Astrophysicist David Spergel

Get your rocket pack. Secret Science Club North is traveling to the edge of time and space!

Astrophysicist David Spergel won the 2018 Breakthrough Prize for his work mapping the infant Universe. Observations of ancient light in the "Cosmic Microwave Background" produced the mind-boggling fact that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and that ordinary matter makes up a mere 5 percent of the cosmos. Now David Spergel is looking to answer the next big questions: What happened in the moments just after the Big Bang? What is dark energy, the unseen force that makes up 68 percent of the Universe and seems to drive its expansion?

Director of the Center for Computational Physics at the Flatiron Institute and professor of astronomy at Princeton University, David Spergel is currently co-chair of the science team for WFIRST, NASA's next major outer-space telescope mission.

Before and After

• Groove to space-age tunes
• Try our cocktail of the night, the Interplanetary Punch
• Stick around for the stellar Q&A!