ASTRONOMY'S MEXT BIG THINGS

摘要

We've never known more about the universe than we do right now—and that's precisely the problem. Every significant astronomical discovery of the past 50 years—afterglow from the big bang, evidence of dark matter, planets circling distant stars, just to name a few—has helped to create an ever-larger and more perplexing set of cosmic questions: Is there life on those faraway planets? How did the first stars form after the big bang? Is the universe filled with an antigravitational force, and, if so, what the heck is it? And most intriguingly: What else are we missing? Answers to questions like these do not come from idle reflection. They come from building really good telescopes. Over the next decade, the first generation of telescopes conceived, designed, and built with the help of computers will open their eyes to the heavens, each with the power to rock our fundamental understanding of the cosmos. Some of these telescopes—such as the trio of satellites riding gravitational waves on the preceding pages—don't look like traditional telescopes at all, but each has the ability to reach out into the universe and uncover its idiosyncrasies, its wonderful strangeness.