The cosmic web of galaxies — seen above in a 2D slice through the three-dimensional “map” of our universe drawn from just the first three years of data gathered by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Mayall Telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson, Arizona — fuzzes out toward the edge of the frame. This is the cosmological principle. On the largest scales, the universe gets fuzzy.
Next January 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Science Synergy Science Chair, Dr. Noah Bray-Ali, will give a talk on the origin of the “cosmological constant” that dominates the dynamics of the universe on the largest scales. “The puzzle or problem posed by the cosmological constant is why it has the size it has and why it keeps that same size over time,” Dr. Bray-Ali explains. The solution of the cosmological constant problem by Science Synergy is rooted in the nature of dark matter worked out by Science Synergy in August 2021 (See Shrinking Dark Matter Makes Dark Energy).
“The moment when dark matter forms is the moment when the Big Bang itself takes place,” Bray-Ali notes. In that moment, the size of the cosmological constant is determined by the size of the newly formed particles of dark matter and by their spacing. “Later on, as the universe expands, the size shrinks at the same rate that the spacing grows, and the two effects balance each other to give a gravitational ‘dark energy’ that is constant in time and space: the cosmological constant.”