Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The nature of dark energy

Astronomers have used many different methods to try and figure out the nature of dark energy: the mysterious substance comprising roughly 70% of the total energy in the universe and responsible for accelerating its expansion. These including measuring the distance to Type Ia supernovae, measuring the mass of galaxy clusters, the clumping of galaxies, and not strong lensing of more distant galaxies by nearby galaxy clusters. Read more about it here and here and here. Hopefully all these methods keep on agreeing.

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