WHEN I finally catch up with Max Tegmark he is pinned to a dentist's chair. "Are you sure this is a good time to talk?" I ask over a hissy cellphone connection. "It's OK," he replies. "They're doing my X-rays so we've got a few minutes. I could use some distraction."
Tegmark, a theoretical cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is visiting the dentist to have a failed titanium implant removed. It's the only time he can spare to talk to me about his latest research, which promises to revolutionise the way astronomers view the heavens.
Today's telescopes come in many shapes and sizes: a few scan the whole sky, while others examine a given patch in great detail. Some look at the visible light emitted by stars and galaxies, others look at longer wavelengths for the embers of the big bang, and yet more ...
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