The Dark Universe: New Directions in Cosmology

The Planck space mission has released exquisite observations of the early universe, providing the strongest evidence yet that the universe we live in is very dark indeed. Its precise results show that our universe is composed of 26.6% dark matter and 68.5% dark energy, while less than 5% is made up of the baryonic material that we are familiar with on Earth. With their long-standing quest to make these precision measurements essentially now concluded, cosmologists are rapidly turning their attention to a much bigger and further-reaching question: what is the exact nature of this dark universe?  In this review I will introduce the new directions being taken in Cosmology to map out the invisible dark matter in our Universe and confront different theories on origins of dark energy.  It could be that in order to truely understand the dark universe we will need some new physics that will forever change our cosmic view.