Universe is Increasing Faster Than We Thought, And Could Rip Itself Apart
Science is not quite sure why, but newly calculations show the Universe is increasing faster than expected, possibly the result of something we only suspect exists – dark radiation.
The most recent research on star movements found the Universe is increasing between 5 percent and 9 percent faster than early in its life. One consequence of this could be that the universe ends up ripping itself apart.
"A funny cosmos just got funnier," says lead Australian researcher and ANU astrophysicist Brad Tucker.
"It could be a new force similar to dark energy, or a fresh particle, or it could be that dark energy itself has changed over time," he added. "We thought we were close to understanding dark energy, but now we know we don't know the answer at all. There's a lot of work to do."
Stars, planets, and gas make up only 5 percent of the Universe. The rest is Twenty five percent dark matters and 70 percent dark energy, both of which are invisible and have never been directly detected.
Precise values of the Universe's expansion from 13.7 billion years ago have been calculated from observations of the cosmic microwave background, the very faint afterglow of the big bang.
The research was led by Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins University in the US.
The Hubble Space telescope was used to look at variable stars, called Cepheids, and Type Ia supernovae, which both have well known brightness which enables their distance to be precisely determined.
The team measured the movements of about 2,400 Cepheid stars and about 300 Type Ia supernovae over two and a half years.
From these measurements they calculated the Universe's expansion rate, known as the Hubble constant, to be 73.2 kilometers per second per mega parsec (a mega parsec equals 3.26 million light-years).
The Present value means the distance among cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years.
The team has a number of theories for the Universe's excessive speed. One possibility is that dark energy may be shoving galaxies away from each other with growing strength, termed phantom dark energy.
Another idea is that the cosmos contained a new subatomic particle in its early history that travelled close to the speed of light and affected the expansion rate. Such speedy particles are collectively referred to as dark radiation and include previously known particles such as neutrinos.
The most recent research on star movements found the Universe is increasing between 5 percent and 9 percent faster than early in its life. One consequence of this could be that the universe ends up ripping itself apart.
"A funny cosmos just got funnier," says lead Australian researcher and ANU astrophysicist Brad Tucker.
"It could be a new force similar to dark energy, or a fresh particle, or it could be that dark energy itself has changed over time," he added. "We thought we were close to understanding dark energy, but now we know we don't know the answer at all. There's a lot of work to do."
Stars, planets, and gas make up only 5 percent of the Universe. The rest is Twenty five percent dark matters and 70 percent dark energy, both of which are invisible and have never been directly detected.
Precise values of the Universe's expansion from 13.7 billion years ago have been calculated from observations of the cosmic microwave background, the very faint afterglow of the big bang.
The research was led by Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins University in the US.
The Hubble Space telescope was used to look at variable stars, called Cepheids, and Type Ia supernovae, which both have well known brightness which enables their distance to be precisely determined.
The team measured the movements of about 2,400 Cepheid stars and about 300 Type Ia supernovae over two and a half years.
From these measurements they calculated the Universe's expansion rate, known as the Hubble constant, to be 73.2 kilometers per second per mega parsec (a mega parsec equals 3.26 million light-years).
The Present value means the distance among cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years.
The team has a number of theories for the Universe's excessive speed. One possibility is that dark energy may be shoving galaxies away from each other with growing strength, termed phantom dark energy.
Another idea is that the cosmos contained a new subatomic particle in its early history that travelled close to the speed of light and affected the expansion rate. Such speedy particles are collectively referred to as dark radiation and include previously known particles such as neutrinos.
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