positrino

I wish governments gave more money to projects like these.

Basic research is, and always has been, the most profitable enterprise in the long term.

And besides, science is awesome!

I am no astrophysicist but afaik:

Dark matter is some kind of matter that doesn't emit or absorb light, and it is hypothesized that it doesn't interact with the electromagnetic field at all. We know that this matter must exist because matter (well, energy) warps space-time and when we look at space/sky we see a lot of space-time warping but see no light whatsoever emanating from those places: dark matter.

Dark energy... we don't know what it is but it looks like vacuum space is not void, it is some kind of a "substance": it is something, and it has energy. The energy a cube meter of vacuum space has is very small, but as there is a looot of space, it's the biggest contribution to the energy of the universe. Now, we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (every second it passes, there's more space in the universe), but it looks like the energy per cube meter of vacuum space stays constant... so dark energy contribution to the total energy of the universe gets bigger and bigger.

About 47% in the province of Cádiz in the south of Spain.

Solar power is very scalable. So yes, in the future it will be a very worthy contender.