Word: astrophysicist
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These discoveries raise more questions than they answer. For example, just because scientists know dark matter is there doesn't mean they understand what it really is. Same goes for dark energy. "If you thought the universe was hard to comprehend before," says University of Chicago astrophysicist Michael Turner, "then you'd better take some smart pills, because it's only going to get worse...
...more convincing is that an entirely different kind of observation--the long-standing search for lumpiness in the cosmic background radiation--now suggests independently that dark energy is real. The lumps themselves were first detected about a decade ago, thanks to the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite. At the time, astrophysicist and COBE spokesman George Smoot declared that "if you're religious, it's like seeing...
...unaided eye, the images are meaningless. A statistical analysis, however, shows that the early lumps--actually patches of slightly warmer or cooler radiation--don't come at random but rather at certain fixed sizes. "It's as though you're studying dogs," says University of Pennsylvania astrophysicist Max Tegmark, "and you find out that they come in just three types: Labrador, toy poodle and Chihuahua...
...exotic particles add up to only about 35% of what you would need. Ergo, the extra curvature must come from some unseen energy--just about the amount, it turns out, suggested by the supernova observations. "I was highly dubious about dark energy based only on supernovas," says Princeton astrophysicist Edwin Turner (no relation to Michael, though the two often refer to each other as "my evil twin"). "This makes me take dark energy more seriously...
...that's not the end, according to University of Michigan astrophysicist Fred Adams. An expert on the fate of the cosmos and co-author with Greg Laughlin of The Five Ages of the Universe (Touchstone Books; 2000), Adams predicts that all this dead matter will eventually collapse into black holes. By the time the universe is 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years old, the black holes themselves will disintegrate into stray particles, which will bind loosely to form individual "atoms" larger than the size of today's universe. Eventually, even these will decay, leaving a featureless, infinitely large...