The progress of cosmology in the 20th century has made enormous leaps: the accelerating expansion of the universe, the Big Bang, black holes, superluminous stars, and so much more.

However, the invisible dark matter, necessary to explain the motion of galaxies, the invisible dark energy, necessary to account for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, as well as black holes, which make ordinary matter disappear like a magician making a rabbit vanish in a hat, shape the image of a universe that we cannot grasp, because we cannot observe an increasingly larger portion of it.

By shedding light on what is commonly referred to as the black triangle of our ignorance, the author attempts to identify the biases that hide such a large part of the universe, by analyzing a series of possible illusions. Is there indeed a shortage of matter in the universe? Could our observations be wrong? Do we see a three-dimensional holographic universe in two dimensions? Or do we live inside a black hole of cosmic dimensions, in a bubble-universe or in an island-universe?

In this highly accessible book, renowned astrophysicist David Elbaz examines the fundamental questions that occupy modern cosmology.