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NOVA News Minutes
Infinite Cosmos
(running time 01:28)
Transcript
April 4, 2003
NARRATOR: This is not an Easter egg. It's a brand-new cosmic portrait of the universe. A NASA satellite just captured the faint afterglow of the big bang—the colossal explosion that started our universe. The images from the satellite confirm scientists' recent startling conclusion that most of the universe is made up of something they call "dark energy."
ALEX FILIPPENKO (University of California, Berkeley): If Einstein heard these results today, he would say, 'Yahoo!'
NARRATOR: The existence of dark energy confirms an early, abandoned theory of Einstein's. Since gravity draws matter together, Einstein wondered why the universe hadn't collapsed on itself. He reasoned that some sort of anti-gravity must be pushing matter apart, keeping the universe static. He called this repulsive force the "cosmological constant."
MICHAEL TURNER (University of Chicago): Einstein introduced the 'cosmological constant' as a fudge factor.
NARRATOR: As shown on PBS's NOVA, by 1929 scientists understood that the universe was not static - it was expanding. So Einstein called his "fudge factor" the greatest blunder of his career. But the NASA satellite just confirmed that a mysterious force is causing the universe to expand faster and faster. Dark energy is indeed a force that repels gravity. Einstein was right.
ALEX FILIPPENKO (University of California, Berkeley): It would be such a thrill for him, I think, to see that his original prediction that such weird 'stuff' might exist in the universe turned out to be actually true.
NARRATOR: An infinite mind imagining an infinite cosmos. I'm Brad Kloza.
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