Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Cosmology

An ancient view of acceleration

Nature volume 451, pages 531–532 (2008)Cite this article

The Universe is expanding ever faster — the effect of 'dark energy', most astronomers believe. Surveys of how galaxies were distributed in the past could provide precise clues to what is driving this acceleration.

Gravity holds our expanding Universe together, or so astronomers have long assumed. The mutual attraction of galaxies should counteract the expansion of space that started with the Big Bang, causing the galaxies to slow down. But a decade ago, observations of distant supernovae gave evidence that this simple picture is wrong. That evidence has since been strengthened by a series of other cosmological probes, and the Universe's expansion appears actually to be faster now than it was billions of years ago. Understanding this accelerated expansion is the most pressing problem facing cosmologists today. On page 541 of this issue, Guzzo et al.1 give them a new handle on the acceleration: a comparison of the distribution of galaxies in the Universe now and in the past.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Clustering over cosmic time.

C. MARINONI ET AL.

Figure 2: Very large telescopes.

ESO

References

  1. Guzzo, L. et al. Nature 451, 541–544 (2008).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Linder, E. V. preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.2968 (2008).

  3. Coil, A. L. et al. preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0004 (2007).

  4. Schlegel, D. J. et al. Am. Astron. Soc. 211th Meet. Abstr. 132.29 available at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AAS...21113229S (2007).

  5. Hill, G. J. et al. Proc. SPIE 6269, 79–89 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Glazebrook, K., Eisenstein, D., Dey, A. & Nichol, R. preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507457 (2005).

  7. http://www.spacesat.info

  8. Albrecht, A. et al. preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609591 (2006).

  9. Marinoni, C. et al. Astron. Astrophys. (in the press).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michael A. Strauss is in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Peyton Hall, Ivy Lane, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-1001, USA. strauss@astro.princeton.edu,

    Michael A. Strauss

Authors
  1. Michael A. Strauss
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Strauss, M. An ancient view of acceleration. Nature 451, 531–532 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/451531a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/451531a

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing