Alpha and Omega

Science journalist Seife's narrative about the fundamentals of cosmology will appeal both to readers basically oblivious to the subject and those who keep up with it--from the grandstands of popular science literature, at least. This dual appeal stems from the author's exceptional clarity and the convulsions-shaking cosmology in recent years. Supernovae hunters who look for the exploding stars to fix the rate of the universe's expansion have been startled to discover that the expansion seems to be accelerating, upending the conventional wisdom that it ought to be decelerating. At the subatomic end of the scale, Seife presents the experiments planned by particle physicists to account for such an unexpected result, which verily demands the existence of an as-yet-undiscovered repelling force.