All language subtitles for Spaces Deepest Secrets S01E02

The universe is falling apart.

Something is forcing galaxies
to rush away from each other

at ever-increasing speeds.

Ever since
this alarming discovery,

physicists have struggled
to understand

what might be causing it.

So far,
they've come up with a name.

They've called it dark energy.

Dark energy is basically
our name for that thing

that we don't understand.

It's not the color dark.

It's just an expression

of our ignorance
as to what is the stuff.

The discovery of dark energy

really surprised
theoretical physicists

and remains
a deep mystery of nature.

We are absolutely
still lacking great ideas.

So, it is crying out
for some new breakthrough,

new thinking.

Scientists all over the world

are on the hunt for answers

to modern science's
most enduring problem...

to paint the biggest
picture of all,

to finally solve the mystery
of dark energy.

Captions by vitac
www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by
Discovery communications

Energy is all around us.

It comes from the sun,
from chemical reactions,

from electricity.

Energy powers our vehicles,

heats our homes,
lights our nights.

Understanding energy
has transformed our planet

and our lives.

Dark energy is something
altogether different.

It seems to serve
no useful purpose at all

except to show us

that we understand less
than we thought we did.

Dark energy
arrived entirely unexpectedly

at the very end
of the 20th century.

In 1998,

a young scientist
named Saul Perlmutter

was thinking
some very big thoughts indeed.

As a graduate student,

I really wanted
to find a project

that would answer some...

or at least be looking at some
very philosophical questions,

something that felt
like it was meaningful

about the world we live in
in some, you know, deep way.

The question
that's been really exciting me

is whether the universe
will last forever.

Do we live in a universe
that is infinite

or, some day,
will it come to an end?

The two big options at the time

were that the universe
could expand forever

but just slow and slow and slow
but forever be expanding.

Or if there was enough stuff
in the universe

to gravitationally attract it,

it could slow to a halt

and then collapse
and come to an end.

Perlmutter was measuring

the way the universe
was expanding

by observing exploding stars
called supernovae.

One particular kind of supernova
always explodes the same way

because it waits
until just a critical amount

of mass has fallen on it,
and then it explodes.

So, they all look very similar
to each other.

They brighten as a firework,
then fade away,

and they reach
the same brightness.

And you can then use that
as an indicator

of how far away it is

by just looking to see
how bright it appears to you.

Because they explode
with exactly the same intensity,

these supernovae
are known as standard candles.

By comparing
their relative brightnesses,

relative distances
can be calculated.

Perlmutter expected the stars

to show what everyone
thought at the time...

that the universe
was slowing down.

Fainter ones are further,

just like when you watch,
you know,

a car recede into the distance,
you can tell

how far away it is by
how faint the taillights look.

If you can use the brightness
of a supernova

to tell you how far away it is,

that's really telling you how
long ago the explosion occurred,

because you know
how long it takes

for light to travel
that great distance.

So, now we have an object
where it explodes,

and its brightness
tells you when it exploded,

how far back in time
it exploded.

No matter how good the theory,

the practical problem
of catching an exploding star

at just the right time
is immense.

But Perlmutter and his team

applied the very latest computer
technology to the problem.

Finally,
we have the analysis completed,

at least the computer's part
of the analysis,

and it's beginning
to show us on the screen

what it thinks might
be a supernova.

Eventually,

after the team had identified
42 such dying stars,

the calculations began.

What Perlmutter discovered
shocked him.

The data was telling
the wrong story.

The universe didn't appear
to be slowing down.

We... we thought
that that's what we would see,

and it looked like the opposite
was taking place,

and, in fact, the universe

was speeding up
in its expansion.

These distant supernova
were fainter

than you would have thought,

and very significantly fainter.

They were, you know,
probably 20% or more.

And that's the hallmark
of a universe

that's actually speeding up
in its expansion.

To say
that this result was a surprise

would be a major understatement.

It was so unexpected

that the initial reaction
was disbelief.

