World’s top cosmologists come together to question traditional view of the universe

If you zoom out into the universe well beyond the level of planets, stars, or galaxies, you end up with a vast, uniformly spotted area with no discernible features. At least, that’s the conventional wisdom.

The principle that everything looks the same is a fundamental pillar of the Standard Model of Cosmology, which seeks to explain the Big Bang and the evolution of the universe over 13.7 billion years.

But this week, some of the world’s leading cosmologists will meet at the Royal Society in London to ask a question: What if this basic assumption is wrong?

Professor Subir Sarkar, a cosmologist at the University of Oxford and co-organizer of the conference, said that in the lead-up to the conference, a number of high-profile astronomical observations challenged conventional wisdom.

In cosmology, he said, we are using a model first formulated in 1922. We have a lot of data, but the theoretical basis has passed its shelf life. More and more people are saying the same thing, and these are respected astronomers.

The conference brought together some of the scientists behind recent unusual discoveries. These include observations showing that the universe is expanding faster in some areas than others, hints at the presence of megastructures in the night sky, and evidence of giant celestial rivers flowing cosmic matter on a scale that cannot easily be explained by conventional theories.

Dr. Nathan Secrest of the U.S. Naval Observatory, also a collaborator of Saka’s, made the discovery that raises the possibility that the universe is slightly imbalanced. After analyzing a catalog of more than 1 million quasars (extremely bright galactic cores), the team found that one hemisphere of the sky appears to have about 0.5% more light than the other.

This may not sound like a major difference, but according to Sarkar, if confirmed, it would undermine the foundations of dark energy, which is thought to be the major component of the universe. That means two-thirds of the universe just disappeared, Sarkar said.

Dr. Konstantinos Migkas of Leiden University will share the discovery of the Hubble constant, the expansion rate of the universe, which appears to vary in different spaces. Our results add another problematic piece to the puzzle, Migkas said. At least on a local scale, this suggests that the observations do not match the predictions of the Standard Model. He added that we cannot deduce that the entire universe is wrong.

Alexia Lopez, a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire, discovered what appear to be cosmic megastructures called “macroloops” and “giant arcs.” These shapes are traced out by galaxies and galaxy clusters, and appear at scales beyond where the universe should be smooth and virtually featureless.

When we find a list of structures beyond this scale, do they challenge such a fundamental assumption in cosmology? Lopez said. Perhaps more critical analysis of our standard model is needed.

Sarkar believes that belief in the Standard Model of Cosmology is so ingrained that it is considered a religion. Frankly, he said, I find it annoying that this principle has not been tested, although not everyone agrees with this characterization.

Professor George Efstathiu, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, expressed a more skeptical view at the meeting, saying that it was not true that the model had not been repeatedly questioned. “People accuse me of defending the model,” he said. But they don’t realize how much time I spend trying to disprove it. I totally disagree that this is some kind of groupthink.

While interesting, none of the anomalies presented are convincing enough to undermine the standard theory, Efstathiou said. The question is: how good is the data? He said. For example, he believes that the claimed imbalance in the universe may be due to the need to use multiple telescopes to observe different hemispheres of the sky, so sifting through the data to look for patterns will inevitably turn up seemingly anomalies. “The big circle in the sky, I absolutely don’t believe in it,” he said.

Professor Wendy Friedman introduced the new findings from the James Webb Space Telescope, saying: Here are all these tantalizing clues of varying significance. We need to explore more where, if at all, the standard model breaks down. I don’t think anything obvious will stand the test of time.

The Conference welcomes this robust debate. “I’m looking forward to a robust discussion,” Sarkar said. Let them do their best to make it happen.