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New data confirms a puzzling rift in the universe's expansion rate.
That Einstein guy really was smart.
Scientists thought dark energy was constant. This groundbreaking study suggests otherwise.
This incredible image captures the ghost of a supernova 100 light-years across.
It will help scientists better understand dark energy and the unnerving expansion of the universe.
Dark energy accounts for as much as 72% of the Universe's matter and energy content and drives the accelerating expansion of the Universe. Yet this cosmic element is a lingering mystery.
The Dark Energy Survey has delivered its first results providing one of the most detailed pictures of the Universe ever created.
We still don't know what dark energy *is*, but we found out another thing it isn't.
If proven right, this theory could be one of the most important developments in 21st-century physics.
Probably the most interesting you're going to read today.
The image above is a timeline with each frame showcasing a stage in our Universe's evolution, from humble beginning to present date (left to right), as simulated by the Argonne National Laboratory. Called the Q Continuum simulation, this is the most complete cosmological simulation to date covering a volume of 1300 Mpc on a side (one Mpc = 3.08567758 × 1022 meters) where half a trillion particles evolved for a mass resolution of ~1.5x108 Msun.
This is the first map in a series of maps that will be stitched together to form a grand picture of how dark matter is distributed across the Universe. Dark matter is basically invisible, which is why it's called dark in the first place, so scientists rely on indirect observations like the gravitational effects it poses to locate and map it. What we're seeing now is only 3% of the area of sky that the Dark Energy Survey (DES) will document over its slated five-year-long mission.
Dark matter and black holes are some of the most mysterious things in the Universe, so a connection between the two is absolutely thrilling. In a new study, astronomers report a strange link between the amount of dark matter in a galaxy and the size of its supermassive black hole. That’s an amazing new black […]
Climate change is a threat to all life and vegetation here on Earth, but some places are worse off than others. Take Mongolia for instance. Over the past 30 years, a quarter of the country's surface has turned into a desert, while 850 lakes and 2,000 rivers have dried out. This rapid desertification has severely disrupted habitats, making it very difficult for both man and beast to adapt. Even to this day, 25% of Mongolians living in the country are thought to be nomadic, still holding on to ancient traditions from the times when the great Khans swept the world and made it tremble, from Beijing to Rome. In the face of such diversity, the Mongolian people risk losing their heritage and way of life, as they've come to know it for thousands of years.
A newly published study has revealed that dark matter is being swallowed up by dark energy, offering valuable data not only about the nature and structure of these mysterious entities, but also about the future of the Universe. Dark Matter and Dark Energy In case you’re wondering, dark matter and dark energy are not Star Trek […]
The Illustris project took 5 years of software development and 3 months running on 8000 processors – but it sure was worth it – the result is truly monumental! Now, researchers finally have an accurate model of the development of the universe, which even though is rough around some edges, still blends in well with today’s […]
Scientists have been analyzing high-energy gamma rays originating from the center of our galaxy and they’ve reported that there’s a good chance that at least some of them come from dark matter. This is the best indication of dark matter to ever be found. What is dark matter? Think about our universe for a moment […]
A new map of a slice of the Universe was recently released by BOSS – Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey – and it’s the most accurate and comprehensive one so far. The map plots the location of some 1.2 million galaxies with an astonishing accuracy of 99%, nothing short of spectacular – remember, each of these […]
Mysterious and elusive, dark matter has escaped scientists time and time again; yet confirming its existence is quintessential to current efforts of studying the Universe. With this in mind, detecting dark matter has become one of the foremost goals in the physics of the 21st century. An experiment at MIT, called DarkLight, aims to prove […]
Dark energy is the mysterious force that drives the Universe’s expansion at an ever increased pace. Probing and understanding this force is thus imperative for astronomers’ and cosmologists’ efforts of peering through the Universe’s secrets. Recently, a new massive project set on probing the nature of dark energy was launched, called the Dark Energy Survey (DES), […]
Bono of U2 recently let it be known that he was a student of astrophysics (yes, truly!). Upon meeting the 2012 Nobel Prize winner for physics Brian Schmidt, Bono demonstrated a thorough understanding of Schmidt’s work on the evidence for an accelerating universe. More and more over the last 100 years, scientists have been theorising about the […]
