Sept 9, 2013: Can we harness black hole energy on Earth? (Space.com Nov. 2012)

Distant Black Holes Map Universe's Dark Energy History

by SPACE.com Staff | November 13, 2012 05:45pm ET

0

0

0

Share

0

Light from distant quasars (red dots at left) is partially absorbed as it passes through clouds of hydrogen gas. Astronomers working on the BOSS survey used this effect to study the history of dark energy in the universe's ancient past. Credit: Zosia Rostomian, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Nic Ross, BOSS Lyman-alpha team, Berkeley Lab; and Springel et al, Virgo Consortium and Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics View full size image

Extremely bright black holes gobbling up matter in the distant universe have provided a window back in time for astronomers to study dark energy more than 10 billion years ago.
Dark energy is the mysterious force thought to be pulling everything in the universe apart, causing space-time to expand and galaxies to move farther and farther away from each other, all at an accelerating clip.
Dark energy, whatever it is, currently appears to be beating out the attractive of force of gravity that works to pull galaxies and everything in the universe closer together. However, that wasn't always the case. When the universe was young, astronomers think dark energy's impact was small, and gravity won out.