Summary

Dark matter is everywhere. Yet, it is not visible to our eyes or detectable by current instruments. As physicist Lisa Randall points out in her book, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, the scientific community believes dark matter is present because of its measurable gravitational effects. Scientific thought is that dark matter comprises a full 85 percent of all matter in the universe. In other words, the great bulk of the universe is invisible to our eyes and instruments. It is entirely possible that dark matter dislodged a comet from its weak orbit 66 million years and sent it crashing into earth, which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and most forms of life.

A misnomer makes a highly abstract notion about the universe seem impenetrable. Dark matter is not dark, but rather transparent (or invisible), Randall asserts. Dark matter has only feeble...