The Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration has achieved one of the most robust measurements of the constraints on the Universe's expansion to date.
The international group of researchers, with UK support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and six UK universities, is led by the US Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Together, they analysed nearly 1,500 supernovae using machine learning techniques.
The culmination of a decade’s work, their findings provide pivotal new support for the standard model of a universe with an accelerated expansion and mark a historic contribution to our understanding of the cosmos.
In 1998, astrophysicists discovered that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, attributed to a mysterious entity called dark energy that makes up about 70% of our Universe.
