Dark Energy
The Expanding Universe and HETDEX’s Research
There is an unknown force causing the Universe to expand faster as it ages. Explore the history of the Universe and what we currently understand about its evolution and destiny.
HETDEX: Leading the Revolution
HETDEX is the first major experiment to search for dark energy in the early Universe. Using the giant Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory and world-class instruments the team will map the three-dimensional positions of millions galaxies to help explain expansion over time.
“Dark energy is not only terribly important for astronomy, it’s the central problem for physics. It’s been the bone in our throat for a long time.”
Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, University of Texas at Austin“Dark energy is our ignorance of what’s going on in the universe right now, don’t get hung up on the words dark and energy. [Dark energy] may not be dark, and it may not be energy. All it is, is our ignorance of how the universe may be expanding, and we don’t know what it is at this point.”
Karl Gebhardt, The University of Texas at Austin“It’s actually a little mind-blowing, how much information is captured in this.”
Gary Hill, University of Texas at Austin“Perhaps we see the acceleration of the universe and we attribute that to energy, but maybe our theory of gravity is still incomplete, so we don’t need extra energy, we just need to modify our theory.”
Eiichiro Komatsu, University of Texas at Austin“HETDEX is very ambitious. It’s going to observe a million galaxies to map out the structure of the universe going over two-thirds of the way back to the beginning of time. We’re the only ones going out that far to see the dark energy component of the universe and how it’s evolving.”
Robin Ciardullo, Penn State UniversityJoin the Search
Dark Energy Explorers
Everybody can join the research!
Help HETDEX classify distant galaxies to measure dark energy when the universe was just 2-3 billion years old.
In the Classroom
For teachers and educators
Discover resources to examine dark energy in the classroom or other educational setting.
Expand the Research and Access the Data
Datasets for dark energy researchers
HETDEX aims to collect and share access to over 600 million fiber spectra with this project. Explore data sets and other findings.