Stellary Starry Universe

 

WASHINGTON: Mysterious dark energy works simultaneously to expand the universe and shrink objects inside it, astronomers have found.

“This result could be described as ‘arrested development of the universe’… Whatever is forcing the expansion of the universe to speed up is also forcing its development to slow down,” said Alexey Vikhlinin of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts.

Vikhlinin was the lead researcher of the study, to be published next year (2009) in the Astrophysical Journal.

A galaxy torn apart?

By studying how gravity competes with the expansion of galaxy clusters, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, “a crucial independent test of dark energy” has been found, said the researchers.

After years of research, scientists now believe that dark energy makes up about 70 per cent of the universe, and is “a form of repulsive gravity that dominates the universe,” the researchers wrote, “although [we] have no clear picture of what it actually is…”

Source: Cosmos Online – click here for full article