Everybody knew Saul,

and everybody knew
the experiment he was doing.

And I remember sitting in
the audience and Saul getting up

and expecting him
to present an update

on the results he'd given
a year ago

that actually the universe
was slowing down.

And so, I was absolutely amazed

that, based on
only twice as many objects

as he had the year before,

that suddenly, he was saying

that we lived in a universe
that was accelerating.

I remember it just
being just incredible.

I mean, all the astronomers
walking around,

scratching their heads,
saying, "this can't be right."

Surely it can't be right."

It was not the result
that people had been expecting.

And such an extraordinary claim

demands extraordinary
evidence...

more than a few data
from a handful of stars.

So, here we are on a beach

where there's
about a billion pebbles.

And if you think you're trying
to understand this beach,

you wouldn't think you could
understand it from 42 pebbles.

But Saul was right.

He was able to work out

that the universe
was accelerating

just from 42 supernovae,

which is quite incredible
when you think about it.

On the one hand,
this was a good result.

It was new science

and produced a nobel prize
for Saul Perlmutter.

On the other,
it raised an obvious question.

Once you know that the universe
is actually speeding up,

then you're faced
with the question of,

"Well,
what could make it speed up?"

So far, the only
real progress on that question

has been to give
the phenomenon a name.

It's become known
as dark energy.

Dark energy
is just the term we use

to describe whatever it is

that makes the universe
accelerate in its expansion,

what makes it expand
faster and faster.

We don't know what that is.
It's a mystery.

And so, we call it dark
to reflect our ignorance,

not because the color is dark.

The mystery
is so deep, so beguiling,

that wherever
there are physicists,

there are people hoping

that they will solve
the mystery of dark energy.

People safe
in the infuriating knowledge

of what they're looking for,

if it's there at all,
is all around them.

But the fact that no one
has yet been able to identify

what the dark energy
might actually be

has opened a can of worms
not seen in science

since the last time a physicist
got involved in cosmology.

In 1915,

it seemed that the work
of physics was nearly at an end.

Everything made sense.

Newton had explained the heavens
by invoking gravity.

And atoms had been identified

as the smallest
invisible units of matter.

Job done.

But then a German man
who liked to muse on trains

turned up with
a totally new set of ideas.

I very rarely think in words
at all.

A thought comes.

And I might try to express it
in words afterwards.

Einstein called
these little flights of fancy

his thought experiments.

And they would lead him
to develop his theory

of general relativity,
which totally changed

how the workings
of the universe were understood.

According to Einstein,
space isn't simply a void.

It's more
like a four-dimensional fabric,

woven from both space and time.

The mass of planets
can warp and distort the fabric,

gathering
other celestial objects,

like moons, around them.

And it's this bending
of space-time

that creates the effect
we experience as gravity.

So, Einstein's theory
of general relativity

is a beautiful theory.

It's incredibly elegant,

and it's been, now,
around for 100 years.

It's very predictable.

You can write things,
make predictions

of what the universe
should look like

and what objects should
look like in the universe,

and we can test those.

And as far as we can tell,
it's passed every test.

The power
of general relativity is that,

like Newton's version
of gravity before it,

it's predictive.

Bizarre as the curvature
of space-time may sound,

it's eminently testable.

In 1919, British astronomer
Arthur Eddington

pointed his telescope
at a patch of sky near the sun

during an eclipse

and observed a star known
to be actually out of view,

behind the sun.

Its rays of light had been bent

by the distorted space-time
created by the sun's mass.

Einstein's theory had held up.

A paradigm had shifted,

and the crowd went wild.

Einstein was suddenly famous,
undoubtedly the cleverest

yet most incomprehensible man
on earth.

This is what all
the fuss was about.

This is the equation
that the porters

and waiters were discussing.

On the one side,
the geometry of space-time.

On the other, the mass
and energy of the universe,

which acts on it.

Not incomprehensible at all,
at least not to its author.

But there was one aspect
of general relativity

that Einstein himself
didn't understand.

