Scientists are attributed to the nature of mystical powers Dark Energyand nothing other than the fate of the universe is irrelevant.
Power is enormous – it accounts for nearly 70% of the universe. And it’s powerful – it keeps all stars and galaxies away from each other at a faster rate.
And now, scientists are getting a little closer to understanding how it behaves. The big question is whether this dark energy is a constant force, and the idea introduced at the beginning is Albert Einstein His theory of relativity, or whether power is weakened, is a surprising wrinkle that was tentatively proposed last year.
Scientists are not yet certain and have yet to resolve what this means for the rest of the universe’s understanding, but the results presented at the American Physics Association meeting on Wednesday reinforce the cases of weakening forces.
Updated findings come from international research collaborations creating three-dimensional maps to see how galaxies spread, expand and cluster the history of the universe. Careful tracking of how galaxies move can help scientists learn about the powers they move around.
The collaboration, known as Dark Energy Spectroscopy (DESI), released the first analysis of six million galaxies and quasars last year, adding more data, bringing the count to nearly 15 million. Their updated results, taken with other measurements — exploding stars, remaining light from the young universe, and distortions in the shape of the galaxy — support the idea that dark energy has faded last year.
Noirlab via NSF AP
“We’re moving from a truly amazing discovery to a moment when we have to throw away the way we thought about cosmology and started over,” said Bhubunesh Jain, a University of Pennsylvania cosmologist who is not involved in research.
Desi Collaboration spokesman Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett called the new observations “deeply intriguing.”
“It’s exciting to think that we may be at the pinnacle of great discoveries about dark energy and the fundamental nature of our universe,” she said in a statement.
The new results are still shy about the gold standard level of statistical proof physics, so it is not time to completely eliminate the idea that dark energy is constant. The collaboration aims to map approximately 50 million galaxies and quasars by the end of the 2026 survey.
“I would like to see some different collaborations with similar measurements in that gold standard to ensure that dark energy is weakening.”
“Big Crunch”
If dark energy is constant, scientists say our universe could continue to expand forever.
If dark energy fades over time and seems plausible now, the universe could one day stop expanding and eventually collapse in what is called a “big crunch.” It may not seem like the most hilarious fate, but it offers some closure, and cosmologist and research collaborator Mustafa Ishak Bouzaki is Mustafa Ishak Bouzaki from the University of Texas at Dallas.
“It could all be over now,” he said. “Do we think of it as a good or a bad thing? I don’t know.”
Other efforts around the world are turning to dark energy and are aiming to release their own data in the coming years. European Space Agency’s Euclidean Mission Bella C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
Released in 2023, ESA’s $1.5 billion Euclidean space telescope comes equipped with a near-perfect 3-foot 11-inch wide primary mirror and two devices. The telescope’s field of view is about twice the size of a full moon.
It takes six years to complete an empty map, producing 100 gigabytes of compressed data per day, or 70,000 terabytes of imaginativeness estimated over the course of the mission.
William Harwood contributed to this report.
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