Over the last half-century, astronomers have come to a profoundly disturbing conclusion: the vast majority of our universe is composed of mysterious stuff that is not part of our world. The familiar atoms and elements comprise just a thin frosting on an unseen obscure cake of dark matter and dark energy. We will survey the compelling observational evidence that has upset our worldview, meet some of the people involved in the intellectual revolution, and explore the current efforts to understand more deeply our surprising universe. This mystery is a work in progress, with the concluding chapters not yet written — come along on a voyage into the dark side of the cosmos! Instructor Theodore (Ted) Williams is Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University and former Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory. He has a physics B.S. degree from Purdue University and astronomy Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. Ted spent most of his career at Rutgers, where he pursued observational studies of galaxies and developed astronomical instrumentation, while teaching a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in physics and astronomy. He has spent innumerable nights at telescopes around the world, including observatories in California, Arizona, Texas, and Hawaii, as well as Chile, China, and South Africa, and an orbiting facility on the Space Shuttle (Ted stayed firmly on the ground). He has taught a number of astronomy courses for Coastal Senior College.
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