Dark Energy detected

• Recently, an international team of researchers made the first direct detection of dark energy.
• It was noticed certain unexpected results in the XENON1T experiment and they came to the conclusion that dark energy may be responsible for it.
• Dark energy, the mysterious form of energy that makes up about 68% of the universe, has intrigued physicists and astronomers for decades.

Dark Energy :

• Dark Energy is a hypothetical form of energy that exerts a negative, repulsive pressure, behaving like the opposite of gravity.
• It is causing the rate of expansion of our universe to accelerate over time, rather than to slow down.
• That’s contrary to what one might expect from a universe that began in a Big Bang.
• Dark energy has been noted as “the most profound mystery in all of science” With advanced technologies and newer experiments, scientists have found certain clues about it and, last week, an international team of researchers made the first putative direct detection of dark energy.

Dark energy Vs Dark matter

• Everything we see – the planets, moons, massive galaxies, you, me, this website – makes up less than 5% of the universe.
• About 27% is dark matter and 68% is dark energy. While dark matter attracts and holds galaxies together, dark energy repels and causes the expansion of our universe.
• While dark matter attracts and holds galaxies together, dark energy repels and causes the expansion of our universe.
• “Despite both components being invisible, we know a lot more about dark matter, since its existence was suggested as early as the 1920s, while dark energy wasn’t discovered until 1998,” .
• “Large-scale experiments like XENON1T have been designed to directly detect dark matter, by searching for signs of dark matter ‘hitting’ ordinary matter, but dark energy is even more elusive.”

About the XENON1T experiment:

• It is the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment and was operated deep underground at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.
• It uses the dual-phase (liquid/gas) xenon technique and is located underground at the Laboratory Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN, Italy.

The theory of general relativity:

• The leading theory, however, considers dark energy a property of space. Albert Einstein was the first to understand that space was not simply empty.
• He also understood that more space could continue to come into existence. In his theory of general relativity, Einstein included a cosmological constant to account for the stationary universe scientists thought existed.
• After Hubble announced the expanding universe, Einstein called his constant his “biggest blunder”.
• But Einstein’s blunder may be the best fit for dark energy. Predicting that empty space can have its own energy, the constant indicates that as more space emerges, more energy would be added to the universe, increasing its expansion.