The ‘dark energy’ that many of us hear in astronomy is a mysterious kind of energy that affects the vast majority of the universe. Einstein discovered that the relativity theory he developed in 1917 also showed that the universe was constantly expanding. However, even he himself had a hard time believing this discovery. Einstein, unable to rely on his own equations, presented the idea of a cosmological constant instead. The cosmological constant was an anti-gravity type of energy required for a fixed universe. This view was accepted by a large section in time and affected physics. Einstein’s biggest failure was actually a success: By 1931, Einstein left his cosmological fixed view. The reason for this was Edwin Hubble himself. Edwin Hubble was the one who managed to prove that the universe is expanding. Einstein also began to characterize the theory of relativity, which he had previously abandoned, as “my biggest mistake. From the 1930s to the 1990s, the cosmological constant was believed to be equal to 0. As history approached, a new idea emerged. This idea, referred to as ‘strange discovery’, was brought forward by Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. Saul’s discovery was that 68% of the mass energy in the universe is made up of a kind of energy that opposes gravity. The mystery that surprised the world of science: dark energy The documentary contains an explanation as to why the discovery surprised the scientific world: “While scientists are hoping to unravel the mystery of dark matter one day, they face another mystery: dark energy. This is a kind of energy that is thought to make up three-quarters of the energy in the universe, and it managed to surprise everyone. This gigantic mystery confused cosmologists.” Saul Perlmutter, who made the discovery, conveyed how terrible his discovery was in the same documentary. Saul noted that this discovery made things four times worse while there was already dark matter mystery in the middle. He also added that they did not even know what this dark energy was. Saul Perlmutter said that they did not even guess that they would encounter such a thing when they studied the universe. Such a discovery further increased the mysteries of the universe. Scientists began to question how we live in an ever-expanding universe. Saul Perlmutter said that dark energy is even more mysterious than dark matter. According to Perlmutter, the world of science sees dark energy as a property that allows space to expand itself constantly more rapidly.