The problem that Einstein had

is when he solved his equations
of general relativity,

what he found was
that he predicted

that the universe
should actually be expanding,

and that was radically different

from the perceived wisdom
at the time,

which is that we lived
in a static universe...

both static in time
and in space.

So, he put in
an extra term into the equation.

He called it
the cosmological constant.

He used the Greek
variable lambda.

But effectively,
it was really just what,

you know,
a physics undergraduate

would call a fudge factor

that was just designed to make
the equations come out right.

And it would just make the
universe sort of stand still.

When you add the lambda term,

it means that the equation
is not quite as simple

as it was before.

So, in that sense, it's not
as beautiful as an equation.

The static universe
was restored,

but Einstein always felt

he'd added lambda
against his better judgment.

Despite the fudge factor...

lambda, the cosmological
constant...

Einstein continued
to be celebrated

as the world's cleverest man...

Until, in 1929,
he became even more clever.

In the U.S., an astronomer,
Edwin Hubble,

was about to get a reputation

for scientific cleverness
himself.

He'd been using the world's
largest telescope

at Mt. Wilson in California
to peer deeper into space

than anyone had ever
looked before.

What he discovered completely
changed the meaning

of the word "universe."

Until Hubble,
it had been thought

that the universe
was our galaxy.

What Hubble saw was that,
in fact, our galaxy

is just one
of countless millions

but, more importantly,
that all these galaxies

were moving apart
from each other.

The universe wasn't static
after all.

This had huge implications.

It introduced the notion
of a beginning

and an age for the universe.

But more importantly
for Einstein,

it meant that he could ditch
his fudge factor,

the cosmological constant,

and return general relativity
to its former glory.

Einstein was over the moon.

In 1931, he went to Mt. Wilson
to shake Hubble's hand

and thank him for putting beauty
back into his equation.

Lambda, he later confessed,

was the biggest blunder
in his career.

I think that the reason
that he said that...

that it was a blunder

was because if he had just
not introduced that term,

then he would have said that,

you know, the universe
must be expanding

and done that 14 years
before the discovery

of the expansion
of the universe by Edwin Hubble,

which would have been
a great achievement.

But despite Einstein's blunder,

general relativity
has stood the test of time.

It is perhaps

the single most successful
scientific theory yet.

Every observation
we make of gravity,

from the smallest scales

to solar-system scales

to galactic scales
all the way to the universe...

all of that can be described
using the single theory

that Einstein created.

So, it's the most successful
and beautiful theory

we have of our universe.

Or at least it was.

For all its beauty
and simplicity,

general relativity

doesn't account for the effects
of dark energy.

Expansion as reported
by Hubble works fine,

but the accelerated expansion
of the universe

that Saul Perlmutter found
isn't part of the deal.

That it's there at all
is bad enough,

but worse, the way that
dark energy seems to work

is unlike anything
that's been observed before.

The density of anything

is the amount of stuff
you have within a given volume.

And dark energy
is an usual phenomenon

in that even though the volume
of the universe

is increasing as it expands,

the density is staying the same.

So, it's almost as if
there's new dark energy

being created all the time
as the universe expands,

meaning that its density
remains the same, constant.

So, you can think of it
as you get more space,

you actually get more
dark energy,

which is like getting something
for nothing,

which is clearly ridiculous.

I mean, it's clearly
against all our training

as physicists.

There is one way
to adapt general relativity

to cope with this magically

constantly
self-replenishing force,

and that is to simply
add it to the equation.

100 years after Einstein's
biggest blunder,

the cosmological constant
is back.

Lambda
is being written once more,

this time not to keep
the universe still,

but to account
for its unexplained

accelerating expansion.

The values are different,

but the concept
is exactly the same.

All this leads to one of two
equally alarming conclusions.

Either we need another Hubble
or we need another Einstein.

But before we consign Albert
to the scientific scrap heap,

there is a branch of physics
which might help,

an area where things popping in
and out of existence

is quite normal.

