It is science's last and greatest challenge:
fathoming the depths of the night sky. The objective: to
crack the cosmic code, to unravel the blueprint for
nature's grandest conception, a machine constructed on
an unimaginably vast scale ' the Universe itself. Vast '
and also complex? Today's model of an expanding Universe
' the big bang cosmology ' is actually built on
principles derived from a few simple mathematical
equations. Gravity-warped space'time, quantum mechanics,
the physics of the subatomic ' these crucial insights,
stemming from Einstein's revolutionary theories of
relativity, have led to a simple and elegant framework
within which the whole of the Universe, over billions of
years, has been described. But recent evidence has begun
to make wrinkles in the neat fabric of the big bang
cosmology. There is now overwhelming evidence that there
is far more stuff in the Universe than we can see. What,
and where, is this 'dark matter'? And it now appears
that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating:
something out there ' some exotic 'dark energy' ' is
acting against gravity to push space and time apart.
While offering a critical view of how all the pieces in
our current model fit together, Pedro Ferreira argues
that Einstein's Universe may be just another stepping
stone towards a new, more profound and effective
cosmology in the future. |
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