But if dark energy is so hard to study, how did we stumble onto it in the first place?
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What is Dark Energy?
The universe is expanding, and that expansion is accelerating. But what is causing that to happen? The leading hypothesis is a repellent force that astrophysicists refer to as “dark energy,” which pushes everything away from everything else. So how does it work? What does it mean for our future? And how sure are we that it even exists?
The portrait was taken using an instrument that was first created to hunt down dark energy.
One fringe hypothesis suggests that this unknown form of energy could be lurking inside an exotic class of objects referred to as Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs).
Hypothetical "chameleon" particles could be behind dark energy, and physicists at CERN have been searching for these particles streaming from the Sun.
An astrophysicist from Oxford is suggesting dark matter and dark energy are actually part of the same phenomenon: a "dark fluid" with negative mass that fills the universe.
