Adapted by:
Matías S. Zavia
WriterAerospace and energy industries journalist at Xataka.
Alba Mora
WriterAn established tech journalist, I entered the world of consumer tech by chance in 2018. In my writing and translating career, I've also covered a diverse range of topics, including entertainment, travel, science, and the economy.
From the very first moments after the Big Bang, gravity has influenced matter, leading to the complex structures that define our universe. Galaxies, galaxy clusters, and galactic filaments have evolved in ways that almost always align with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. However, something’s amiss.
Chaotic universe. A recent study by cosmologists at the University of Pennsylvania and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests that the universe has become “messier and more complicated” over time. Research indicates fewer clumps of matter in the universe exist than what current physical models predict.
The study combines two distinct sets of data gathered from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and Arizona’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. By merging these two maps, scientists discovered that nearly all aspects of the structure formation history align with Einstein’s predictions regarding gravity. There’s one exception: a small discrepancy in the clumping of matter from around 4 billion years ago.
A cosmic tomography. Scientists are working to create a multidimensional view of the cosmos, starting from the oldest light. The cosmic microwave background dates back 14 billion years to when the universe was only 380,000 years old. However, the journey of this ancient light hasn’t been straightforward. It’s been deflected and distorted by the gravitational pull of massive structures like galaxy clusters. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing and was predicted by Einstein.
By overlaying the map of these distortions with the distribution of galaxies, cosmologists can infer how matter has been distributed over time. “This process is like a cosmic CT scan where we can look through different slices of cosmic history and track how matter clumped together at different epochs,” co-author Mathew Madhavacheril explains.
Something doesn’t add up. The clumping of matter, as measured by density fluctuations, appears to be slightly lower in more recent epochs than models predict based on the early universe. Cosmic structures seem to be less tightly clustered than expected.
Researchers are cautious about this finding. It represents a small discrepancy that could simply be the result of chance rather than evidence of new physics. However, if this deviation isn’t a statistical anomaly, it could indicate unknown physical processes that influence the formation and evolution of cosmic structures.
One hypothesis is that this might relate to dark energy, the mysterious force responsible for the universe’s accelerating expansion. Perhaps dark energy is affecting the formation of structures in ways that current models don’t fully account for. If true, it would be acting as a powerful force that moderates the large-scale aggregation of matter.
Image | Arnaud Mariat
Log in to leave a comment