The Dark Energy Pushing Our Universe Apart May Not Be What It Seems, Scientists Say

NEW YORK: Distant, ancient galaxies are giving scientists more hints that a mysterious force called dark energy may not be what y thought.

Astronomers know that universe is being pushed apart at an accelerating rate and y have puzzled for deces over what could possibly be speeding everything up. y orize that a powerful, constant force is at play, one that fits nicely with main mamatical model that describes how universe behaves. But y can’t see it and y don’t know where it comes from, so y call it dark energy.

It is so vast it is thought to make up nearly 70% of universe — while ordinary matter like all stars and planets and people make up just 5%.

But findings published earlier this year by an international research collaboration of more than 900 scientists from around globe yielded a major surprise. As scientists analyzed how galaxies move y found that force pushing or pulling m around did not seem to be constant. And Tuesday, same group published a new, broer set of analyses that yielded a similar answer.

“I did not think that such a result would happen in my lifetime,” said Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, a cosmologist at University of Texas at Dallas who is part of collaboration.

Called Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, it uses a telescope based in Tucson, Arizona to create a three-dimensional map of universe’s 11-billion-year history to see how galaxies have clustered throughout time and across space. That gives scientists information about how universe evolved, and where it might be heing.

map y are building would not make sense if dark energy were a constant force, as it is orized. Inste, energy appears to be changing or weakening over time. If that is indeed case, it would upend astronomers’ standard cosmological model. It could mean that dark energy is very different than what scientists thought — or that re may be something else altoger going on.

“It’s a time of great excitement, and also some he-scratching and confusion,” said Bhuvnesh Jain, a cosmologist at University of Pennsylvania who is not involved with research.

collaboration’s latest finding points to a possible explanation from an older ory: that across billions of years of cosmic history, universe expanded and galaxies clustered as Einstein’s general relativity predicted.

new findings aren’t definitive. Astronomers say y need more data to overturn a ory that seemed to fit toger so well. y hope observations from or telescopes and new analyses of new data over next few years will determine wher current view of dark energy stands or falls.

“ significance of this result right now is tantalizing,” said Robert Caldwell, a physicist at Dartmouth College who is not involved with research, “but it’s not like a gold-plated measurement.”

re’s a lot riding on answer. Because dark energy is biggest component of universe, its behavior determines universe’s fate, explained David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of Simons Foundation. If dark energy is constant, universe will continue to expand, forever getting colder and emptier. If it’s growing in strength, universe will expand so speedily that it’ll destroy itself in what astronomers call Big Rip.

“Not to panic. If this is what’s going on, it won’t happen for billions of years,” he said. “But we’d like to know about it.”

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