Cosmic secrets unravelled
Researchers and cosmologists have confirmed that the Universe is accelerating at an exponential rate, a phenomenon that has baffled the scientific community since it was detected. This 'inflation' is yielding primordial fluctuations and radiation that with modern technology can help examine the Universe more thoroughly, including solid evidence of dark energy. The EU-funded project 'Understanding cosmic acceleration: Connecting theory and observation' (Cosmic Acceleration) aimed to develop novel tools to understand inflation and dark energy. The project team set out to identify cosmological data and models that would help achieve its objectives, analysing all the information gathered in more precise and systematic ways. In addition, it examined competing theories against each other through advanced techniques to identify models that are consistent with all the data. Cosmic Acceleration has successfully gathered the first observational constraints on the 'multiverse', a feat that was almost impossible previously. Researchers then used a novel statistical algorithm in order to remodel the power spectrum of primordial density perturbations on a much grander scale. Achievements also include a cutting-edge software package for constraining the physics of the early Universe using astrophysical data. This was followed by novel statistical methods to test certain cosmological assumptions, and almost a dozen papers on different aspects of the team's findings. All the headway achieved in this project is set to shed light on the microphysics of inflation and dark energy in novel ways. It may even help unveil some more exotic physics theories in the near future.