In David Mitchell's compelling novel "Cloud Atlas," two of the characters climb the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, and find giant domes -- observatories -- at the peak of the great mountain. The novel -- published last year -- is comprised of six interweaved strands, starting in the 1800s and moving through time until we reach the characters on Mauna Kea, hundreds of years in the future.
The telescopes are relics of a former age, a lost golden age of science and discovery. That age is now.
Scientists currently working at those observatories -- containing the largest optical telescopes in the world -- are studying light from distant quasars that has been traveling across the universe for billions of years. What they are discovering goes to the core of cosmology and physics, and has consequences for the meaning of life itself.