Astronomers have made an intriguing discovery that could upset everything we know about the structure of the universe and its expansion.
Scientists recently discovered that dark energy, the mysterious form that stimulates the accelerated expansion of the universe, could weaken over time.
The results could undermine the existing standard cosmological model of the universe called the lambda black -caisse model (LCDM), which takes black energy, ordinary matter and cold dark matter – a hypothetical form of dark matter which moves slowly compared to the speed of light – in consideration.
The lambda symbol in the model refers to the cosmological constant of Albert Einstein, which assumes that the universe accelerates at a fixed pace.
However, last year, scientists concluded This dark energy is not a constant after all, analyzing the observations by the spectroscopic instrument of black energy (desi) in Arizona, as New scientist reports. They found that the mysterious force could evolve and weaken over time.
In March, scientists published follow -up, Strengthen unusual results.
“It's exciting – it could actually put the standard cosmology model in danger,” said assistant research professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Yashar Akrami, in New scientist.
Instead of modifying the LCDM itself, Akrami and his colleagues suggested redefining dark energy as a “flessing field”, which was used to explain the observations of an acceleration rate of expansion of the universe.
This could allow scientists to harmonize more advanced string theory with the standard cosmological model.
“If you prove that quintessence is dark energy, it's very good for (string theorists),” said Akrami New scientist. “This is why the community of string theory is really excited now.”
A modified vision of the black energy quintessence model suggests that the mysterious force could interact with gravity itself.
“We have always grown up thinking of the universe as having gravitational strength, and Gravity feeds everything,” said Oxford Astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira to publication. “But now there will be an additional fifth force, which is due to dark energy, which also feeds everything.”
But before we could add this fifth force, we had to reconcile the fact that we simply saw no evidence, at least not when we make precise measures in our district of the universe.
“Physics ends up being even more complicated than we thought, and that makes you ask you, why do you want to take this path?” Ferreira added.
The researcher believes that it is very likely that scientists will debate different models of dark energy and will never solve it “.
However, there is still a chance that researchers can observe that gravity is influenced by black energy in future observations by the satellite and the Desi of the European Space Agency.
More on dark energy: Scientists say they built a “black hole bomb”
