A weakening of the force

New data suggests that dark energy's pulling power is changing

- by Chris Lintott

Dark energy's pull could be weakening over time, according to new results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration.

The Universe has been expanding at an accelerating pace since the Big Bang over 13.8 billion years ago, and cosmologists have long believed this expansion was enabled by the Universe's most mysterious quantity - dark energy. Most think dark energy's pulling power is the same now as it was at the dawn of the Universe, an idea that arises from a widely accepted model of the Universe, known as Lambda cold dark matter or Lambda-CDM.