Galaxies keep drifting apart from one another. This is because the universe is expanding in an accelerated way. It is mostly composed of matter and thus the acceleration should slow down because matter carries gravity and gravity is a force which pulls, but does not push, if one neglects the cosmological constant. This is not the case and it is currently assumed that this accelerated expansion is caused by dark energy. MATTEO MATURI and his research group investigate the cause of this phenomenon. As he describes in this video, they approached the problem by observing galaxy clusters with optical telescopes. Once they find clusters, they can use them to trace the evolution of these cosmic structures. The researchers have already applied their method to existing data and managed to find 1800 clusters. They are in the process of implementing their method in the pipeline of the Euclid Space Mission and hope to obtain a better understanding of accelerated expansion and of dark energy if this indeed turns out to be its cause.

LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10444