Have the forces of darkness played with the cosmos?

Quasars come from supermassive black holes in the center of the galaxies; they are the brightest objects of nature and can be seen clearly through the universe. As classic candles, quasars are not ideal because their masses vary considerably. Nevertheless, researchers have identified some regularities in quasar emissions, tracing the history of the cosmos for nearly 12 billion years. The team found that the rate of cosmic expansion was spreading expectations during this period.

One of the interpretations of the results is that the dark energy is not finally constant, but it changes, becomes denser and thus fortifies itself with cosmic time. It turns out that this increase in dark energy would also be sufficient to resolve the gap between the Hubble constant measurements.

The bad news is that, if this model is correct, dark energy can take a particularly virulent form and – as most physicists say – improbable, called ghost energy. Its existence would imply that things can lose energy by accelerating, for example. Robert Caldwell, a physicist from Dartmouth, described this phenomenon as "bad news".

As the universe expands, the thrust of phantom energy grows endlessly, eventually defeating gravity and ripping the Earth first, then the atoms.

The Hubble-Constant community responded to the new report with caution. "If that holds, it's a very interesting result," Dr. Freedman said.

Astronomers have been trying to measure this dark energy for two decades. Two space missions – Euclid of the European Space Agency and Wfirst of NASA – have been designed to study dark energy and hopefully provide definitive answers over the next decade. The fate of the universe is at stake.

In the meantime, everything, including ghost energy, needs to be examined, according to Dr. Riess.

"In a list of possible solutions to voltage through new physics, mentioning a strange black energy like this would seem appropriate," he wrote in an email. "Heck, at least their dark energy is going in the right direction to resolve the tension. It could have gone the other way and made the situation worse!