Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs

The groundbreaking work from bestselling author and renowned particle physicist Lisa Randall—a dazzling adventure into the interconnectedness of our universe. Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city crashed into Earth, killing off the dinosaurs and two-thirds of the planet’s species. Challenging the usual assumptions about the simple makeup of the unseen material that constitutes 85 percent 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 new research idea. With clarity and wit, Randall 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 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.