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Mounting cosmic evidence
[[https://cow-swop.org/|cow swap]]

DESI can measure what scientists call the baryon acoustic oscillation, or BAO, scale — essentially how events that occurred early in the universe left behind patterns in how matter is distributed across the cosmos. Astronomers look to the BAO scale, with separations of matter by about 480 million light-years, as a standard ruler.

“This separation scale is like a really gigantic ruler in space that we can use to measure distances, and we use the combination of these distance and redshifts (speed objects are moving away from us) to measure the expansion of the universe,” said Paul Martini, a coordinator of the analysis and professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University.

Measuring dark energy’s influence across the history of the universe shows how dominant a force it has been.

Researchers began to notice when they combined these observations with other measurements of light across the universe such as exploding stars, the gravity-warped light of distant galaxies, and the light leftover from the dawn of the universe, called the cosmic microwave background, the DESI data shows that dark energy’s impact could be weakening over time.

“If this continues then eventually dark energy will not be the dominant force in the universe,” Ishak-Boushak said in an email. “Therefore the universe expansion will stop accelerating and will go at a constant rate or even in some models could also stop and collapse back. Of course, these futures are very remote and will take billions and billions of years to happen. I’ve worked on the question of cosmic acceleration for 25 years, and my perspective is, if the evidence continues to grow, and it is likely to, then this will be huge for cosmology and all of physics.”