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Chandra telescope finds dark energy clues

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., May 18 (UPI) -- Astronomers have detected the mysterious force called dark energy by analyzing images of galaxy clusters made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The results trace the transition of the expansion of the Universe from a decelerating to an accelerating phase several billion years ago, and give intriguing clues about the nature of dark energy and the fate of the universe, astronomers said Tuesday.

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The astronomers, at Britain's Cambridge University, used Chandra to study 26 clusters of galaxies at distances corresponding to light travel times of between one and eight billion years. These data span the time when the universe slowed from its original expansion, before speeding up again because of the repulsive effect of dark energy.

The new Chandra results suggest that the dark energy density does not change quickly with time and may even be constant, consistent with the "cosmological constant" concept first introduced by Albert Einstein. If so, the universe is expected to continue expanding forever, so that in many billions of years only a tiny fraction of the known galaxies will be observable.

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