BBC Inside Science Is dark energy getting weaker?
Nov 6, 2025
Lizzie Gibney, a senior physics and AI reporter at Nature, shares new revelations about orcas hunting great white sharks and a groundbreaking interactive map of Roman roads. Carlos Frenk, a Durham University cosmologist, discusses the universe's expansion and the intriguing possibility that dark energy might be weakening, hinting at drastic cosmic implications. Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in AI, issues urgent warnings about the risks of superintelligence and the need for proactive measures to ensure humanity's safety in an era of advanced technology.
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Dark Energy Might Be Fading
- New analyses suggest dark energy may be declining, which would change the universe's fate from eternal expansion to eventual recollapse.
- Carlos Frenk says independent measurements (including DESI) already indicate dark energy is decreasing and demand revised theory and better data.
Get Better Data And Theory
- Carlos Frenk urges collecting more and better data to settle the question about dark energy's behaviour.
- He also calls for theorists to think harder because we currently lack a theory for dark energy.
Backpropagation Explained Simply
- Hinton explains neural nets learn by adjusting many connection strengths simultaneously using backpropagation.
- He notes this method is vastly more efficient than changing one connection at a time and enabled modern AI advances.
