It is not a bubble, but dark energy is what is driving the expansion of the universe constantly and it would be spatially flat. This is the conclusion reached by a team of astronomers from the University of Portsmout (England) and whose indications about dark matter -and that would force to rethink the Hubble constant and, therefore, the cosmological model-, speak in the journal Physical Review Letters that publishes the study.
Has the astronomical debate been resolved?
By improving the way astronomers measure the impact of dark energy, believed to be the force behind the expansion of our universe, scientists have discovered that the universe can be spatially flat rather than shaped like bubble. And its finding, which has yet to be ratified with new studies and verifications, would mark a before and after in astronomy, since until now we had assumed that the universe is bubble-shaped and that it expands non-constantly due to energy. dark, a recent component of the universe discovered in 1998 .
Previously, scientists had measured dark energy by tracking distant supernovae. However, this team of English astronomers analyzed more than a million galaxies and quasars collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey , thus being able to determine the amount of dark energy present in the universe and how it has evolved in the last billion years. .
We do not know the source of the dark energy; however, we can measure its influence and impact throughout the universe. The new data, with unprecedented precision, has made it possible to better understand how dark energy is pushing our universe outward. And one very important detail: it could settle the ongoing debate about the Hubble constant, a contested value that describes precisely how fast the universe is expanding.
“This result shows the power of galaxy studies to determine the amount of dark energy and how it evolved in the last billion years,” says Seshadri Nadathur, co-author of the work. “We are doing really accurate measurements right now and the data will get even better with the new surveys coming online very soon.”
Deformed structure
When astronomers claim that the universe is flat, it does not necessarily mean that it resembles an infinitely spread sheet of paper. More study is needed, for example, to determine whether the universe could bend into a donut-like shape , which cosmological models would still consider “flat.”
The astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan said at the time that “there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth”, which is why we find it so fascinating to understand the outline of our universe.
For the moment, the debate over the speed at which billions of rocks and glowing balls of gas traverse the vacuum of space continues as our knowledge of the universe continues to expand.
Referencia: Seshadri Nadathur et al. Testing Low-Redshift Cosmic Acceleration with Large-Scale Structure, Physical Review Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.221301
