Black matter, Dark energy

The most comprehensive catalogue of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion.

A catalog of almost 3,000 white dwarfs that exploded as type Ia supernovas after overfeeding on companion stars indicates that dark energy is changing over time.

A new analysis of more than 1,700 supernovae is questioning whether the universe is really accelerating at all. After accounting for the ages of the stars that produce these explosions, researchers found signs that cosmic expansion may actually be slowing. They also argue that the apparent acceleration changes with direction, which would be difficult to explain with dark energy. Other cosmologists dispute the conclusion, setting up a major test for upcoming observatories.

The most comprehensive catalog of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe's accelerating expansion. Researchers at The University of Queensland's School of Mathematics and Physics have led a global effort to compile a dataset containing information on 2,884 Type Ia supernovae used to measure cosmic distances.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is on a mission to probe dark energy, hunt for distant worlds and transform our view of the universe

Roman Space Telescope Launch NASA’s newest flagship observatory is on its way. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Roman is the most capable deep space survey telescope ever built and will be used to study dark energy, exoplanets, supernovae and much more.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope blasts off. | Photo: NASA / John Kraus After funding struggles and a name change, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been successfully launched. It will now make a three-month, one-million-mile journey to its orbit at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2) beyond the Moon. From this vantage point, Roman will conduct an unprecedented survey of the universe. Its field of view is 100 times larger than Hubble's and, according to NASA, it can survey the sky 1,000 times faster using its 300-megapixel infrared camera. Roman also has a Coronagraph system that can block and mask glare from stars, allowing it to directly image exoplanets, even smaller, older, and colder planets … Read the full story at The Verge.

Learn more about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and how it could uncover some of the mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy. 

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

The more scientists try to understand dark energy, the more its mysteries seem to grow. NASA’s newest space telescope is custom-built to crack the case

The universe is known to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Physicists typically attribute this acceleration to dark energy, a mysterious component of the universe that exerts negative pressure, causing space to expand faster. Dark energy is thought to have become the predominant influence on the universe's evolution around 3–4 billion years ago, at the beginning of what is known as the dark energy era.

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For close to a century, physicists have pursued a way to unite gravity with quantum mechanics. Known as quantum gravity, this goal has remained frustratingly out of reach so far. Similarly elusive is the force of dark energy, which is believed to be driving the universe's accelerating expansion.

At the end of August, NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its quest is to help us better understand how the universe works, from the glue-like dark matter that keeps galaxies together to the elusive dark energy that drives the expansion of the cosmos.…

A new theoretical study offers a possible explanation for how the Universe can grow more complex without violating the second law of thermodynamics. Using a quantum gravity framework called Gravity from Entropy, mathematician Ginestra Bianconi found that the Universe’s total entropy may rise as space expands, even while entropy within each unit of volume falls. That decline could leave room for galaxies, stars, planets, and life to form locally amid an overall increase in cosmic entropy.

According to current understanding, the universe is expanding—and is doing so at an accelerating rate. This is believed to be caused by something called the cosmological constant, which was first proposed by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity. In recent decades, it has become better known as dark energy, which is believed to make up about 70% of the universe.

The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) has a massive 570 megapixel camera, and its new image is of the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud. Corona Australis is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. It's not as well-studied as the Orion Molecular Cloud or Ophiuchus, but as DECam's new iage of Corona Australis shows, it's just as fascinating.

The Dark Energy Camera has captured a vibrant view of the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud, with the star-forming region resembling a cosmic take on Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

The 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam) captures a vibrant scene filled with swirls and stars reminiscent of Van Gogh's The Starry Night. This new cosmic masterpiece features the glowing nebula NGC 6729 on the left and the globular star cluster NGC 6723 on the right. DECam is mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a program of NSF NOIRLab.

For nearly a century, astronomers have known that the universe is expanding. In the late 1990s, two independent teams, the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter, and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, led by Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, discovered something strange: The expansion is speeding up. The finding earned them the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. The leading explanation for this acceleration is "dark energy," a mysterious force usually modeled as a constant called Lambda, pushing space apart. Combined with cold dark matter, this gives us the LCDM model, the standard picture of the cosmos for the past 25 years.

A new AI-powered framework could transform how astronomers measure the expansion of the Universe. By analyzing images of Type Ia supernovae and modeling their environments in unprecedented detail, researchers can estimate cosmic distances with near-spectroscopic accuracy. The technique is designed for the flood of data expected from the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and may greatly improve our understanding of dark energy.

Dark Energy and Divine Light: A Hasidic framework for the structure of Reality.

Gravity, the force that attracts objects toward each other, is currently framed by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This framework describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime, the invisible four-dimensional fabric of the universe.

New study confirms accelerating expansion of the universe The post Cosmic crisis averted as supernovae put dark energy back on track appeared first on Physics World.

