The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality

by Richard Panek

Rubin was beginning to realize that there are two kinds of geniuses. There’s the kind we would all be if we were extremely smart and knew what we were doing. And then there’s the kind you can only watch, knowing that your mind could never work that way.

The universe, Tryon wrote, “is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.”

Vera Rubin summarized the situation with a joke. There was a wise rabbi, she said, who was trying to mediate a marital dispute. The husband complained about the wife. “You’re right,” the rabbi said. The wife complained about the husband. “You’re right,” the rabbi said. Then the rabbi’s own wife emerged from behind a curtain, where she had been eavesdropping. “How can you tell them both they’re right?” she said to her husband. To which the wise rabbi replied, “You’re right too.”