New Map of the Universe's Matter Reveals Something Missing
- Institut Max Planck untuk Astrofisika
VoxPop – Scientists have made one of the most precise maps of the universe's matter, and it shows that something may be missing in our best model of the cosmos.
Created by pooling data from two telescopes that observe different types of light, the new map revealed that the universe is less "clumpy" than previous models predicted a potential sign that the vast cosmic web that connects galaxies is less understood than scientists thought.
According to our current understanding, the cosmic web is a gigantic network of crisscrossing celestial superhighways paved with hydrogen gas and dark matter.
Taking shape in the chaotic aftermath of the Big Bang, the web's tendrils formed as clumps from the roiling broth of the young universe; where multiple strands of the web intersected, galaxies eventually formed.
This new map published on January 31 as three separate studies in the journal Physical Review D, shows that in many parts of the universe, the matter is less clumped together and more evenly spread out than theory predicts it should be, as launched from the Live Science site.
Alam semesta.
- Space.com
"It seems like there are slightly fewer fluctuations in the current universe than we would predict assuming our standard cosmological model anchored to the early universe," co-author Eric Baxter, an astrophysicist at the University of Hawaii, stated in a statement.
According to the standard model of cosmology, the universe began taking shape after the Big Bang, when the young cosmos swarmed with particles of both matter and antimatter, which popped into existence only to annihilate each other upon contact.
Most of the universe's building blocks wiped themselves out this way, but the rapidly expanding fabric of space-time, along with some quantum fluctuations, meant that some pockets of the primordial plasma survived here and there.
The force of gravity soon compressed these plasma pockets in on themselves, heating the matter as it was squeezed closer together to such an extent that sound waves traveling at half the speed of light (called baryon acoustic oscillations) rippled outward from the plasma clumps.
