After a year of observations, the Dark Energy Survey publishes its first results.

Scientists involved in the international collaboration of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) have presented the most accurate measurement to date on the large-scale structure of the current universe. The series of published scientific articles, which open a new era in the history of cosmology, determine the quantity and distribution of dark matter in the universe today, with a precision that rivals the measurements of the primitive cosmos estimated by the space mission Planck Of the European Space Agency.

The results of the Dark Energy Survey corroborate the theory that 26% of the universe is composed of dark matter, a mysterious form of matter that does not emit radiation so that we can observe it. Their data, after a first year of observation, cover one-thirtieth of the sky and were collected from two methods for measuring dark matter. On the one hand, researchers developed galaxy position maps and, on the other hand, accurately measured the shapes of 26 million distant galaxies in order to map dark matter patterns over billions of light years, thanks To a technique called gravitational lens.

To carry out these measurements, the international consortium created a series of methods to determine the tiny distortions that gravitational lenses produce in the images obtained on distant galaxies, a problem that is invisible to the human eye. Thus they have been able to simultaneously develop the largest map ever made of the dark matter present in the cosmos, a cartographic effort that resulted in the lower image. This new map is ten times larger than the one made by the Dark Energy Survey in 2015. When the five years of DES observation are completed, scientists expect the map to be three times larger than the photograph now published.