A new theoretical study suggests that the mysterious force driving the accelerated expansion of the universe—known as dark energy—may actually be rooted in a deeply quantum structure of space-time. This new preprint study could finally provide us with long-sought-after evidence of string theory.
Since its surprise discovery in the late 1990s, dark energy has baffled researchers. Originally thought to be a constant vacuum energy spread throughout space, newer observations from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) revealed that this acceleration may be slowing over time—a result the Standard Model of particle physics can’t explain.
That mystery led a team of physicists to explore a more radical solution: maybe dark energy isn’t just something filling space. Maybe it’s baked into the very nature of space and time itself.
