It’s A Dark Energy Day In Our Neighborhood

Governato is one of three authors of a paper describing the work, scheduled for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an astronomy journal in the United Kingdom. Co-authors are Andrea Maccio of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and Cathy Horellou of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Vetenskapsrådet, the Swedish Research Council.

The authors, part of an international research collaboration called the N-Body Shop that originated at the UW, ran simulations of universe expansion on powerful supercomputers in Italy and Alaska. Their findings provide supporting evidence for a sea of dark energy surrounding galaxies.

“We studied the properties of galaxies close to the Milky Way instead of looking billions of light years away,” Governato said. “It’s like traveling from Seattle to Portland, Ore., rather than from Seattle to New York, to measure the Earth’s curvature.”

From a UW press release.