The Most Shocking Discovery in Astrophysics Is 25 Years Old
A quarter of a century after detecting dark energy, scientists are still trying to figure out what it is
Stories by Richard Panek
Richard Panek is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Science Writing. He is the prizewinning author of The 4% Universe (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). His next book, Pillars of Creation, the story of the James Webb Space Telescope, is forthcoming from Little, Brown.
The James Webb Space Telescope Has Launched: Now Comes the Hard Part
After years of delay, the most ambitious observatory ever built has at last left Earth. It now faces a high-stakes series of deployments in deep space
How a Dispute over a Single Number Became a Cosmological Crisis
Two divergent measurements of how fast the universe is expanding cannot both be right. Something must give—but what?