Scientists are homing in on the nature of a mysterious force called dark energy, and nothing short of the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.

The new findings come from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which sits on a telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

Dark energy makes up roughly 70 percent of the universe, yet we know nothing about it.Around 25 percent of the universe is the equally mysterious dark matter, leaving just five percent for everything that we can see and touch -- matter made up of atoms.