Here is what I remember most about the months I spent searching for dark matter: there are some things in the universe you can only find by looking away from them. It was how the professor who ran the lab greeted me on my first day, and I remember thinking, Yes, of course, and the thought was a revelation because this was a time when nothing about the world made sense to me. Later, sitting at my desk at midnight or nodding my way through some incomprehensible explanation, I would repeat the words to myself, trying to re-create that first frisson of . . . what? Joy, almost. Hope. The feeling that the universe itself was something I might take hold of if only I kept reaching. Even now, worlds away, the words have a certain magic to me.