Testing Gravity to Explain Dark Energy

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

Video imagery:

·       Visualization flight through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: NASA, ESA, STScI

·       Visualization, Hubble data of Stephan’s Quintet: G. Bacon, J. DePasquale, F. Summers, Z. Levay (STScI)

·       Webb Space Telescope image of SMACS 0723: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Writer: Leah Ramsay

Designer: Leah Hustak, Joseph Olmsted

Science review: Dr. Brandon Lawton

Education review: Jim Manning

Music from Music for Non-Profits

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Images of planets and galaxies in their dynamic dance of emergence, explosion, expansion, and extinction.

 

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Text, News from the Universe.

 

September 13, 2022. Testing Gravity to Explain Dark Energy.

 

The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, and scientists don't know why. The mysterious cause of this acceleration is called dark energy.

 

Are dark energy results due to our incomplete understanding of gravity? Galactic spheres fly across the universe in a coordinated evolution of expansion.

 

Text, If the strength of gravity has varied throughout the universe's history, that could help explain what looks like accelerating expansion.

 

However, the Dark Energy Survey has tested and confirmed the widely accepted theory of gravity developed by Albert Einstein.

 

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So, no updates to gravity or dark energy for now, but the stage is set for future missions to test gravity with even more precision.

 

NASA's Roman Space Telescope will look 11 billion years across space and time, searching for changes in the strength of gravity by the appearance of warped galaxies.

 

This news was brought to you in part by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.