Welcome to the strange
and wonderful world

of Clare Burrage
and of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics
is the theory of what happens

to really, really small things.

It's the theory
of how the fundamental particles

in the universe work...

atoms, electrons, protons.

And quantum mechanics
is intrinsically uncertain.

Einstein hated
quantum mechanics.

But even though Einstein
didn't like it,

quantum mechanics could
shed light on dark energy

and come to the aid of
his once-more-under-fire theory,

in theory.

Quantum mechanics
tells us that particles

can come in and out of existence
in the vacuum.

And the fact
that those particles have mass

and potentially
are moving around...

they have a little bit
of energy.

And so,
when they pop into existence,

they give a little bit
of energy to the vacuum.

And, yes, they disappear again,

but the fact that that process
is going on all of the time

means that there's some energy
stored in the vacuum.

And because Einstein told us

that energy and mass
are the same thing,

having lots of energy stored
in space affects space-time

that caused the expansion
of the universe to accelerate.

So, it seems
that quantum mechanics should,

in theory, be able to explain

how the cosmological
constant works

and how dark energy appears
in the vacuum of space

and is driving the acceleration
of the universe.

But there's a problem.

When they came
to calculate this vacuum energy,

they discovered how
spectacularly wrong they were.

If you were to say there was
one pebble on this beach,

you'd be wrong
by one part in a billion.

If you were to say
there was one particle

in the universe, you'd
be off by 10 to the 80.

But the vacuum energy
was calculated

to be off by 10 to the 120.

That is a googol.

That is spectacularly wrong.

The fact that our predictions
are so far off from what we see

tells us that there's
something fundamentally missing

in the way that we
understand physics,

that we understand
the world around us.

So, there's still a mystery,
still a puzzle there.

It might be tempting
to simply ignore dark energy.

You could argue that the
apparent accelerated expansion

is, in fact,
a trick of the light,

that it may be a function

of other, inaccessible
dimensions at play,

that it just
looks like dark energy

but is actually something else.

But dark energy
isn't just an irritating threat

to Einstein's
beautiful equations.

It's also a very
practical solution

to a fundamental question
in cosmology,

namely, what is the universe
made of?

When Einstein was busy thinking
about gravity on trains,

the answer was simple.

The universe
was made of the same stuff

that you and I are made of,

the stuff of stars, planets,

coke cans, tennis rackets...

atoms, made from electrons,
protons, and neutrons.

But physics
was about to get a surprise.

It turned out there was
something else out there

that the universe
was also made of...

matter of a different kind.

In 1975,

astronomer Vera Rubin
made an unexpected discovery.

If we plot
the velocity of the planets

as a function of distance
from the sun...

Mercury, Venus, earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto...

and you can see
that Mercury orbits

much more rapidly than pluto.

The graph is called
a rotation curve.

It is the embodiment
of the law of gravity.

The further away
you travel from the sun,

the weaker
its gravitational force.

Galaxies work in the same way
as our solar system

except that, instead of planets
orbiting a central sun,

in a spiral galaxy,
stars are held in orbit

by a gravity-providing
black hole.

Vera Rubin decided to plot
the rotation curves in galaxies.

She focused her telescopes
on Andromeda,

the galaxy closest to our own.

I came out with sets of numbers,

and I plotted them
on pieces of paper,

and I discovered that the stars,

as you went further
and further out,

did not slow down.

They were moving just as fast
as the stars near the center.

We find that their velocities
remain flat all the way

to the edge of our observations.

And that was a surprise,

and a surprise
that had to be explained.

By all accounts,

the stars should have flown off
into space.

But they didn't.

And wherever spiral galaxies
were measured,

the same flat curves appeared.

It was decided
that the only explanation

was that their must be
more stuff out there

that we couldn't see
providing the extra gravity,

holding the galaxies together,

and flattening the curves.

They called this stuff
dark matter.

The new dark matter was a
surprise in more ways than one.

The very fact of its existence

was almost overshadowed
by the fact

that when
the calculations were made,

this new form of matter

outweighed the atomic form
of stuff by about 90 to 1.

