New Book Examines how Dark Energy Enabled a Universe that Supports Intelligent Life

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My good friend Dr. Stephen Perrenod has published a new book entitled Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Gravity: Enabling a Universe that Supports Intelligent Life. Steve is an astrophysicist and a long-time member of the HPC community, so when he asked me to write the Foreword for the book, I jumped at the chance.

Foreword,
by Rich Brueckner
 
“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
— Alan Watts
 
We all know of the Big Bang, how our universe came to be in a massive explosion, seemingly starting from nothingness. And for those who study cosmology, further understanding requires us to define the dark energies that somehow endowed our world with order.
 
Now, we haven’t observed dark energy, dark matter, and the secrets of dark gravity directly, but we do see their effects. As we learn in this book, without them, the universe would not have formed in a way that could have spawned intelligent life.
 
As a writer, I am intrigued by these dark energies because they imply a backstory–phenomena that happened first that led to this outcome. So in this way, dark energies seem to me to be metaphors of science. Like the stories of Genesis and Adam and Eve, what they really represent is a deeper truth.
 
In this book, Dr. Perrenod does a wonderful job of explaining the origins of the universe in way that is accessible to the layman. When you want to understand how the universe came to be, you ask an astrophysicist. But when you really want to know why, I think you have to start by asking yourself some questions. Try a thought experiment.
 
Put yourself in the place of a Universal Mind before the Big Bang. If you really wanted to understand yourself, you would need to have something intelligent outside of yourself that could experience that which is you. Not to get metaphysical here, but if we were at the scene of a crime, what I’d be suggesting here is motive.
 
Thanks to modern physics and cosmology, we no longer live in a universe where dark forces lurk far beyond our capacity for comprehension. I believe that, through the works of Stephen Perrenod and others, we will come to that knowing. But even as we look out to the stars, I think it begins with understanding that not only are we within the universe, but the universe is within us.

Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Gravity is now available as an ebook on a number of different platforms including the Kindle and Nook, with more on the way. It’s well worth the read, and Dr. Perrenod has now started a blog on related topics in cosmology.

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