Distant Galaxies Confirm Dark Energy's Existence and Universe's Flatness

I found this article quite readable and the trick from the researchers smart.

They assume that galaxies are oriented randomly (from our viewpoint). In actual observations this does not appear to be the case. They then compensate for it to make all orientations as you would expect (random); The force that caused this distortion can then be calculated and it indicates the existence of dark energy.

This is an amazing read I can't believe how quickly science is advancing. A concept I can't grasp is what space should be advancing into. We're saying dark energy is forcing space to expand quicker than any gravitational force could pull it back. But does this mean we're only gaining 3-d space, or are we also seeing time moving at faster speeds?

I'm actually not entirely sure dark energy has any effect on spacetime itself, this is merely speculation which hopefully somebody could answer in better detail.

This is pretty significant. The accelerating expansion of the universe is still a surprising result. This completely independent method of measuring that acceleration has come up with the same figures, which bolsters the claim substantially (though the original evidence was very strong, this makes it far, far stronger).