Dark Energy Isn’t What Scientists Thought It Was—but Gravity Certainly Is

Scientists are gaining more knowledge about “dark energy,” and their research is both shocking and validating to Einstein’s 1915 theory of general relativity.

New research using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) studied almost 6 million galaxies and quasars and found further support for our existing model of gravity and the universe.

“General relativity has been very well tested at the scale of solar systems, but we also needed to test that our assumption works at much larger scales,” study co-leader and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) cosmologist Pauline Zarrouk said in a statement. “Studying the rate at which galaxies formed lets us directly test our theories and, so far, we’re lining up with what general relativity predicts at cosmological scales.”

Not only did these findings validate Einstein’s theory of gravity, but they also challenged the idea that “dark energy” is a constant force pushing or pulling galaxies apart. 

According to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument [DESI], the universe is actually made of 68 percent dark energy—making it the most abundant element. Not understanding whether it’s constant or growing leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions regarding the universe’s ultimate fate. 

However, this new data will hopefully open the door to further expanding our current view of and research on dark energy. 

“Dark matter makes up about a quarter of the universe, and dark energy makes up another 70%, and we don’t really know what either one is,” Mark Maus, a PhD student at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, said in the statement. “The idea that we can take pictures of the universe and tackle these big, fundamental questions is mind-blowing.”