Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe
Alexei Filippenko, Univ. California-Berkeley
Abstract:
In 1998, observations of very distant exploding stars (supernovae) provided
intriguing evidence that the expansion of the Universe is now speeding up,
rather than slowing down due to gravity as expected. Today, new and completely
independent observations strongly support this amazing conclusion. Over the
largest scales of space, our Universe seems to be dominated by a repulsive
"dark energy" of unknown origin, stretching the very fabric of space itself
faster and faster with time. The physical nature of dark energy may provide
an important clue to the long-sought theory unifying gravity and quantum
physics.