Pretty big explosion: This false-colour X-ray image of the remains of Tycho's Supernova shows an expanding bubble of multimillion-degree debris (green and red) inside a more rapidly moving front of high-energy electrons (blue).
Credit: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Warren & J.Hughes et al.
Good news
The results are good news for how astronomers currently understand dark energy and also support Einstein's predictions about cosmological acceleration.
"Dark energy seems to get created as space gets created, which is what Einstein's view of dark energy – the cosmological constant – predicts," said Schmidt. "As near as we can tell, that theory is safe; Einstein's version of things is what is happening."
Astrophysicist Scott Croom, from the University of Sydney, who wasn't part of the study, said it was the "best bit of work to date" done on the evolution of Type Ia supernovae.
"The key reason there this much interest in Type Ia [supernovae] is because they are one of the primary ways to detect dark energy," said Croom. But he said that other methods of studying dark energy, such as looking at the cosmological background radiation and soundwaves leftover from the Big Bang, would probably be more useful for studying dark energy in the future.
Schmidt said he was inclined to agree: "If we want to push our understanding of dark energy forward, we need to use other methods – this study is pretty much as far as we can go [understanding dark energy] with supernova. It will be extremely difficult to make sure any mistakes don't creep in with further supernova studies."
