If it’s true that the universe is proportioned 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter and 5% ordinary matter, says Harvard astronomer Robert P. Kirshner in a New York Times op-ed, then “the things we observe in the universe are not the important things.” Kirshner suggests: “Think of it this way: when you look at a snow-covered mountain, what you see is the snow, but the snow is not the mountain.”
Kirshner wrote The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy and the Accelerating Cosmos . His op-ed goes on to explain why the recent Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for two separate teams of astronomers’ discovery “that the expansion of the universe is speeding up as a result of the force of dark energy.” To make further measurements and observations, he recommends the James Webb Space Telescope, the Giant MagellanTelescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and a dedicated satellite such as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope or the Euclid telescope.
Kirshner ends with the traditional argument for beautiful non-utilitarian curiosity-motivated science:
The case for investment in science often rests on the connection between technology and economic development, or national defense, or relief from suffering and disease. These are good arguments. Everybody wants to be rich and safe and immortal. But even in stringent times, it seems like a good idea to do some science to find out what the world is made of and how it works.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are published in 'Science and the media.' He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
