So we're just about ten years into the discovery that the universe is probably blowing apart due to a cosmic, anti-gravitational force called dark energy. And how much more do we know about it?

Scientists have made some headway, but there are still some frighteningly large questions to be addressed.  They now agree that dark energy makes up 75 percent of the cosmos. Dark matter, another mysterious substance, commands a 21 percent share. And as for the protons and electrons we all know and love? A mere sliver of the total, at a paltry four percent. The latest issue of the journal Physics World features reflections and insights from two of the leading dark energy astrophysicists, Eric Linder and Saul Perlmutter, of the University of California, Berkeley. They say that planned and potential space missions - like the probe pictured here - could make the next decade an exciting one for astrophysics. Who knows, maybe we'll get really lucky and understand the nature of ten or even, dare I say, twelve percent of the universe!—Gregory Mone

The New York Times reports today that Google and IBM are sinking $30 million into a two-year project to build remote data centers that can handle sophisticated computing research remotely. No World of Warcraft player will again be safe now that students can crunch probabilities with the 1600+ processors Google is installing in an undisclosed location.

But seriously: the two companies—along with six universities (Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Maryland and the University of Washington)—are cooperating to get an inadequately funded area of research off the ground. The Times succinctly defines "cloud-computing" as a "new kind of data-intensive supercomputing" that "often involves scouring the
Web and other data sources in seconds or minutes for patterns and
insights." It's typically used by major corporations to analyze web traffic and refine big systems, but now any university kid with a password will be able to create programs and software that can take advantage of the horsepower Google and IBM are providing. —Jacob Ward

When six men got trapped in a Utah coal mine on August 6, the mine's chief executive declared that the cave-in was caused by a natural earthquake. The University of Utah Seismograph Stations did record a magnitude-3.9 earthquake, but the quake was probably caused by the mine collapse—rather than the other way around.

Seismograph stations recorded a smaller seismic event on Thursday, when a second implosion killed three men who were participating in the rescue effort, including an inspector from the U.S. Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration. Called a "bump" by mining officials, it is the seismic event recorded in blue on the lower right section of this chart.

Seismologists at the University of Utah, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of California, Berkeley, say that the downward motion of seismic waves from both events is strong evidence of collapse. The second event happened less than a mile underground, which would be quite shallow for a natural earthquake.

The "bumps" are likely to continue. The roof of the Crandall Canyon mine is held up by pillars of coal. When some pillars fail, that can increase the stress on nearby pillars that are still standing.—Dawn Stover

The military garb designed by mechanical engineer Homayoon Kazerooni at the University of California, Berkeley, is anything but standard issue. Kazerooni’s 90-pound battlesuit, dubbed BLEEX for Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton, consists of a pair of robotic legs and backpack-like frame. Wearing the prototype, a soldier can haul up to 75 extra pounds with little effort. BLEEX is still a far cry from the superhuman combat gear envisioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is funding the research.

The Paper Tracing Black Hole Mergers Through Radio Lobe Morphology

The Journal Science, August 23, 2002, Vol. 297

The Author David Merritt and R.D. Ekers

The Gist What do you get when black holes meet? A really big black hole.

In the basement of the Valley Life Sciences Building at the University of California, Berkeley, biologist Michael Dickinson walks down a cinderblock hallway to an anonymous steel door. Beyond it lies a small, windowless room crammed with high-speed video cameras and lasers and computer cables draped as thick as cobwebs. In the center of the room is a glass tank big enough to hold a vending machine. This is Robofly.

A new type of solar cell may one day prove so inexpensive and flexible, it could be used to turn your clothes into portable power sources—keeping you warm or cool, or charging your phone. Materials scientist Paul Alivisatos and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, mixed P3HT, a plastic that conducts electricity, with nanorods made from cadmium selenide, a semiconductor material. This mixture was then "spin-cast" onto a glass base, a process similar to swirling a wineglass so that the wine spreads into a thin film.