Dark Energy
Cosmology is the study of the ‘biggest questions’: where did the universe come from? How does it evolve? What will happen to it? And what’s the deal with dark energy?
We know that the universe is expanding, and its expansion is increasing. We’re not sure why, but we attribute it to an unknown force called “dark energy”.
We can actually “see” how the universe has evolved since the formation of the earliest galaxies, thanks to the fact that light takes time to travel. The further away in space we look, the further we look back in time. By mapping out the location of galaxies all around us, we can study both the large-scale structure of matter in the universe, and how it has changed over time.
The components of our universe affect its evolution, so the best way to observe the nature of dark energy on large scales is to map out this evolution. We use simulations like the one pictured above to understand how different theories of dark energy affect the structure we observe.