Most certainly, one of the top goals in physics today is proving the existence of dark matter – the elusive form of matter that makes up 85% of all matter in the Universe. Many theories have been proposed and tested, however to this day we only have glimpses and possible hints of dark matter. A […]
Hubble just never ceases to surprise. The latest astronomical find discovered using the ever resourceful space telescope is a never before encountered double ring pattern known as an Einstein ring. This very rare pattern is the result of a peculiar optical alignment in which three galaxies are perfectly aligned with each other, like beads on […]
Renowned physicist, famous for his study of black holes, galaxies and for authoring a popular book on the origin of the universe, “A Brief History of Time”, recently arrived at Caltech, like every year, where he held a talk in front of 1,000 people who had waited in line for 12 hours to hear him speak. […]
A $1.6 billion cosmic ray experiment on the International Space Station has come across evidence of antimatter in space, a remarkable finding that was recently presented during a seminar at CERN and which might help probe the mysteries of dark matter – one of the major components that make up the Universe. The find was made using […]
Using the incredible Planck cosmology probe astronomers at the European Space Agency have assembled a map of the “oldest light” in the sky – the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that was thrown into space in all directions just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang and which is still picked up here on Earth today. […]
The American (NASA) and European (ESA) space agency have teamed up to create a new spacecraft that will hold a groundbreaking telescope. The mission, Euclid, will look at billions of galaxies, create a more accurate map of the Universe, and also map out the mysterious dark matter and dark energy. Dark Matter and Dark Energy […]
Well, the year really kicked off in style. This research is really next level physics, and in order to understand it (even slightly), we’re going to delve into some serious physics. Dancing around absolute zero Over the years, physicists have made significant progress in cooling objects closer to absolute zero (0 Kelvin, the temperature at […]
Astronomers have for the first time confirmed a bridge of hot gas with a temperature of about 80 million degrees Kelvin connecting a pair of galaxy clusters 10 million light-years apart. The discovery is of particular importance since it might help shed light on the missing baryonic matter that has been puzzling scientists for decades. The […]
Scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) have used a novel technique to peer through the nature of dark energy as far as ten billion years ago and measure the three-dimensional structure of the distant Universe. Tracing this 3-D map scientists were able to assess the influence of dark energy over time, which might help unravel […]
Dark matter is a type of matter which astrophysicists believe covers the greater part of the Universe’s mass. However, dark matter can’t be seen, nor does it interract with any type of electromagnetic radiation – it is only observed through the gravitational object it has on other bodies. Dark matter is estimated to constitute 84% […]
The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) is the most powerful sky survey instrument yet built, a collaborative international effort which took more than eight hard years worth of planning and design. Recently, the camera, installed on top of a mountain in Chile at the Victor Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, was tested for the first time and […]
Encompassing years worth of work, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) has now precisely measured the distance between over a quarter of a million galaxies. As part of the project, called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, or BOSS, scientists built a massive map of all the studied galaxies so far, some more than six billion years ago […]
Galaxy clusters are the biggest stable structures in our Universe that we know of, typically containing 50 to 1000 galaxies. El Gordo Seven billion light years away and two million billion times heavier than our Sun lies El Gordo – which is Spanish for ‘the fat one’. Astronomers reporting at the 219th American Astronomical Society […]
Europe aims for the stars: known as the Solar Orbiter will fly towards the Sun and get closer to it than any other man made object has; also, ESA will launch two other missions with the purpose of studying dark matter and dark energy. Closer to the Sun The mission was adopted today, and it […]
Astronomers at UC Santa Cruz have set a new benchmark for cosmological research for decades to come maybe, after successfully simulating the forming of distant galaxies, like our very own Milky Way, under the mysterious forces of dark matter and dark energy. Named Bolshoi – for the Russian word meaning “grand” or “great” – the simulation’s […]
Unveiled this past weekend, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have created a 3D map of the Universe using the light from 14,000 quasars, some of the brightest bodies in the universe, to illuminate gas clouds in regions of space some 11 billion light years away. From the study‘s abstract: These features arise as […]
