First year of DESI results unveil new clues about dark energy

Researchers at The Ohio State University played a major role in analyzing the first year of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s survey into the history of the universe.

With 5,000 tiny robots in a mountaintop telescope, the .

Beyond dark energy, DESI has also been used to study many other cosmological mysteries important for physics, such as the mass of important particles called and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. As those instruments collect more precise data and scientists get to work decoding their results, many are confident that even more exciting pieces of the universe’s ever-changing cosmic puzzle will be revealed. 

“It is a really exciting result that could indicate a significant change in our understanding of the universe, and the fact that we see these hints about dark energy gives us fuel to keep going,” said Honscheid, who is the current DESI instrument scientist and instrument operations lead. “The future looks extremely bright for DESI and other long-term experiments like this one.”

​DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility. Additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico, the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain, and by the DESI member institutions. 

The DESI collaboration is honored to be permitted to conduct research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to Tohono O’odham Nation.