Ninety-five percent of the energy in the universe is of unknown origin, and is classified as either "dark energy" or "dark matter". Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive energy that is accelerating the expansion of the Universe, and its mere existence is considered the biggest outstanding problem in all of theoretical physics. Dark matter is most likely a yet-to-be-discovered weakly interacting particle produced in the early universe, and this particle plays the key role in the formation of structure in the Universe. TA scientists are exploring the nature of the dark energy and of the dark matter based on the comparison of existing observational data (and forthcoming data from Pan-STARRS and LSST) with analytic models and numerical simulations.

Project Links

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

People

Douglas P. Finkbeiner, Abraham Loeb, Ramesh Narayan, Christopher W. Stubbs, Matias Zaldarriaga