The expansion of the universe is still accelerating under the influence of dark energy, despite recent claims to the contrary averting a cosmological crisis, according to new research.

A new theory suggests the universe is constantly recording its own history in the fabric of spacetime. If correct, this cosmic memory could help solve some of the biggest puzzles in physics, from black holes to dark matter and the universe’s ultimate fate.

A bold claim that the universe’s accelerating expansion was an illusion has been put to the test—and failed. Researchers found that the study behind the controversy made key mistakes when analyzing supernova data. After revisiting the evidence, astronomers concluded that cosmic acceleration remains as strong as ever.

Cardi B suggests Trump's presence at Madison Square Garden brought bad luck to the Knicks after their Game 3 loss to the Spurs in the NBA Finals.

For nearly thirty years, dark energy has been cosmology's great get out of jail free card, the invisible, mysterious force we invented to explain why the universe is expanding faster than it should be. Now a team of mathematicians says we may never have needed it at all. And the implications are stranger than you might think.

Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable.

Cosmologists have long struggled to determine whether the universe's accelerating expansion is being driven by a simple cosmological constant, or whether dark energy's influence is evolving over time. In a new analysis published in Physical Review D, Samsuzzaman Afroz and Suvodip Mukherjee at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, have identified a subtle impact on the inference of the nature of dark energy, due to a tiny mismatch between a fundamental cosmological distance relation and two key datasets used to measure the properties of dark energy.

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Using AI and Rubin Observatory data, scientists are rethinking Type 1a supernova "standard candles," hunting for "unknown unknowns" that could lead us to missing ingredients in our recipe of the cosmos and solve the puzzle of dark energy.

An international team led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has developed a new method that could significantly improve our understanding of the expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy.

On top of Kitt Peak in the Arizona Desert, a robotic surveyor just completed a five year mission to catalogue the positions of tens of millions of galaxies. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has now created the largest, most detailed 3D map of our universe ever constructed. And it’s not done yet, its main mission has been extended through 2028.

A massive cosmic milestone has just been reached: scientists have completed the largest high-resolution 3D map of the universe ever created. Built using data from over 47 million galaxies and quasars, this map could unlock new clues about dark energy—the mysterious force driving the universe’s expansion. Despite setbacks like wildfire disruptions, the international DESI collaboration powered through, gathering an unprecedented dataset that already hints dark energy may behave in unexpected ways.

Only about 5% of the universe is composed of normal matter that we can directly observe, while the remaining 95% is widely believed to consist of dark matter and dark energy. Paradoxically, however, the nature of these dark components remains unknown. Is this due to limitations in our observational capabilities, or does it reflect a more fundamental incompleteness in the classical laws of physics that have long underpinned our understanding of the universe?

In the Big Bend region, a portal to the early universe is enabled by the largest dark-sky reserve on Earth.

In the Big Bend region, a portal to the early universe is enabled by the largest dark-sky reserve on Earth.

The work involved mapping more than 47 million galaxies and quasars over a five-year period The post Dark energy survey unveils the largest 3D map of the universe appeared first on Physics World.

Every single tiny point on the map is a galaxy.

Latest data must still be analyzed but could help determine if dark energy is constant or varies over time.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument has completed its five-year mission to build the most comprehensive 3D map of the universe to date — but its exploration of the universe continues.

A team of cosmologists in China has introduced a mathematical framework that investigates two of the deepest mysteries in cosmology at the same time. Publishing their research in The Astrophysical Journal, Yun Chen and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences suggest their work could pave the way for vital corrections to the current ΛCDM model—alongside a long-awaited resolution to the Hubble tension.

Astronomers may have found an exciting new clue about dark energy—the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion. They discovered an extraordinarily bright supernova from more than 10 billion years ago whose light was bent and magnified by a foreground galaxy, creating multiple images through gravitational lensing. Because the light from each image traveled slightly different paths, it arrived at Earth at different times, letting scientists effectively watch different moments of the same cosmic explosion simultaneously.

This is a New Scientist special package about shock results that have upended cosmology. What do they mean for our models of the universe, and what are the alternative explanations?

Dark energy is one of those cosmological features that we are still learning about. While we can't see it directly, we can most famously observe its effects on the universe—primarily how it is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. But recently, physicists have begun to question even that narrative, pointing to results that show the expansion isn't happening at the same rate our math would have predicted.

