The team's finding appears to rule out a competing theory that dark energy is composed of subatomic particles that apart the fabric of space. If that were true, you'd expect to see some change in the particles' behavior over the last five billion years, said Robert Kirshner of Harvard University, who was not involved in the study. Instead, dark energy remains constant. In areas with high densities of normal and dark matter (which together make up only about 30 percent of all the stuff in the universe), gravity dominates -- holding planets, stars and galaxies together. But across huge distances, the slight effects of dark energy add up enough to push the universe apart faster and faster every day. The team's findings cement what cosmologists have long suspected about the fate of the universe. "Expansion of the universe will keep speeding up," Kirshner said. As the Milky Way continues on its solitary trip, flying away from its nearest neighbors in Virgo, "it will eventually be kind of dark and cold and lonely," he said. Related Links: |
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