Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2025

44 ASTRO PUBLISHING the Dark Energy Survey (DES), presented in a paper appearing on arXiv and in talks at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Ana- heim, California, hint at a deviation from this as- sumption, suggesting that dark energy might evolve over time. These findings align with previ- ous studies, reinforcing their significance. The DES is an international collaboration compris- ing more than 400 scientists from over 25 institu- tions, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The DES was con- ducted using the 570-megapixel Department of En- by NOIRLab Josie Fenske & Fernando Torrecilla Potential inconsistencies in the standard cosmological model T he Λ CDM (Lambda-CDM) model has been the foundation of modern cosmology for some time now, successfully describing large-scale structures in the Universe. It proposes that 95% of the cosmos is composed of dark matter (25%) and dark energy (70%) —mysterious substances whose nature remains unknown. Only 5% of the Universe consists of ordinary matter. Dark energy, represented by the cosmological con- stant ( Λ ), is thought to drive the accelerating ex- pansion of the Universe, maintaining a constant en- ergy density over time. However, new results from