• Question: how was dark energy found

    Asked by terimater2 to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Aimé Fournier

      Aimé Fournier answered on 9 Jun 2011:

      As I recall, after decades of observing galaxies and other objects very far away from our own galaxy, cosmologists have an adequate idea how the size of the universe is changing. Last time I checked (a few years ago), they didn’t know if the universe’s growth would someday reverse or not, but they knew that there must be a lot of mass and energy that we can’t see. This invisible mass and energy is called “dark matter” and “dark energy” and together they are 96% of everything that can be detected at all.

    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 9 Jun 2011:

      It seems that two scientists found out that a supernova (a very powerful explosion of a star) seemed dimmer than it should have. Scientists can calculate the intensity of a supernova based on the size of the star and its distance from us. They then proposed that dark energy had to exist to be able explain this observed phenomenon.

    • Photo: Diana Samuel

      Diana Samuel answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      From what I’ve read, it wasn’t found per se; it’s a hypothetical form of energy that’s been used as an explanation for why the universe is expanding (since it supposedly increases the rate of expansion).

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