Situated on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona and inside the Nicholas U. Mayall four-meter Telescope, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s (DESI) collection of data has led to the creation of the most precise three-dimensional map of the universe in history – in turn revealing potentially revolutionary information about Dark Energy and the role it plays in the Universe.
DESI, run by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and DESI director Michael Levi, and primarily supported by the DOE Office of Science, stands as a beacon of collaboration between dozens of funders, including the Moore Foundation, and research institutions across the globe. DESI is an impressive research instrument on the Mayall Telescope with 5,000 optical fibers in its focal plane that it uses to collect and break down light. Since 2021, DESI has been observing more than 100,000 galaxies a night to build a picture of the universe’s expansion over 11 billion years.
Video: An animated 3-D model of DESI’s focal plane. The movement of the 5,000 robotic positioners is coordinated so that they don’t bump into one another. Credit: David Kirkby/DESI Collaboration
The Moore Foundation began supporting the University of California Berkeley Space Science Lab in 2012 with a grant for the acquisition of first-of-a-kind optical instruments (wide-field optics and massively parallel spectrographs) to measure Dark Energy and its effects on the Universe’s expansion. The co-leads of the grant were current DESI director Levi and Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of supernovae.
DESI’s data has helped astronomers challenge the existing understanding of how Dark Energy affects the expansion of time and space. While people have long assumed Dark Energy has been a constant force, the new evidence indicates that it may be changing with time. These measurements, which are the most precise of their kind, were only drawn from DESI’s first year of data, meaning there is much more to come. “So far we’re seeing basic agreement with our best model of the Universe, but we’re also seeing some potentially interesting differences that could indicate that Dark Energy is evolving with time,” Levi said.
This is just a hint at the true nature of Dark Energy, and more data is needed to ensure that new information isn’t a statistical fluke. DESI’s goal is to create a three-dimensional map of 40 million galaxies, and this initial map includes six million. The data has energized the astronomy community, and researchers are eager to analyze DESI’s next set of findings. “This grant is one of the finest examples of our catalytic influence in astronomy, through investments in design and early-stage instrumentation development that have a de-risking effect,” said Dusan Pejakovic, Moore Foundation Science Program Director.
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