UCI, other experts shed light on ‘teenage’ universe

UC Irvine researchers played a key part in findings released this week about the rate at which the universe expanded after the Big Bang and continues to grow. “Before these new results, most of our understanding of the universe came from studying its infancy, as revealed by the cosmic microwave background, and its recent adulthood, which appears to be dominated by a mysterious form of dark energy,” said physics & astronomy professor David Kirkby. “These new results provide our most detailed picture yet of the ‘teenage’ universe, dominated by dark matter, and offer tantalizing hints about its future shift toward dark energy. Our role in the work has been to develop the techniques and software used to analyze the light from distant quasars (the brightest objects visible in the universe, powered by supermassive black holes) and to compare our findings with theoretical models for the large-scale evolution of the universe.” Other UCI researchers were Daniel Margala and Michael Blomqvist.