In the 1980s,

when new ways of measuring
dark matter were developed,

it was discovered that there
simply wasn't enough of it

to make the universe work
as it clearly does.

The universe was short on stuff

to the tune of about 70%.

Cosmology scratched its head.

Then, in 1998,
a young scientist,

Saul Perlmutter, was thinking
some very big thoughts indeed.

Something that felt
like it was meaningful

about the world we live in
in some deep way.

The universe was speeding up
in its expansion.

The dark energy

that earned Perlmutter
his Nobel prize

was an interesting
and troubling concept,

but it also had a number,

and that number
was very significant.

We know from Einstein that
energy and mass are related...

that energy, "e,"

equals mass times
the speed of light squared.

"E" equals m-c squared.

Plug dark energy
into that equation

and you get the missing mass

that dark matter
couldn't account for.

The universe was complete.

It was made up of about 4%
baryonic matter,

the stuff that we're made from,

26% dark matter, and the
gaping 70%-sized hole

was filled with dark energy.

Despite heroic efforts
to find it

and overwhelming evidence
that it exists,

no one has identified
what dark matter is.

And, of course, dark energy,
both useful and confounding,

is barely in its infancy

when it comes
to a convincing explanation.

But there is an idea
in cosmology

that dark matter and dark energy

may be linked by more
than just a common adjective.

And if they are,

a new European spacecraft
called the Euclid

may shed light
on what that link might be.

The Euclid consortium
is staffed by 1,200 scientists

from 14 countries.

Here are some of them having
their picture taken

at their annual conference
in lausanne.

They're hoping that by taking
pictures of the universe,

they will be able to figure out

how it's expanded
over its lifetime

and, by determining that,

the nature of dark energy
will become clearer.

The way we think about it

is that it's either some
new stuff in the universe,

some particle
or even just a new field

that you put into the universe

to explain the properties
of the universe.

Alternatively, you could say

that the equation
you wrote down is not correct.

It's not wrong,
but it's sort of...

we like to say it's incomplete.

So, you could sort of fiddle

with the mathematics
of the equation.

So, actually, what you could do

is maybe come up with
a natural explanation for it.

So, Euclid should be able

to tell us which of
those alternatives it is.

The satellite will launch

and start sending data
back to earth in 2020.

The all-important camera
for the Euclid space telescope

is being built and tested
in the u.K.

In this country house
in the surrey hills.

Not only will Euclid

be able to measure
the historic acceleration

of stars and galaxies
in all directions,

it's hoped that it will also
provide data

about how dark matter
around galaxies

has expanded over time.

This is possible

because of an effect
called gravitational lensing.

So, in general relativity,
mass bends space and time,

and then light is bent
around large, massive objects,

just like Eddington measuring
the star behind the sun.

And so, we use the same
technique for Euclid.

I can illustrate it
using this wine glass

and this image of the universe.

So, as we draw the wine glass
across the image,

what you see is that the
galaxies behind the wine glass

get distorted,

and that distortion
is caused by the lens.

In general relativity,
the lens is mass,

because it bends the light.

And that can be shown
in this picture.

You have a large clump
of mass here,

which is like the lens,

like our bottom
of the wine glass.

And what you can see are all
the distorted galaxies

behind that lens.

And what you can do
with an image like this

is you can calculate

how much mass would I need
within the lens

to create the distortions
that I see.

And what you find
is quite remarkable.

What you find is there is
about 100 times more mass here

than you see from the light
in the image.

And that missing mass,

that mass you cannot see
is what we call dark matter.

So, Euclid will make an image

of the whole sky
at this resolution,

and it will find all these
distorted background galaxies.

And from that,

it can infer the distribution
of dark matter in the universe.

Euclid will compare
lensing all over the universe

and, by doing so, will help
paint an accurate picture

of how the universe
is tearing itself apart

under the influence
of dark energy.

