The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile spent nearly two decades studying how the universe began, what it’s made of, and how it evolved to its current state. The observatory was decommissioned in 2022, but its last batch of data is still sending shockwaves through the cosmological community.

A recent study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics used this data to test about 30 “extended” models of the universe’s evolution—alternatives to the standard model of cosmology. These alternatives attempt to explain certain cosmological phenomena that the standard model can’t, such as the Hubble tension , a discrepancy between different measurements of the universe’s expansion rate.

The researchers ruled out every extended model they tested. Alongside another

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