Seeing Darkness: the New Cosmology

Abstract

We present some useful ways to visualize the nature of dark energy and the effects of the accelerating expansion on cosmological quantities. Expansion probes such as Type Ia supernovae distances and growth probes such as weak gravitational lensing and the evolution of large scale structure provide powerful tests in complementarity. We present a ``ladder'' diagram, showing that in addition to dramatic improvements in precision, next generation probes will provide insight through an increasing ability to test assumptions of the cosmological framework, including gravity beyond general relativity.