Ingeniously simple lab experiment led by Prof Clare Burrage recognised by Blavatnik awards
and recipient of the £100,000 prize, said: “We don’t know what dark energy is. It’s the name we give to something we don’t understand so we can start talking about it. And when so little is known, even ruling things out feels like big progress.”
A popular theory is that dark energy is a “chameleon force”, which adjusts its properties according to the local environment. “In dense environments, your force becomes very short-range, but in empty space it becomes very long-range,” said Burrage. By precisely tracking the motion of the atoms using pulsed laser light, the team were looking for any unexpected accelerations that could be due to a chameleon force.
“With one upgrade of the experiment we hope to close that window,” Burrage said. “It’s definitely technologically achievable.” Some may be deterred by the narrow odds of a breakthrough in a field where so little is known, but for Burrage this is the attraction of working on dark energy.
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