Bizarre Universe

It seems we live in a bizarre Universe. One of the greatest mysteries in the whole of science is the prospect that 75% of the Universe is made up from a mysterious 1 known as ‘Dark Energy’, which causes an acceleration of the cosmic expansion. Since a further 21% of the Universe is made up from invisible ‘Cold Dark Matter’ that can only be 2 through its gravitational effects, the ordinary atomic matter making up the rest is apparently only 4% of the total cosmic budget.

These 3 require a shift in our perception as great as that made after Copernicus's 4 that the Earth moves around the Sun. This lecture will start by reviewing the chequered history of Dark Energy, not only since Einstein’s proposal for a similar entity in 1917, but by tracing the concept back to Newton’s ideas. This lecture will 5 the current evidence for Dark Energy and future surveys in which UCL is heavily involved: the “Dark Energy Survey”, the Hubble Space Telescope and the proposed Euclid space mission.