To a lecture today on 'dark energy' by a topflight cosmologist. Held by the chaplaincy which seemed odd till you thought about it. Though the speaker did admit to being an atheist.

He was excellent at keeping the science (and speculation) [1] managable for a non-technical audience and was clearly enthusiastic about his subject in a way that couldn't help but rub off.

Excellent. Even if it did raise more questions than it was ever likely to answer.


[1] Dark matter is strange enough. Dark energy is weird enough and so little understood that you can pretty much make up your own theory and it will be as right as anyone else. Our speaker appeared on the Letterman show and did his best explanation of the current state of knowledge but irritated Letterman no end (we saw the video) when he asked "What is dark energy?" with the quite honest and accurate: "I don't know."