CH 4: The Paranal Light Quartet

Take a trip to the Atacama Desert high in the Chilean Andes, where four giant telescopes peer deep into the cosmos night after night. They make up the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, which is at the forefront of our efforts to understand the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. The chapter tells the tale of the confirmation of the big bang theory, the development of the theory of inflation, the mind-bending discovery of dark energy, and the latest in the drive to make sense of this confounding component of the cosmos. All set amidst one of the most hostile places on Earth, where not even a blade of grass can grow.