Universe expansion 'is speeding up'

In its research, an international team has analysed nearly 446,000 galaxies to map the matter distribution and the expansion history of the universe, proving again that Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is indeed correct.

And the astronomers clearly found that the universe was indeed growing faster and faster with time, as predicted by Einstein.

"Our results confirmed that there is an unknown source of energy in universe which is causing the cosmic expansion to speed up, stretching the dark matter further apart exactly as predicted by Einstein's theory," lead astronomer Ludovic Van Waerbeke of Leiden University in the Netherlands said.

Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that space and time is a soft geometrical structure of which the shape and evolution are entirely determined by the matter within it.

According to the astronomers, the universe is composed of dark matter and normal matter with third constituent called "dark energy", which over the past two billion years has been the force behind the accelerated expansion of the universe.

"The data from our study are consistent with these predictions and show no deviation from Einstein's theories," Van Waerbeke said. PTI