Dark Matter Still Confuses Scientists

After a decade of research, scientists have come to this conclusion about dark energy: they still have no idea what it is!

Here’s a fascinating article on the most mysterious force in the Universe, the dark energy, by Dennis Overbye for the New York Times (no physics equations, we promise!):

Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.

“The discovery of dark energy has greatly changed how we think about the laws of nature,” said Edward Witten, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

Link – via Blue’s News