Dr Walker and Dr Wardle. The two Marks are nervous. And they could know as soon as April whether they are right or wrong, when the new Chandra satellite observatory surveys x-ray emissions from the distant universe.
None is more important than the one the two researchers are working on in Sydney.
The pace of scientific and technological change is so rapid it is easy to forget that we have uncovered only a tiny fraction of what there is to know. In this Herald series we look at five big questions for the 21st century, and talk to Australian researchers trying to answer them. Researchers 100 years ago could not have imagined the big unanswered questions scientists are asking today. Albert Einstein hadn't published his special theory of relativity. Edwin Hubble hadn't shown that our galaxy was but one of many in a vast universe.