Seeing in the Dark

摘要

Since 1998, when astronomers discovered that a mysterious force known as dark energy is blowing the universe apart, scientists have launched at least a dozen multimillion-dollar projects to figure out what, exactly, dark energy is. These range from the $71-million BigBOSS project to the $900-million Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is scheduled to see first light in 2019. But in an era of shrinking research funding, the advantage might go to scientists who can work on a shoestring budget-people such as Basque cos-mologist Narciso "Txitxo" Benitez, who says he can scoop every one of those projects for less than $10 million.