'Another mind-blowing change': New data suggests mysterious dark energy is evolving

Title: 'Another mind-blowing change': New data suggests mysterious dark energy is evolving

Date of publication: Wednesday, April 2nd/2025

Author: Ashley Strickland, CNN

Article Link: Unexpected dark energy finding may change our understanding of the universe | CNN

Image of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Summary of Article: Dark energy is a term used to describe an energy that accelerates the expansion of the universe. It represents 70% of the energy in the cosmos, and "researches still have no idea exactly what dark energy is." A collaboration, known as DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collaboration), includes more than 900 researchers. 

This collaboration is based around the use of the DESI, which is a scientific instrument with 5000 fiber-optic 'eyes' that can see throughout different time periods of the cosmos. The instrument, now in its fourth year of serving, can observe light from 5000 galaxies at the same time, and in the next year when this project concludes, it will have measured about 50 million galaxies in total. This DESI instrument is enabling astronomers to build one of the largest 3D maps of the universe, which will aid in tracking "how dark energy has influenced and shaped the cosmos over the past 11 billion years." 

When the new measurements, released on March 19/2025, are compared to measurements from 30 years ago (when dark energy was first discovered), we get the suggestion that dark energy evolves. In Cosmology, this "would be [a] mind blowing change to our understanding of how the universe works," states David Weinberg, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State University. The DESI show that dark energy's impact could be weakening overtime. "If  this continues, eventually dark energy will not be the dominant force in the universe," says Ishak-Boushak, which basically means that the universes expansion will stop its acceleration, and will either continue at a constant rate, or stop and collapse back. 

This would obviously take billions and billions of years to happen as these futures are very remote, but if this evidence continues to be proven, then this will be a huge discovery for cosmology and all of physics. 

Image of Star Trails, using a stabilized camera. 

My Thoughts: I think the fact that we are constantly discovering new things about our universe and how it functions is an incredible feat for man kind. The more we study and analyze how our universe behaves, the more we compare our past findings and misconceptions, the more we learn. This article is an incredible example of using our previous knowledge and mistakes to make new discoveries. 

It is fascinating to learn that dark energy may no longer be considered the most dominant force in the universe, and it changes so much as to what we thought we knew about cosmology and science. It's hard to believe that the universes expansion could stop accelerating, and its even harder to comprehend that it may stop or fully collapse back in on itself. Its a terrifying, mind-bending thought, but it just makes me appreciate the universe and space that much more. 

It is also an incredible feat that we have the teams and equipment to even observe such things. Sometimes it can be hard to fully respect how complex our equipment and procedures are due to how fast everything has evolved in the past 100 years, but it truly is an unbelievable accomplishment.

Having equipment that can measure 50 million galaxies wouldn't have even been a probable concept as little as 30 years ago, and the fact that we can is mind boggling. Us humans cant even begin to comprehend what a large scale that is, and it is a beautifully terrifying thing.