, starting in 1965 and leading up to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Panek’s anecdotes are informative and enjoyable, describing dark matter and dark energy’s reveal through the work of unusual physicists and astronomers. But being a visual learner, I needed to “see” the numbers. So… Voila! Behold the the Jelly Bean Universe, a visual representation explaining atoms (4% lightly-colored beans) and the rest of the universe (96% black beans, equaling 23% dark matter and 73% dark energy) — “dark” simply meaning unknown. Bonus: Learn how to make your own universe on YouTube from Fermilab’s Kurt Riesselmann, the man who deconstructed John Updike’s Cosmic Gall poem. Credit: Photo by Fermilab. High-res

Understanding Dark Matter and Dark Energy

I’m currently reading Richard Panek’s The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality that tells the story of the standard cosmological model, starting in 1965 and leading up to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Panek’s anecdotes are informative and enjoyable, describing dark matter and dark energy’s reveal through the work of unusual physicists and astronomers. But being a visual learner, I needed to “see” the numbers. So… Voila! Behold the the Jelly Bean Universe, a visual representation explaining atoms (4% lightly-colored beans) and the rest of the universe (96% black beans, equaling 23% dark matter and 73% dark energy) — “dark” simply meaning unknown.

Bonus: Learn how to make your own universe on YouTube from Fermilab’s Kurt Riesselmann, the man who deconstructed John Updike’s Cosmic Gall poem.

Credit: Photo by Fermilab.