This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Ulta and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

By naming it dark energy, I wanted to get everyone's attention to say, we don't really

know what this is.

We know that it has repulsive gravity, but I think it's a much bigger puzzle.

In fact, I've gone out on a limb several times to say it's the most profound problem in

all of science.

That's Michael Turner.

He helped bring together two fields of study, each one amazingly difficult in itself.

One is trying to understand the smallest particles in the universe, and the other is figuring

out how the universe began and evolved into what it is today and what it will become.

He explores these things by making what he modestly calls cat scratches on a piece of paper.

But in the ten years I've known Michael, he's never spoken to me in the cat scratch language

that the rest of us call math, because I wouldn't be able to follow him.

Instead, he finds ways to describe these invisible things in words that light up our minds

and help us to imagine them, like he's coming up with the term dark energy.

This is so great to be talking with you Michael.

I love our conversations all the time, but this is especially wonderful because we're

talking about dark energy, and we talk all the time on this show about communication.

When you achieved a communication, hit home run when you named it dark energy.

Tell me about how the name came about.

...