This picture captures the first photons that escaped the early formation of the universe. What’s important is that the number of wrinkles and the patterns they form in the picture are very sensitive to the proportion of dark matter, dark energy, and regular matter in the universe. In other words, if you change the proportions, then the patterns in the picture will come out differently. It turns out that for the patterns that we see in the picture you’d need about 5 percent regular matter, 27 percent dark matter, and 68 percent dark energy. Anything else would give us a different picture than
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