This is the stuff of "Strange Matters". In broad terms, this book is about a variety of discoveries that theorists of the past imagined before the observers and experimenters actually saw them. Moreover, it is about the things that today's are now imagining - but haven't yet been discovered or confirmed by the observers. "Strange Matters" artfully mixes the present with the past and future, reporting from the frontiers of research where history is in the process of being made. Each chapter 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" with current stories that relate brand new ideas. We 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. "Strange Matters" is a guide to the discoveries of the twenty-first century, a series of visions dreamt by the most imaginative scientists of our time merged with the achievements of the past - to point the way towards even greater accomplishments of the future.

The science editor of the Dallas Morning News takes general audiences on a tour of key cosmic mysteries paired with physicists who anticipated discoveries on the frontiers of physics and cosmology. E.g. Siegfried traces the phenomena of dark matter from Pauli's 1930 "prediscovery" of a new particle to more recent understandings of the neutrino.
Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)