There are a whole lot of things in the world that I do not know that much. It is true that I cannot learn all of them (or even a small portion of them) in my lifetime. Actually, it is not necessary for most cases, e.g. I do not need to know how that technology works if I do not want to use it. However, some kinds of knowledge is just essential. They shape our viewpoint to the world and “may” answer questions like “where do you live?”, “how do you live?”, and etc.
All intro. things said, I want to read this paper later. You may like to take a look at it some time:
Paul J. Steinhardt, A Quintessential Introduction to Dark Energy
Abstract:Most of the energy in the universe consists of some form of dark energy that is gravitationally self-repulsive and that is causing the expansion rate of the universe to accelerate. The possible can-didates are a vacuum energy density (or, equivalently, a cosmological constant) and quintessence, a time-evolving, spatially inhomogeneous component with negative pressure. In this review, we focus on quintessence and ideas on how it might solve the cosmic coincidence problem, how it might be distinguished observationally from a cosmological constant, and how it may affect the overall cosmic history of the universe.