EDUCATION RESOURCES: NGSS Standards: ESS 5-ESS1-1 Dark Energy. The name sounds like something out of science fiction, and so does the description: A mysterious force that's pulling the universe apart. It was discovered in 1998 by two separate teams of astronomers who were competing to solve a simpler problem. They wanted to know the rate at which gravity is slowing down the universe's expansion. But what they found surprised everyone. The universe's expansion is not slowing d