2023-09-22 06:00:03
A recent discovery by researchers at the University of Michigan overturns some scientific ideas about the growth rate of large cosmic structures. The study reveals slower growth than Einstein’s theory of General Relativity predicted, raising intriguing questions about the nature of gravity ( Gravitation is one of the four fundamental interactions of physics.) and black energy.
An artistic depiction of matter in the early universe slowly coalescing into large cosmic structures in the late universe.
Credit: Minh Nguyen, University of Michigan and Thanh Nguyen (spouse)
Nhat-Minh Nguyen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Michigan, is the lead author of this study. He worked in collaboration with Professor Dragan Huterer and graduate student Yuewei Wen. Their research (Scientific research refers primarily to all the actions undertaken with a view to…) is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Galaxies are distributed throughout the Universe like an immense cosmic web. They are not distributed randomly, but tend to group together. The Universe also contains a mysterious component called dark energy, which accelerates the expansion of the Universe on a global scale.
By studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), made up of photons emitted shortly after the Big Bang, researchers were able to paint a picture of the Universe in its early days. These photons experience gravitational lensing as they pass through large cosmic structures, allowing scientists to infer the distribution of light. matter in the Universe.
Nguyen and his team also used a similar phenomenon of gravitational lensing distorting galaxies. Light from background galaxies is distorted by gravitational interactions with foreground matter and galaxies. These deformations are then decoded to determine how the material is distributed.
The study results raise questions about what is known as “S8 tension” in cosmology. The S8 is a parameter (A parameter is in the broad sense an element of information to take into account…) which describes the growth of structures in the Universe. This tension arises when the values calculated for the S8 do not agree according to two different measurement methods. The results of this study could reconcile these differences by showing that the growth of structures is actually slower than the standard model predicted.
Nguyen and colleagues seek to further consolidate the statistical evidence for this growth suppression. They also wonder about the unexplored properties of dark energy and dark matter (In astrophysics, dark matter (or dark matter), translation from English…), or about other possible extensions of General Relativity and the Standard Model.
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