Expert Explores 'Strange Matters' in Space, Environment

Journalist Tom Siegfried details this century's scientific "prediscoveries"--from unusual forms of matter and realms of existence to wild ideas about how time and space are related to one another--in his new book, STRANGE MATTERS.

WIMPZILLAS, quark nuggets, Q-balls, fuzzy dark matter...

Surprising as it may be, these are not the latest alcoholic drinks being popularized by "Sex and the City" or nefarious villains from "Star Trek." They're what author Tom Siegfried dubs "strange matters"--things in the universe that scientists speculate may be there, but have yet to prove actually exist.

In his new book, "Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time," Siegfried reports from the frontiers of research where history is still in the process of being made. He takes a look at today's "prediscoveries"--the things that theoretical physicists are now imagining, but have yet to discover or confirm--and artfully mixes these tales from the present with stories about a variety of discoveries that theorists of the past imagined before the observers and experimenters actually saw them.

Each chapter of "Strange Matters" examines a different step along the twisted path we've walked to gain our rudimentary understanding of the universe, incorporating historical examples of successful "prediscoveries" (from black holes and neutron stars to electromagnetic waves, antimatter, and the expansion of the universe) with current stories that relate brand new ideas. Readers come to see the universe not only in terms of what has already been discovered, but also in terms of what has yet to be observed.

From unusual forms of matter and realms of existence to wild ideas about how time and space are related to one another, Siegfried acknowledges that many of these proposals may well turn out to be wrong. Then he forces you to ask: how many will be proven to be right?

According to Siegfried, at least one...

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Tom Siegfried has been Science Editor of the Dallas Morning News since 1985. In 1993, he received the American Chemical Society's James H. Grady-James T. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. In 1997 he received the American Psychiatric Association's Robert T. Morse Writer's Award.

Tom is the author of "The Bit and the Pendulum: From Quantum Computing to M Theory-The New Physics of Information," which Booklist called "a volume of remarkable sweep." He received a B.A. from Texas Christian University and a M.A. in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Tom lives in Arlington, Texas, with his wife Chris.
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The Joseph Henry Press is an imprint of the National Academy Press, publisher for the National Academies--National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council.