Scientists are now looking into the empty space in the Universe in search of evidences that might possibly disprove Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
Their newly adapted technique, describe in a paper to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters, works by searching tiny deviations in the behavior of the invisible dark energy lurking in Universe's empty spaces.
"Voids are empty. They're boring, right? Galaxies are like the cities of the universe, full of bright lights and activity, and voids are like the miles and miles of quiet farmland in between," said Paul Sutter, staff researcher at The Ohio State University and co-author of the study, in a statement.
Dark Energy is not yet known during the time of Einstein. This is the reason why researchers are trying to find out if the rules of general relativity developed by Einstein in 1915 will still be applicable in a Universe dominated by dark energy.
"We're looking for bits of evidence that general relativity might be wrong, and it turns out that all the activity in galaxies makes those tiny effects harder to see. It's easier to pick up on effects in the voids, where there's less distraction--like it's easier to spot the glimmer of a firefly in a dark cornfield than in a lit-up city bustling with nightlife," Sutter explained in a press release.
To test if their new technique is effective, the researchers compared a portion of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with computer simulations of voids in space. The researchers discovered that studying the empty spaces in the Universe provided four times better precision in measurements of how the visible matter in the Universe is clustered together.
So far, the researchers found no tiny deviations in void behavior, suggesting that Einstein's theory of general relativity describing how gravity works still hold still for now.
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