UCL: Cosmology Safe as Universe Has No Sense of Direction

[bystander]

Cosmology Safe as Universe Has No Sense of Direction
University College, London | 2016 Sep 22

[img3="A Sky Full of Stars -- Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA"]http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles ... 052016.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

The universe is expanding uniformly according to research led by UCL which reports that space isn’t stretching in a preferred direction or spinning.

The new study, published today in Physical Review Letters, studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which is the remnant radiation from the Big Bang. It shows the universe expands the same way in all directions, supporting the assumptions made in cosmologists’ standard model of the universe.

First author, Daniela Saadeh (UCL Physics & Astronomy), said: “The finding is the best evidence yet that the universe is the same in all directions. Our current understanding of the universe is built on the assumption that it doesn’t prefer one direction over another, but there are actually a huge number of ways that Einstein’s theory of relativity would allow for space to be imbalanced. Universes that spin and stretch are entirely possible, so it’s important that we’ve shown ours is fair to all its directions.” ...

How Isotropic is the Universe? - Daniela Saadeh et al

• Physical Review Letters 117(13):1302 (2016 Sep 23) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.131302
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1605.07178 > 23 May 2016 (v1), 07 Sep 2016 (v2)

[Fred the Cat]

In a photography class the instructor indicated the surest way to a good photograph was to capture something that no one has seen before. I guess the same thing goes for physics. In astrophotography I suspect it just gets more expensive or time consuming but "luck happens".

[Ann]

100 meter dash for people with no sense of direction.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Ann