So, Euclid may tell us

that it's
the cosmological constant,

and then we have to
explain that.

It might tell us that our theory
of gravity is not complete,

and we'd have to explain that.

It could tell us
that actually the dark matter

and dark energy are two sides
of the same coin

and that actually there might be
a unified dark sector.

But we'd have to explain that.

Uh, it could be another theory

that we haven't even
come up with yet.

And so, Euclid
will give us a coherent data set

that we can test
all these theories against.

Whatever the case,
the devil's in the details,

and these days, the details
can be interrogated

to degrees not thought possible

when Einstein first
reluctantly inserted

his cosmological constant
into general relativity.

Cosmology is one of the fields

that is actually
pushing the boundaries

of cosmology itself but also
statistics and computing.

It is the frontier, I think.

Euclid will be pushing
the boundaries

like never before.

It will stream more data
from space

than has ever been
processed in the past.

At the end, it will
have about 1.5 billion galaxies.

It will observe 1.5 billion
galaxies, so it's huge.

And a lot of the times,

your eyes cannot just pick up
patterns, okay?

So, this cannot be possible

without computers
and statistics.

The computer-aided searches

should give
unprecedented clarity

on how science should be
thinking about dark energy.

There will be winners
and losers.

The amount of data
that we have on dark energy

hasn't been enough
to be able to tell us

which path
we have to go down to.

So, we have, like,
lots of theories and a lot of...

hundreds of models
that could still fit our data.

When Euclid comes, lots of these
can be thrown away,

and it could, like, you know,
narrow down the possibilities

of what this dark energy is.

The Euclid telescope
is not the only show in town

when it comes to mapping
the expansion of the universe.

And kitt peak in Arizona,
risa wechsler is hoping to use

the proposed dark energy
spectroscopic instrument, desi,

to make a map
of part of the universe,

like this one...

...but 100 times more accurate

so that she can check
the validity

of computer simulations
of the universe

that she's created.

One of the things that I do

is try to simulate
the entire universe

and tie what we think about the
physics of the evolving universe

to what we actually see
with surveys like desi.

What we're trying to do
in these simulations

is take a whole bunch
of hypothetical universes.

Some of them will have
a cosmological constant.

Some of them will have
a different,

time-evolving dark energy.

Some of them will have more
or less amount of dark matter.

And then, when we compare that
to what we actually see,

we can rule out
a lot of these ideas.

So, some of them will not be
consistent with what we measure,

and then we can determine
that that's not the universe

we live in.

When desi starts
producing data in 2020,

it might be that one
of risa wechsler's simulations

strikes gold.

It'll be up against a lot
of competition.

In the absence of hard data,
this is boom time for theories.

Multi-galileons,
ghost condensates,

and the higher co-dimensional
branes worlds theory

jostle for attention in the race
to explain dark energy.

Many of these theories

usually try to provide
a global solution

to the dark energy problem,

a fix to general relativity.

But Clare Burrage
is working on an idea

that suggests Einstein

may have been both right
and wrong at the same time,

depending on where you are.

We know that Einstein's
theory works very well

on earth
and in the solar system.

We've tested it,
and it works phenomenally well.

But we don't have ways
of testing that theory

on the kinds of distance scales

that are relevant to cosmology.

And so, it could be

that whilst relativity's
a good description

of what's happening around us,

it doesn't work
as a description of the universe

as a whole system,

and maybe you need
to change the theory.

Clare's solution

involves something
called a chameleon...

...a particle that tries to
blend in not by changing color,

but by changing
how it exerts its force.

There are two types
of particles in the universe.

There are the ones
that make up matter,

like electrons and protons
and neutrons and quarks.

And then there's another set
of particles,

and those are the ones
that transmit forces.

So, for example, the photon,
which makes up light,

also carries
the electromagnetic forces.

It's exactly like
what we're doing

with the ball and the magnet.

We don't see the photons
transmitting the force directly,

but we see the fact that
the magnet makes the ball move.

In physics,
the greater a particle's mass,

the smaller the distance

over which its able to exert any
force or field it might have.