Dark energy is one of those cosmological features that we are still learning about. While we can’t see it directly, we can most famously observe its effects on the universe - primarily how it is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. But recently, physicists have begun to question even that narrative, pointing to results that show the expansion isn’t happening at the same rate our math would have predicted. In essence, dark energy might be changing over time, and that would have a huge impact on the universe’s expansion and cosmological physics in general. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Dr. Slava Turyshev, who is also famously the most vocal advocate of the Solar Gravitational Lens mission, explores an alternative possibility that our data is actually just messy from inaccuracies in how we

New data from major dark-energy observatories suggest the universe may not expand forever after all. A Cornell physicist calculates that the cosmos is heading toward a dramatic reversal: after reaching its maximum size in about 11 billion years, it could begin collapsing, ultimately ending in a “big crunch” roughly 20 billion years from now.

The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the Universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. Their completed analysis combines all six years of data for the first time and yields constraints on the Universe's expansion history that are twice as tight as past analyses.

Astronomers use the term dark energy to refer to energy in the universe that is unaccounted for by ordinary matter but necessary to explain cosmology. Astronomy, however, isn't the only field with missing energy. Rice University professor Peter Wolynes and postdoctoral researcher Carlos Bueno, along with Universidad de Buenos Aires collaborators Ezequiel Gaplern, Ignacio Sánchez and Diego Ferreiro, recently published a paper describing the "dark energy" found in the structural protein universe. This missing energy comes from the tension between the form of a protein and its function.

Dark energy is still one of the greatest cosmic mysteries. For all the time, money and telescopes that humanity has used to uncover its nature, scientists are still asking a fundamental question: What is dark energy?

The latest results combined weak lensing and galaxy clustering and incorporated four dark energy probes from a single experiment for the first time.

The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO, a program of NSF NOIRLab. Their completed analysis combines all six years of data for the first time and yields constraints on the universe's expansion history that are twice as tight as past analyses.

In an unprecedented step, researchers crafted a detailed model compatible with the universe’s accelerated expansion. The post String Theory Can Now Describe a Universe That Has Dark Energy first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The accelerating expansion of the universe is usually explained by an invisible force known as dark energy. But a new study suggests this mysterious ingredient may not be necessary after all. Using an extended version of Einstein’s gravity, researchers found that cosmic acceleration can arise naturally from a more general geometry of spacetime. The result hints at a radical new way to understand why the universe keeps speeding up.

A mysterious force called Dark Energy might be changing, in a way that challenges our current understanding of the nature of time and space.

Astronomers are a step closer to cracking one of the secrets of dark energy—the mysterious force believed to be causing the universe's accelerated expansion.

In the leading model of cosmology, most of the universe is invisible: a combined 95% is made of dark matter and dark energy. Exactly what these dark components are remains a mystery, but they have a tremendous impact on our universe, with dark matter exerting a gravitational pull and dark energy driving the universe's accelerating expansion.

Author(s): R. C. H. Gomes et al. (DES Collaboration)The authors demonstrate that combining the third-order aperture mass statistic with the two point correlation function on Dark Energy Survey Year 3 cosmic shear data leads to a 111% (22%) improved figure-of-merit on the joint Ωₘ-S₈ (S₈-w₀) constraint. They further show that the tension to Planck data is thus at the 2.3σ level. [Phys. Rev. D 112, 123515] Published Thu Dec 04, 2025

A cosmological simulation study by researchers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has systematically revealed, for the first time, how the interaction between dark matter and dark energy significantly influences the rotation and shape alignment of dark matter halos in the universe.

To be fair, all scientific models are in some sense wrong

Let's rewind the clock back…oh, I don't know, let's say a hundred years. It was 1917, and Einstein had just developed his general theory of relativity. It was a masterpiece, giving us our modern-day view of the gravitational force. And like anybody curious about gravity, Einstein decided to apply his new equations to the evolution of the universe.

Let’s rewind the clock back…oh, I don’t know, let’s say a hundred years.

New supercomputer simulations hint that dark energy might be dynamic, not constant, subtly reshaping the Universe’s structure. The findings align with recent DESI observations, offering the strongest evidence yet for an evolving cosmic force.

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"If these results are confirmed, it would mark a major paradigm shift in cosmology since the discovery of dark energy 27 years ago."

The universe's expansion may actually have started to slow rather than accelerating at an ever-increasing rate as previously thought, a new study suggests.

The term dark energy, first used in 1998, is a proposed form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe – an observation that was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Dark energy is now a well established concept and […] The post Further evidence for evolving dark energy? appeared first on Physics World.

An academic dives into using quantum physics to explore dark matter.

The universe may not only be geometry and energy—but also memory. And in that memory, every moment of cosmic history may still be written. The post Information Could Be a Fundamental Part of the Universe—and May Explain Dark Energy and Dark Matter appeared first on SingularityHub.

Author(s): K. Lodha et al. (DESI Collaboration)The new map of the Universe’s expansion history released by the DESI Collaboration offers hints at a breakdown of the standard model of cosmology. [Phys. Rev. D 112, 083511] Published Mon Oct 06, 2025

A controversial prediction about black holes and the expansion force of the universe could explain a cosmology mystery

Since the early 20th century, scientists have gathered compelling evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This acceleration is attributed to what is known as dark energy—a fundamental property of spacetime that has a repulsive effect on galaxies.

