News archive - May 2020

A group of astronomers led by Dr Sesh Nadathur at the University of Portsmouth, and including WCA Director Will Percival, have spent the last 3 years studying large structures in the distribution of galaxies in the Universe to provide the most precise tests of dark energy and cosmic expansion yet. The new method is based on a combination of the statistics of voids – large expanding bubbles of space containing very few galaxies – and the faint imprint of sound waves in the very early Universe, known as baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), that can be seen in the distribution of galaxies.