Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) as a research area focus on using the imprinted scale of early-universe sound waves in the baryon–photon plasma as a standard ruler for precision cosmology. BAO studies analyze the characteristic clustering scale in the large-scale distribution of galaxies and matter, extracted from galaxy redshift surveys, Lyman-α forest data, and other tracers, to measure the expansion history and geometry of the Universe. This research constrains key cosmological parameters, including the Hubble parameter, dark energy equation of state, spatial curvature, and matter density, and tests models of inflation, structure formation, and possible deviations from general relativity on cosmological scales.
Cosmologists have long struggled to determine whether the universe's accelerating expansion is being driven by a simple cosmological constant, or whether dark energy's influence is evolving over time. In a new analysis published ...
Only about 5% of the universe is composed of normal matter that we can directly observe, while the remaining 95% is widely believed to consist of dark matter and dark energy. Paradoxically, however, the nature of these dark ...
A team of cosmologists in China has introduced a mathematical framework that investigates two of the deepest mysteries in cosmology at the same time. Publishing their research in The Astrophysical Journal, Yun Chen and colleagues ...
For the last few decades, researchers have been studying what the universe looked like in its first seconds. It is generally accepted that the universe expanded exponentially in the first fraction of a second after the Big ...
Astronomy
Mar 23, 2026
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Dark energy is one of those cosmological features that we are still learning about. While we can't see it directly, we can most famously observe its effects on the universe—primarily how it is causing the expansion of the ...
Astronomy
Feb 17, 2026
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The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation ...
Astronomy
Jan 22, 2026
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Scientists have discovered a giant black hole that they believe may have been formed in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang. The black hole is so huge that it may change our understanding of how these cosmic giants ...
Looking up at the night sky, it may seem our cosmic neighborhood is packed full of planets, stars and galaxies. But scientists have long suggested there may be far fewer galaxies in our cosmic surroundings than expected.
Astronomy
Jul 28, 2025
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