The universe is impossibly big and it is getting bigger.

We have long known that the universe is expanding and have even had at least a pretty good idea of how rapidly it was growing.

According to the most popular theories, the growth is being fueled by dark energy and dark matter, which (if correct) make up the majority of the universe itself.  It was believed that dark energy was essentially a cosmological constant that never changed, but that may not be the case.

A new survey of millions of galaxies and quasars has been completed and the findings point to the fact that dark energy is actually getting weaker, which is quite surprising.

This information was gathered as part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and looked at millions of galaxies to produce a map of the universe. This can then be used to get estimates of the properties of dark energy by seeing how fast various galaxies and other things in the universe are expanding away from each other. Specifically, the type Ia supernovae are used for this type of measurement because they have a very well defined and understood level of luminosity, so it is easy to measure their movement.

Dr. Santiago Aliva is from the Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT) in Spain. She was responsible for the analysis of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in the DES. She commented to IFLScience:

“It is exciting to see the power of the Dark Energy Survey when combining its different probes. Whereas our supernova results and our BAO results from last year were already exciting. By putting them together, we can observe the cracks in ΛCDM, which is considered the standard model of cosmology.”

This is just one more ‘crack’ in the standard understanding of the universe, called the Standard Model. There have been other issues associated with it, including the Hubble Tension that finds that the universe is expanding at different rates depending on how it is measured. Hopefully the data collected in this survey can help to determine which (if any) method of measurement is more accurate so that the Standard Model can be updated to be as accurate as possible.

While significant, the data from this survey does not seem to threaten the model entirely, nor does it mean that the dark energy and dark matter explanations no longer fit. The fact that dark energy and dark matter still haven’t been confirmed to exist, however, is a concern for some.

Researchers are continuing to analyze the data brought in by the survey so it is likely that additional insights will come out in the coming months and years.

While this type of thing has little impact on our day-to-day lives, it is this type of work that helps to push forward our understanding of the universe.

The more we learn, the more we realize how much we don’t know.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.