Adam Riess discovered that the universe was expanding faster and faster, thanks to a repulsive force dubbed "dark energy" — a breakthrough that has led scientists to reconsider the fundamentals of physics.
By Michael Anft
Photos by Steve Spartana
There are billions of galaxies, a zillion stars, swirling clouds of dust, and bulging pockets of gas. Cosmic radio waves fan out around something called "dark matter" — "dark" because no one really knows what it is — while remnants of energy that date back to the Big Bang 14 billion years ago swell and contract. Stars eat up other ones, then implode. Asteroids and comets wreak their usual havoc.
Don't let the perspective and calm of a clear night sky
fool you: The universe is a mess.
Astrophysicists, cosmologists, theorists, and other Big
Thinkers intimately understand this. It's a lot to clean
up, intellectually speaking. They will tell you that the
whole shebang is up for grabs, that theories of its
vastness and mechanics are constantly in flux, falling in
and out of fashion almost as rapidly as amateur television
singers. And the conjecture is seemingly as infinite as
space itself...
More: http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0208web/riess.html
