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A dark horse has jumped into the race to solve the mystery of dark energy. NASA has given the nod to a radical new method to probe this unknown force, which is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. It involves looking for the imprint of primordial sound waves.

NASA’s decision to fund the probe, called ADEPT, stirs up the competition. Until now, the frontrunners were missions that planned to study dark energy by looking for ancient supernovae. That’s scarcely surprising, since it was the study of supernovae in the 1990s that led to the discovery of dark energy. Now ADEPT is set to change…

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