BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – This fall, an assistant professor of physics at Illinois Wesleyan University plans to have students help research one of the biggest questions facing science today: What is dark energy?
According to Assistant Professor of Physics Thushara Perera, studies involving dark matter and dark energy are showing there is more that is unknown in the universe than known. “Everything we know about the universe is probably 5 percent of what is really out there,” he said. “Dark matter is maybe 25 percent, and the other 70 percent is probably dark energy.”
Highly sensitive cameras, filled with detectors, are set in dry places at high elevation in an attempt to reveal the nature of dark energy and the history of the universe. Perera has spent years working on such a camera, known as the Astronomical Thermal Emission Camera (AzTEC), which was mounted on a telescope in the mountains of Chile. “The data from AzTEC helps answer fundamental questions about early galaxies and how they formed.”