startswithabang: Dark Energy Holds The Ultimate Lesson For Today’s Scientific Frontiers“
startswithabang: Dark Energy Holds The Ultimate Lesson For Today’s Scientific Frontiers“The big problem with science at the frontiers of what is known is that we don’t know where or how the next great, revolutionary discovery will occur. The XENON experiment could find evidence of a WIMP-like dark matter signal. The upcoming DUNE experiment could reveal something unexpected about neutrinos. The James Webb Space Telescope could show us a population of stars or galaxies that we never thought existed. And a future collider could reveal new forces, particles, or states of matter.Until we look, though, we cannot know what secrets the Universe does or doesn’t hold. All we know for certain is what Wayne Gretzky told us decades ago, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Humanity now stands at the most distant frontier of all-time in particle physics, astrophysics, low-temperature physics and more. We can’t know what we’ll find if we push that frontier and look as we’ve never looked before. But we can be certain that science will not progress any further without doing so.”If we didn’t come into existence 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, but rather 138 billion years after the Big Bang, our Universe would be a vastly different place. Our home galaxy would no longer be part of the Local Group, but instead all its galaxies would have merged into one. Beyond our galaxy, no others would be visible: not to the naked eye and not even to a Hubble-equivalent telescope. The cosmic microwave background would not appear, and there would be little evidence to point towards the Big Bang.But if we pushed the limits of our scientific frontiers far enough, we’d still uncover the truth about the Universe. The next time you think that a study is ill-motivated, think about this instead. -- source link