1
January 2004
Dark energy is out there
Recent observations suggest that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating due to some unknown 'dark energy'. This energy would also be expected to slow down the gravitational collapse of matter, imprinting fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that are more recent than the bulk of the CMB fluctuations that originated when the Universe was just 400,000 years old. These fluctuations have now been observed. They correlate closely with the presence of large-scale structures such as radio galaxies, providing independent evidence for the existence of the mysterious dark energy.
A correlation between the cosmic microwave background
and large-scale structure in the Universe
STEPHEN BOUGHN & ROBERT CRITTENDEN
Nature 427, 45–47 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature02139
| First
Paragraph | Full
Text (HTML / PDF) |
