Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.
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Summary
Last April, researchers presenting the first-year findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Collaboration reported hints that dark energy — the mysterious entity stoking the universe’s accelerating expansion — might be weakening.
Now, the collaboration has reported that its three-year data set, which spans 15 million galaxies and spans 11 billion years of cosmic history, strongly supports the idea that dark energy is evolving.
A second group, the 400-strong Dark Energy Survey (DES) Collaboration, has also found evidence of varying dark energy in its own analysis.
Such findings would rip up the cosmologists’ playbook and banish the cosmic doomsday scenario in which endlessly accelerating expansion would eventually snuff out all matter.
If dark energy is evolving, it would herald either the onset of a new force or the presence of a new fundamental particle.
