A 570 megapixel camera will launch next year to prove the existence of Dark Energy.

Here's a small disclaimer: the 570 megapixel camera currently under construction isn't exactly small, and it won't end up on Walmart shelves anytime soon. Rather than replace the aging Hubble telescope due to hit retirement in 2014 (the James Webb Space Telescope will actually have seat), this $35 million dollar camera will focus its 74 CCD sensors on dark energy.

Called the Dark Energy Camera, this rig isn't looking for the existence of the dark side of the Force, but rather the invisible substance that supposedly makes up 70-percent of the universe. The camera is currently under construction at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois under the supervision of Brenna Flaughter.

The idea of this camera is to peer back into time when the universe was only a few billion years old by pointing its mammoth lenses up into the Southern Hemisphere. Flaughter and her team of scientists want to understand how the dark energy diminished the influence gravity had over galaxies, thus allowing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

The scientists are betting that the 570 megapixel monster will help solve the riddle by mapping the light from over 300 million galaxies and supernovas. The Dark Energy Survey and the digital camera is expected to go live in 2011, and could even challenge Einstein's general theory of relativity. "It’s throwing the tools of the digital age onto the old question of where we are," said Craig Hogan, the director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Fermilab.

The images produced by the Dark Energy Camera should make one heck of a desktop wallpaper.

Source: Click Here