Invisible Universe, The: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, And The Origin And End Of The Universe

This book describes some of the frontier problems of cosmology: our almost total ignorance of what the Universe is made up of, the mystery of its origin and its end. The book starts with a description of the historical events that led to the construction of the Big Bang model together with the stages that transformed the Universe from a very hot place to a very cold one, full with the structures that we observe today. These structures (stars, galaxies, etc.) constitute only 5% of the contents of the Universe. Concerning the remaining 95%, dubbed dark matter and dark energy, we know very little, and we have only indirect evidence of their existence. The text describes the story and the protagonists who showed the need for the existence of this "missing matter", the observations, and puzzles they had to solve to understand that dark matter was not ordinary matter. The book describes the hunt for dark matter, carried out with instruments operating in space, on the Earth's surface, and in laboratories built in the bowels of the Earth. It also describes dark energy, which manifests itself in the accelerated expansion of the Universe, and appeared only a few billions of years ago. The book discusses why dark energy must exist and what its existence implies, especially for the future and the end of our Universe.

Dr Antonino Del Popolo graduated from the University of Bologna in 1990 with a score of 110/110 and honors, discussing a thesis on General Relativity and obtained his doctorate in 1994 defending a thesis on the cold dark matter model. He taught Mathematics and Physics in Italy and in the high schools of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Istanbul and Sofia. He worked as a Researcher in the CRL Institute (NICT) in Tokyo (1998–1999), in the Bosporus University of Istanbul (2000–2005), in the Feza Gursey Institute in Istanbul (2001–2003), in the Argelander Institute of Bonn (2008–2009), and was Full Professor at the Technical University of Istanbul (ITU) (2006–2008). Dr Del Popolo is a researcher and adjunct professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania since 2008. He has been "visiting professor" at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) (2012–2013), in the International Physics Institute (IIP) of Natal (Brazil) (2013, 2015), and in the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMP-CAS) in Lanzhou (China) (2017–2018), where he also obtained the PIFI prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is currently visiting professor in the Institute of Astronomy of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He taught courses in Astronomy, Galactic and Extragalactic Astrophics, and Cosmology, both in Italy and abroad, for students of the degree course in Physics, Engineering, Letters and Philosophy (course at the Bosphorus University), masters and PhD. He currently teaches extragalactic astronomy and cosmology for masters students of the Physics course of the University of Catania. His main interest is Physical Cosmology, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, being the author of over 200 scientific articles (150 in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature). He has always been passionate about scientific popularization, both as a reader and as a lecturer. He is a member of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) and of international projects (missions) such as GAIA, EUCLID and CTA. He is referee for various journals such as: Science, The Astrophysical Journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Academy, etc.