Astronomers Contribute to the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe

Map of dark matter made from gravitational lensing measurements of 26 million galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey. The map covers about 1/30th of the entire sky and spans several billion light years in extent. Red regions have more dark matter than average, blue regions less dark matter. Image credit: Chihway Chang of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, and the DES collaboration.

For the past four years, as part of a project called the Dark Energy Survey, a team of scientists from around the globe has aimed one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras towards the sky with the hopes of answering fundamental questions about the universe.

“One of the things that the Dark Energy Survey is investigating is the 20-year-old discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, which wouldn't happen in a ‘normal’ universe,” says Gary Bernstein, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Project Scientist for DES. “There's something in the universe, which we call dark energy, that's causing this space to basically repel itself and grow faster and faster.”

Penn astronomers are playing an integral role in this team and its mission. The survey officially began in August of 2013, the culmination of 10 years of planning, building and testing by more than 400 scientists from 26 institutions in seven countries.

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