This week, ALMA researchers reported the discovery of oxygen in the most distant known galaxy. Geologists believe unusual structures in rock in the desert regions of Namibia, Oman and Saudia Arabia may be evidence of an unknown microorganism. And a group of physicists may have generated a tiny charge of electricity using the Earth’s rotational energy. But the biggest story by far is the second release of data from the DESI survey of the universe, which could upend the standard model:

An emerging generation of cosmological surveys launched this week with the second release of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, which is mapping an unprecedentedly huge number of galaxies spanning 11 billion years of cosmic history in order to better understand dark energy.

Astronomers have known for many decades that the universe is expanding; in the 1990s, the first image of the cosmic microwave background—the echo of the big bang—revealed that this expansion is accelerating for unknown reasons. Astronomers call this expansion “dark energy,” which translates to “we don’t understand what this energy is.”