The universe is approaching the midpoint of its 33-billion-year lifespan, a Cornell physicist calculates with new data from dark-energy observatories. After expanding to its peak size about 11 billion years from now, it will begin to contract—snapping back like a rubber band to a single point at the end.

For decades, astronomers have believed that dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe. However, a new study suggests they might not exist at all. Instead, what we perceive as dark matter and dark energy could simply be the effect of the natural forces of the universe slowly weakening as it ages.

For more than a century, physics has been built on two great theories. Einstein's general relativity explains gravity as the bending of space and time.

A new study, based on years of precise data from telescopes such as the Dark Energy Survey in Chile, above, suggests that the mysterious force known as dark energy may be evolving over time rather than constant.

Cosmologically coupled black hole hypothesis also confirms that dark energy is evolving The post Unconventional approach to dark energy problem gives observed neutrino masses appeared first on Physics World.

Science is a story of coming up with theories then doing our best to disprove them. That is especially true for theories on a grand, cosmological scale, though disproving them can be particularly hard.

Science is a story of coming up with theories then doing our best to disprove them. That is especially true for theories on a grand, cosmological scale, though disproving them can be particularly hard. One of the most famous examples of a hard to disprove theory is that of dark energy and dark matter. In large parts of space we see unequivocal evidence that something is messing with general relativity. But down at the scale of our own solar system, there’s no evidence of it whatsoever, at least as far as we can see. A new paper from Slava Turyshev, a physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discusses a way scientists might be able to deal with this discrepancy - by being very, very selective with the way we test for evidence of dark matter and energy in our solar system.

Dark energy—the term used to describe whatever is causing the universe to expand at an increasing rate—is one of the universe's greatest mysteries. The most widely accepted theory currently suggests that dark energy is constant, and the energy of empty space drives cosmic acceleration.

These are exciting times to explore the largest unanswered questions in physics thanks to high-tech experiments and very

Our understanding of cosmology hinges on how well we know our own local universe, which remains poorly mapped and poorly understood

If black holes are actually droplets of dark energy that convert stellar matter into this mysterious and dominant force, many "cosmic hiccups" could soon be cured.

This week, researchers pinned down the age of a complete Homo-genus skull found in Greece in 1960 to at least 286,000 years old. Medical researchers reported that the majority of chronic pain patients discontinue cannabis use within one year. And engineers prototyped solar trees, a new solar technology designed with natural tree morphology that can be incorporated into natural branches in the upper canopies of trees while allowing light to penetrate to underlying vegetation.

A new interpretation of dark energy data suggests that the mysterious force, which accelerated the early universe's expansion, emerged naturally from black holes.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Author(s): S. P. Ahlen et al. (DESI Collaboration)An alternative to the standard cosmological model where matter is converted to dark energy during stellar collapse results in an accurate cosmological expansion history and a summed neutrino mass posterior distribution peaked at positive mass. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 081003] Published Thu Aug 21, 2025

Researchers at Durham and collaborators in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) mission have proposed a bold new theory that black holes could be converting matter into dark energy.

Scientists have created the largest catalogue of exploding stars ever assembled, and it's telling us something surprising about the mysterious force driving our universe apart. After analyzing over 2,000 stellar explosions spanning billions of years, researchers have found hints that dark energy, the force making up 70% of our universe, may not be the constant we once thought. Instead, it appears to be changing over time, potentially even weakening!

It took about 50 exploding stars to upend cosmology. Researchers mapped and measured light from Type Ia supernovae, the dramatic explosion of a particular kind of white dwarf. In 1998, they announced their surprising results: Instead of slowing down or staying constant, our universe was expanding faster and faster. The discovery of "dark energy," the unknown ingredient driving the accelerated expansion, was awarded a Nobel Prize.

Author(s): Maria Berti, Emilio Bellini, Camille Bonvin, Martin Kunz, Matteo Viel, and Miguel ZumalacarreguiThe authors perform a model-independent, non-parametric reconstruction of dark energy density using DESI BAO, CMB, and SNe data. Their method employs a piecewise polynomial interpolation without assuming a functional form of dark energy density. This analysis shows mild but consistent deviations from ΛCDM and evidence for phantom crossing. The framework is robust, flexible and can be readily used for next-generation precision cosmological surveys. [Phys. Rev. D 112, 023518] Published Tue Jul 08, 2025

New evidence suggests the universe might not behave as expected, raising questions about the costs of being wrong. The post Shifting Forces: The Evolving Debate Around Dark Energy appeared first on SingularityHub.