Detection of Dark Energy Near the Milky Waywith the Hubble Space Telescope

摘要

The global expansion of the observed Universe is accelerated by cosmic antigravity—this hasbeen found [1, 2] with high-redshift type la supernova observations at the very large distances of more than1000 Mpc, half-way to the observation horizon. Antigravity is produced by enigmatic dark energy whichcontributes about 3/4 to the total energy of the Universe [ 1, 2]; this figure is also confirmed by cosmicmicrowave background (CMB) anisotropy studies [3, 4]. Does antigravity act on relatively small scalesas well as on global ones? High-accuracy observations of the local expansion flow made with the HubbleSpace Telescope enable us to discover antigravity and to estimate dark energy density in the Local Universeat distances of a few Mpc from us. The result is entirely independent of large-distance observations or CMBstudies; however, it is compatible with and complementary to them. Together with the results of [1-4], thisforms direct observational evidence for antigravity as a universal cosmic phenomenon existing on smalland large scales. Antigravity and dark energy are little understood, and elucidating their physical natureprovides perhaps the biggest challenge in physical cosmology.