As the universe evolves, scientists expect large cosmic structures to grow at a certain rate: dense regions such as galaxy clusters would grow denser, while the void of space would grow emptier.
, which gradually grew into individual galaxies, and eventually galaxy clusters and filaments.
The universe is not only made of matter. It also likely contains a mysterious component called dark energy. Dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe on a global scale. As dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe, it has the opposite effect on large structures. First, the team used what's called the cosmic microwave background. The cosmic microwave background, or CMB, is composed of photons emitted just after the Big Bang. These photons provide a snapshot of the very early universe. As the photons travel to our telescopes, their path can become distorted, or gravitationally lensed, by large-scale structure along the way.
To track the growth of structure to an even later time, the researchers further used motions of galaxies in the local universe. Asfall into the gravity wells of the underlying cosmic structures, their motions directly track structure growth. Neither of these probes measures the growth of structure today. Instead, they probe structure at earlier times, then extrapolate those measurements to present time, assuming the standard model. Cosmic microwave background probes structure in the early universe, while galaxy weak gravitational lensing and clustering probe structure in the late universe.
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