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<\/a>Dark Energy is expanding at an alarming rate, threatening our very universe.<\/p>\nAnd you thought all you had to worry about is getting studded tires on your car.<\/p>\n
What exactly is dark energy? you ask.<\/p>\n
Good question.<\/p>\n
Terry Gross asked the same thing \u00a0of \u00a0Saul Perlmutter on her show<\/a> the other night. Perlmutter is a Nobel Prize recipient.<\/p>\n You really have to hand it to Terry Gross. It\u2019s not easy interviewing an astrophysicist. Most common folks only think of the universe in terms of the Big Dipper.<\/p>\n Perlmutter has discovered that dark energy is expanding faster and faster, like a cancerous mass left unchecked.<\/p>\n In fact, Dark Energy makes up most of the universe, says Perlmutter.<\/p>\n There is no such thing as empty space, it seems.<\/p>\n Space is an entity of its own.<\/p>\n And Dark Energy is making space reproduce itself faster and faster, Perlmutter says.<\/p>\n Astrophysicists like Perlmutter are trying to determine exactly what Dark Energy is, and why it is taking over our universe, like some ominous Creeper.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll leave it to them to do that.<\/p>\n But what intrigues me is this notion that there is a darkness growing all around us, expanding at a terrifying rate.<\/p>\n I\u2019m reminded of that old Christian classic \u2014 This Present Darkness<\/em> by Frank Peretti<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maybe Dark Energy has a spiritual element.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s the mystery of it.<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s as Bush poet Chris Wharton says in his 1996 ballad on Quantum Theology.<\/p>\n Snicker, snicker, snack.<\/p>\n God is a poet after all.<\/p>\n And if Peretti is right, the prayers of Believers can abate the darkness that threatens to overtake us.<\/p>\n