In this week’s installment of Scott Solves Your Everyday Problems, I’ll get to the bottom of this pesky issue of the 96 percent of the universe that’s gone missing.

I’m not making up this problem.  I learned about it in Michael Brooks’ new book, “Thirteen Things That Don’t Make Sense.”  We can be certain it’s a sound scientific work because it features a cover blurb from “New Scientist,” a magazine so prestigious it was once edited by noted scientist Michael Brooks.

Anyway, according to Brooks’ book, only 4 percent of the cosmos can be accounted for.  The way scientists figured this out is, they looked into their telescopes and, using knowledge accumulated over the centuries, discovered the lens caps were still on.  So they looked again and found that certain stars are accelerating away from us at rates higher than the laws of physics can explain, though frankly, considering some of the stuff that happens on this planet, you can hardly blame them. Read the rest of this entry »