While scientists are not ready to close the case, they said today that dark energy, which is thought to permeate the cosmos and work in opposition to gravity, does appear to be a constant presence as predicted.
The results bolster a theory that the universe won't end soon. But they leave researchers no more informed about the actual nature of dark energy.
"We still have almost no clue what it is," said study leader Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore.
Dark energy was conjured to explain a phenomenal discovery in 1998: Nearly all galaxies in the universe are receding from each other at an ever-faster pace.
Gravity is losing some unknown battle, cosmologists admit. They theorize that about 70 percent of the universe is made up of dark energy, while most of the rest is another mysterious thing called dark matter and only a small fraction is real matter like stars, planets and living entities.
Einstein was the first to consider something similar, which he called a cosmological constant. He said even the emptiest space would have some of this strange stuff in it.
But when Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in the 1920s, Einstein called his cosmological constant his greatest blunder.
Einstein is back
With the more recent finding that the expansion is accelerating, Einstein's idea was revived.
The new results suggest that even if Einstein and modern dark energy theory are both wrong, dark energy will not destroy the universe for at least 30 billion years, The universe is presently 13.7 billion years old.
That rate of expansion has changed over time, The initial expansion, after a theoretical Big Bang, was the most rapid and was called inflation(Rise). Then things leveled off before another round of acceleration, which is apparently underway now.
What's going on
There are two main ideas for the source of dark energy. It might penetrate from empty space, as Einstein theorized, and is unchanging and of a fixed strength. The other holds that dark energy is associated with a changing energy field called "quintessence," something similar to a magnetic field. In that scenario, the field causes the current acceleration of the universe. It is also unknown how much power this magnetic force has?
Another research team recently theorized that if the repulsion from dark energy gets stronger than Einstein's prediction, the universe could expand so incredibly that it would end in a Big Rip. All matter -- galaxies, then stars, then planets, and everything right down to the atomic level -- would be torn apart.
If dark energy can change, it might also one day reverse course and pull the universe back together in a Big Crunch. There are two initial questions scientists are trying to answer: What is the strength of dark energy today, and does it grow or decay with time?
The new data show that if the repulsive force is changing, There is a lot of work ahead.
Astronomers have provided new evidence that so-called dark energy may effectively rule the universe by making up two-thirds of the total energy and pushing galaxies and everything in them away from each other at an ever-increasing pace.
In recent years, researchers have been looking for an explanation for why the universe is not just expanding, but doing so at an accelerated rate. Exotic dark energy, said to work over long distances to push things apart and overcome the local effects of gravity, is one theory thats been put forth.
There was an article in India Today few years back that if God really exists, he might be living in Dark Energy, I believe this Dark Energy itself is a God which actually super functions the Universe. There is a theory even if butterfly flies it reflects somewhere in the corner of the Universe. And that Butterfly Effect directly proportional to Dark Energy which states true as the Super Power of the Universe(kind of Mathematical Induction)
Do you think there is any religion which talks about Dark Energy, I think I must check with some ancient religion like Greek and Agnostic, I might come up with some more interesting data in the future.
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