DARK energy, the mysterious stuff thought to be causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, has been found in our own galactic backyard.
In 1998, astronomers found that distant supernovae were fainter than expected, which suggested that the universe was expanding faster than expected. They attributed it to something called dark energy, the nature of which remains a mystery.
“The case for [dark energy] would be much stronger if it could be detected in our neighbourhood, where the interpretation of [data] is easier than in the distant universe,” says of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
So a …
