Light and Dark

The story of how we used light to reveal the cosmos begins in the 3rd century BC when, by trying to understand the tricks of perspective, the Greek mathematician Euclid discovered that light travels in straight lines. In Renaissance Italy 2,000 years later, Galileo Galilei did just that by using the lenses of his simple telescope to reveal our true place in the cosmos.With each new insight into the nature of light came a fresh understanding of the cosmos. In the 1670s, the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer discovered that light travelled at a finite speed, a discovery that had a profound implication. And in 1964, by detecting the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang, we captured the oldest light in the universe and saw as far back as it is possible to see with light.

The first hints that there might be more out there than meets the eye emerged from the gloom in 1846 with the discovery of the planet Neptune. In the middle of the 20th century scientists discovered dark matter and in the late 1990s dark energy. Jim explores the quest to uncover the nature of dark energy and to see dark matter pull the first stars and galaxies together, a quest that involves peering into the darkest period in the cosmos's past.