Accelerating research into dark energy

A quick method for making accurate, virtual universes to help understand the effects of dark matter and dark energy has been developed by UCL and CEFCA scientists. Making up 95% of our universe, these substances have profound effects on the birth and lives of galaxies and stars and yet almost nothing is known about their physical nature. The new approach, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and funded by the Royal Society, is twenty-five times faster than current methods but is just as accurate, allowing scientists more computer power to focus on understanding why the universe is accelerating and galaxies are positioned where they are. 'To uncover the nature of dark energy and the origin of our 14 billion year old accelerating universe, we have to compare the results from big studies to computational models of the universe,' explained Dr Andrew Pontzen, UCL Physics & Astronomy. 'Exciting new ventures, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe survey, are on the horizon, and we want to be ready to do the best possible job of understanding them', added joint author Dr Raul Angulo, CEFCA, Spain. Dr Pontzen continued: 'But every computer simulation we run gives a slightly different answer. We end up needing to take an average over hundreds of simulations to get a 'gold standard? prediction.