The mass of a particle

tells you how far
it can carry information.

If a particle that's
transmitting a force is heavier,

it only transmits the force
over a shorter distance scale.

So, the range that you can
transmit the force over

changes depending
on where you're looking.

The idea here
is that when the chameleon

comes into contact
with other stuff,

it interacts with it
and becomes heavy,

and its force-transmitting
capability all but disappears.

But in regions of deep space,

where there's very little
in the way of anything,

the chameleon has no stuff
with which to interact

and so is very light

and can transmit its force
over vast distances.

We're looking for this simple,
elegant solution

to this strange
accelerated universe,

and nothing yet
has given us that.

Where that simple solution

will eventually come
from is anyone's guess.

That is one of the infuriating
things about science.

It can't always produce
the rabbit out of the hat

on time and on budget.

Sometimes, it takes
an unexpected turn of events

or what the media
like to call a genius,

though the geniuses themselves

have a rather different take
on their exploits.

I'm not more gifted
than anybody else.

I'm just more curious
than your average person.

And I will not give up
on a problem

until I have found
the proper solution.

I think that curiosity
is what drives most cosmologists

and physicists...
a curiosity about the universe.

What is the universe
made out of?

Why are we here?

How did the universe begin?

What will happen to the universe
in the future?

All of these are questions
which are driven by curiosity.

I have no special talent.

I am only passionately curious.

Curiosity, I think, is...

well, it's the best
motivating force, okay?

Working hard doesn't necessarily
get you to an answer.

Working too hard
can actually stifle creativity.

With our work, you know,

it's a mixture of inventiveness

and persistence
and the hard work.

It's a combination.

It's the end of the
Euclid conference in lausanne.

The conference organizers
have arranged a social evening,

cruising around lake Geneva.

It's a chance for the delegates
to unwind

and maybe even think a little

about the biggest picture
of all.

Yeah, so, Einstein's theory

was motivated for a reason,
right?

He had an equivalent...

Yeah, and, I mean,
we're gonna measure a lot

of things about the nature
by looking at how it evolves...

how dark energy actually
evolves with red shift.

The problem is
the zero-point energy,

the vacuum energy,

the quantum mechanical part
that you add there.

Try and study the nature
of dark energy,

and at the same time,

try and test
if general relativity works.

So, there's, like, a lot of work
and a lot of discoveries

that are gonna
happen down the road.

- Exactly.
- And I'll drink to that.

- Exactly.
- Yeah.

The process
of scientific discovery

sometimes makes progress
through sheer hard work,

and sometimes it needs someone

to take an inspired
alternative view.

We learned an awful lot
about animals and plants

by simply observing them.

But it took Darwin
with a radical idea

to give us a context
to understand life itself.

And in our efforts
to understand the wider world

and even the universe,
observations are critical.

The ideas of dark matter
and dark energy

come courtesy
of people watching stars.

But just as Einstein musing
on his train

managed to take
all the known science

and see it from a different,
more useful angle,

it might be that to solve
the dark energy problem,

someone needs to pull off
a similar trick

and come up
with an even better idea.

There are an awful lot of
very smart people in the world.

I wouldn't be surprised
if we end up

with another Einstein
somewhere along the line here.

I don't know whether
it will be in our lifetime,

but we... i think we have
a good shot at it.

We need teams like Euclid.

That's the only way you can
get the data that you need.

But to understand that data,

to give it some interpretation,

to give it an idea could
come from one person.

That could be the next Einstein.

A genius could come up

and put all the observations
that we have so far...

put it together and come up
with a new theory.

Yeah.
It is quite possible.

I'm kind of hoping it's me.

The tantalizing truth
is that all it might take

to solve the mystery
of the dark energy

is one big idea,

for someone out there
to see things differently,

someone perhaps like you.

And if that new Einstein is you,

if you manage to solve
the mystery of dark energy,

you're likely to become
very famous indeed...

as famous
as the original Einstein.