The Runaway Universe and the New Cosmology Dr Donald Goldsmith (Interstellar Media) Abstract ======== Recent discoveries with the Hubble Space Telescope, combined with observations by the world's greatest ground-based instruments, have revealed startling new facts about the cosmos. Instead of slowing down, as would be expected from the mutual gravitational attraction among all objects, the expansion of the universe is speeding up! This discovery implies that all of space must be filled with a mysterious "dark energy," entirely different from the previously revealed "dark matter." Although cosmologists can now calculate the amount of dark energy, they remain unable to explain why the universe contains precisely this amount, or indeed why any dark energy should exist at all. Yet another mystery for future generations of scientists to unravel!