Speaker
Description
Back in 1983, when I got involved in the hunt for Grand Unified (GUT)
Magnetic Monopoles, it was possible that there were enough of them to flatten (close)
the Universe. MACRO searched for GUT monopoles at levels below the closure and
Parker Bound(s) and didn’t find any. A belief in the Inflationary Universe led scientists
like me to search for Dark Matter but there was not enough to flatten the Universe.
Then the accelerating Universe was discovered, and it was thought that a mysterious
form of Dark Energy provided the missing energy needed to flatten the Universe. My
involvement with the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic
Instrument (DESI) arose from my original motivating question that got me involved with
MACRO – “what flattens (closes) the Universe?” Just this year DESI released the
results of 3 years of its planned 5-year survey and to everyone’s surprise, discovered
that Dark Energy is dynamic. I will briefly describe this remarkable scientific journey
that has led me and my colleagues from Monopoles to Dark Energy and into the
interiors of Black Holes.
