Dark Energy Survey Confirms Standard Cosmological Model

Massive study took six years and cataloged millions of objects

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) has completed a massive study of the cosmos that has determined the way matter is distributed is consistent with predictions in the standard cosmological model. The six-year study, which was funded by the US National Science Foundation, was the largest-ever sampling of galaxies over 5,000 square degrees (almost one eighth of the entire sky). In all, the survey cataloged millions of objects and observed more than 226 million galaxies.

The goal of the study is to illuminate the nature of dark matter and dark energy by “...studying how each competes and shapes the large-scale structure of the universe over cosmic time.”

The DES team used the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Supercomputing resources were provided by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.