Universe’s energy output has nearly halved in 2 billion years

BBC :The Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, led by Simon Driver of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Western Australia, studied 21 wavelengths of light emitted from 200 000 galaxies. At a meeting of the International Astronomical Union yesterday, researchers announced that the energy being released is now only half what it was 2 billion years ago. The decrease is associated with a decline in star formation. GAMA looked at five wedges of the sky with a variety of different telescopes and combined data stretching from the UV through the visual to the IR. That span allowed for a full measurement of the energy being released by the galaxies examined and also for adjustments to account for dust-cloud interference. Driver’s team did not make any predictions, however, concerning the eventual end of the universe.