Dark energy is a real and mysterious force that is pulling the universe apart, according to a census of 200,000 galaxies.

The five-year galactic survey looked at galaxies that were up to 7 billion years old and used NASA’s space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Anglo-Australian Telescope on Siding Spring Mountain in Australia. The survey’s results support the theory that dark energy is a constant working force, continuously driving away the universe’s runaway expansion. This also contradicts the theory that gravity is what pushes space apart and causes it to expand, challenging Albert Einstein’s concept of gravity.

"The action of dark energy is as if you threw a ball up in the air, and it kept speeding upward into the sky faster and faster,” said a statement written by Chris Blake of the Swinburne University of Technology. "The results tell us that dark energy is a cosmological constant, as Einstein proposed… If gravity were the culprit, then we wouldn't be seeing these constant effects of dark energy throughout time."

Dark energy’s existence has not yet been proven, but these new study results may provide independent confirmation that it may be the force behind the mysterious way that galaxies are being pulled away from each other. Dark energy is thought to make up about 74 percent of the universe.