Luckily, for every project we are waiting on, there is often another project that is coming to fruition. While we wait to learn more about dark matter, another team on the other side of the world is bringing us an update on dark energy. New research published in MNRAS and led by Zhao Gongbo and Wang Yuting presents an analysis of galaxies and structure growth over a previously not-so-well-studied region of space, ranging from 0.7 to 1.8 billion light-years away. By looking at myriad galaxies of different types and sizes, they were able to measure the changing expansion rate of the galaxy in new ways. New ways that confirmed, yes, our universe is accelerating apart and they confirmed this result with super high accuracy.

This gives us one more “really can’t be ignored and really can’t be denied” piece of evidence that our universe is dominated by a completely not understood something we have named dark energy. While it’s frustrating to know so little, knowing something exists is actually the first step in understanding something.

Science isn’t always satisfying, but it’s rarely boring, and we’ll be back tomorrow to once again bring you all that is new in space and astronomy.

More Information

NAOC press release

“The completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: a multitracer analysis in Fourier space for measuring the cosmic structure growth and expansion rate,” Gong-Bo Zhao et al., 2021 March 24, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society