Weighing GalaxiesManoa's Adam Bolton make a discovery in the relationship between galaxy mass and luminosity. Read moreDark Energy EvidenceManoa’s Istvan Szapudi, Mark Neyrinck and Benjamin Granett image dark energy in action. Read more
Astrochemistry GrantThe W.M. Keck Foundation supports research into the chemical evolution of the solar system. Read more
KudosManoa’s Maile Andrade, Matthew Craig, C Manu Kaiama, Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Karen Kosasa, Geoff White and Vicky Holt Takamine and Hilo’s Robert Fox. Read more
BOR ReportPeter Quigley appointed interim vice chancellor and Hawai'i’s hospitality and tourism degree status established. Read moreMark Twain’s Early ReportingManoa’s James Caron publishes Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter. Read more
UH EventsManoa’s Hawai‘i Institute for Contemporary Music, Hilo’s chocolate tasting event and more. Read more
The UH team compared directions in the sky where they found superclusters (red circles) and supervoids (blue circles) with the strength of the Cosmic Microwave Background. Credit: B. Granett, M. Neyrinck, I. Szapudi.
Dark Energy Evidence
Manoa Associate Astronomer Istvan Szapudi, Junior Science Researcher Mark Neyrinck and graduate student Benjamin Granett have found direct evidence for the existence of “dark energy.” Dark energy works against the tendency of gravity to pull galaxies together and so causes the universe’s expansion to speed up. The nature of dark energy—what precisely it is, and why it exists—is one of the biggest puzzles of modern science.
This is arguably the clearest detection to date of dark energy’s stretching effect on vast cosmic structures: there is only a one in 200,000 chance that the detection would occur by chance.
“We were able to image dark energy in action, as it stretches huge supervoids and superclusters of galaxies,” says lead investigator Istvan Szapudi. Superclusters are vast regions of space, half a billion light-years across, that contain an unusually high concentration of galaxies, while supervoids are similarly sized regions with a below-average number of galaxies. They are the largest structures known in the universe.
The team made the discovery by measuring the subtle imprints that superclusters and supervoids leave in microwaves that pass through them.