The three U.S.-born scientists, Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley, Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University in Weston Creek, and Adam Riess, an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, won the Nobel Prize in Physics today for their studies of exploding stars that revealed the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
According to author Richard Panek, an award-winning journalist and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, “The stunning discovery here is that the universe is doing the opposite of what these scientists expected—the expansion is speeding up under the influence of some force that, on the cosmic scale, is overpowering gravity.”
THE 4 PERCENT UNIVERSE describes the rivalries of the scientists in the race to explain dark energy.
“In his journalistic yet artful style, Panek guides you through the quirky discoveries that established the existence of dark matter and dark energy…you also get to meet the quirky cosmologists who got us there,” said Neil deGrasse Tyson, American Museum of Natural History, author of Death by Black Hole.
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With nearly two-centuries of award-winning history, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Trade and Reference Division continues to publish some of the most renowned novels, non-fiction, children’s books and reference works in hardcover, Mariner Books trade paperbacks and ebooks. Its distinguished author list includes eight Nobel Prize winners, 47 Pulitzer Prize winners, 13 National Book Award winners, and more than 100 Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, and Silbert Medal and Honor recipients. HMH publishes such distinguished authors as Philip Roth, Temple Grandin, Tim O'Brien, and Umberto Eco, as well as The Best American series®, The American Heritage® family of dictionaries, The Gourmet Cookbook and other culinary classics, the Peterson Field Guides and books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Along with a celebrated lineup of children’s authors, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group is the publisher of some of the best-loved children's books and book characters including Curious George, The Little Prince and The Polar Express. For more information, visit www.hmhbooks.com.