After a two-year study, scientists say the likelihood of its existence stands at 99.996% (or the same level of significance as the recent discovery of the Higgs boson). 

More than ten years ago, astronomers observing the brightness of distant supernovae realised that the expansion of the Universe appeared to be accelerating. The acceleration is attributed to the repulsive force associated with dark energy now thought to make up 73 per cent of the content of the cosmos. The researchers who made this discovery received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011, but the existence of dark energy remains a topic of hot debate. 

After a two-year study led by Tommaso Giannantonio and Robert Crittenden, the scientists conclude that the likelihood of its existence stands at 99.996% (or the same level of significance as the recent discovery of the Higgs boson). 
Their findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 
Professor Bob Nichol said: "Dark energy is one of the great scientific mysteries of our time, so it isn't surprising that so many researchers question its existence. 
"But with our new work we're more confident than ever that this exotic component of the Universe is real – even if we still have no idea what it consists of." 
Other techniques have been used to confirm the reality of dark energy but they are either indirect probes of the accelerating universe or susceptible to their own uncertainties. Clear evidence for dark energy comes from the Integrated Sachs Wolfe effect named after Rainer Sachs and Arthur Wolfe. 
In 1967 Sachs and Wolfe proposed that light from cosmic background radiation would become slightly bluer as it passed through the gravitational fields of lumps of matter, an effect known as gravitational redshift. 
In 1996, Robert Crittenden and Neil Turok, now at the Perimeter Institute in Canada, took this idea to the next level, suggesting that astronomers could look for these small changes in the energy of photons, by comparing the temperature of the radiation with maps of galaxies in the local Universe. 
In the absence of dark energy, or a large curvature in the Universe, there would be no correspondence between these two maps (the distant cosmic microwave background and relatively closer distribution of galaxies), but the existence of dark energy would lead to the strange, counter-intuitive effect where the cosmic microwave background photons would gain energy as they travelled through large lumps of mass. 
The Integrated Sachs Wolfe effect was first detected in 2003 and was immediately seen as corroborative evidence for dark energy, featuring in the 'Discovery of the year' in Science magazine. But the signal is weak as the expected correlation between maps is small and so some scientists suggested it was caused by other sources such as the dust in our galaxy. Since the first Integrated Sachs Wolfe papers, several astronomers have questioned the original detections of the effect and thus called some of the strongest evidence yet for dark energy into question. 
In the new paper, the product of nearly two years of work, the team have re-examined all the arguments against the Integrated Sachs Wolfe detection as well as improving the maps used in the original work.
"This work also tells us about possible modifications to Einstein's theory of General Relativity", notes Giannantonio.


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