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Scientists develop the largest, most detailed model of the early universe to date

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It all started around 13.8 billion years ago with a big, cosmological “bang” that brought the universe suddenly and spectacularly into existence. Shortly after, the infant universe cooled dramatically and went completely dark.

Then, within a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe woke up, as gravity gathered matter into the first stars and galaxies. Light from these first stars turned the surrounding gas into a hot, ionized plasma — a crucial transformation known as cosmic reionization that propelled the universe into the complex structure that we see today.

Now, scientists can get a detailed view of how the universe may have unfolded during this pivotal period with a new simulation, known as Thesan, developed by scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.

Named after the Etruscan goddess of the dawn, Thesan is designed to simulate the “cosmic dawn,” and specifically cosmic reionization, a period which has been challenging to reconstruct, as it involves immensely complicated, chaotic interactions, including those between gravity, gas, and radiation.

The Thesan simulation resolves these interactions with the highest detail and over the largest volume of any previous simulation. It does so by combining a realistic model of galaxy formation with a new algorithm that tracks how light interacts with gas, along with a model for cosmic dust.

With Thesan, the researchers can simulate a cubic volume of the universe spanning 300 million light years across. They run the simulation forward in time to track the first appearance and evolution of hundreds of thousands of galaxies within this space, beginning around 400,000 years after the Big Bang, and through the first billion years.

So far, the simulations align with what few observations astronomers have of the early universe. As more observations are made of this period, for instance with the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, Thesan may help to place such observations in cosmic context.

For now, the simulations are starting to shed light on certain processes, such as how far light can travel in the early universe, and which galaxies were responsible for reionization.

“Thesan acts as a bridge to the early universe,” says Aaron Smith, a NASA Einstein Fellow in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “It is intended to serve as an ideal simulation counterpart for upcoming observational facilities, which are poised to fundamentally alter our understanding of the cosmos.”

Smith and Mark Vogelsberger, associate professor of physics at MIT, Rahul Kannan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Enrico Garaldi at Max Planck have introduced the Thesan simulation through three papers, the third published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .

Follow the light

In the earliest stages of cosmic reionization, the universe was a dark and homogenous space. For physicists, the cosmic evolution during these early “dark ages” is relatively simple to calculate.

“In principle you could work this out with pen and paper,” Smith says. “But at some point gravity starts to pull and collapse matter together, at first slowly, but then so quickly that calculations become too complicated, and we have to do a full simulation.”

To fully simulate cosmic reionization, the team sought to include as many major ingredients of the early universe as possible. They started off with a successful model of galaxy formation that their groups previously developed, called Illustris-TNG , which has been shown to accurately simulate the properties and populations of evolving galaxies. They then developed a new code to incorporate how the light from galaxies and stars interact with and reionize the surrounding gas — an extremely complex process that other simulations have not been able to accurately reproduce at large scale.

“Thesan follows how the light from these first galaxies interacts with the gas over the first billion years and transforms the universe from neutral to ionized,” Kannan says. “This way, we automatically follow the reionization process as it unfolds.”

Finally, the team included a preliminary model of cosmic dust — another feature that is unique to such simulations of the early universe. This early model aims to describe how tiny grains of material influence the formation of galaxies in the early, sparse universe.

Cosmic bridge

With the simulation’s ingredients in place, the team set its initial conditions for around 400,000 years after the Big Bang, based on precision measurements of relic light from the Big Bang. They then evolved these conditions forward in time to simulate a patch of the universe, using the SuperMUC-NG machine — one of the largest supercomputers in the world — which simultaneously harnessed 60,000 computing cores to carry out Thesan’s calculations over an equivalent of 30 million CPU hours (an effort that would have taken 3,500 years to run on a single desktop).

The simulations have produced the most detailed view of cosmic reionization, across the largest volume of space, of any existing simulation. While some simulations model across large distances, they do so at relatively low resolution, while other, more detailed simulations do not span large volumes.

“We are bridging these two approaches: We have both large volume and high resolution,” Vogelsberger emphasizes.

Early analyses of the simulations suggest that towards the end of cosmic reionization, the distance light was able to travel increased more dramatically than scientists had previously assumed.

“Thesan found that light doesn’t travel large distances early in the universe,” Kannan says. “In fact, this distance is very small, and only becomes large at the very end of reionization, increasing by a factor of 10 over just a few hundred million years.”

The researchers also see hints of the type of galaxies responsible for driving reionization. A galaxy’s mass appears to influence reionization, though the team says more observations, taken by James Webb and other observatories, will help to pin down these predominant galaxies. 

“There are a lot of moving parts in [modeling cosmic reionization],” Vogelsberger concludes. “When we can put this all together in some kind of machinery and start running it and it produces a dynamic universe, that’s for all of us a pretty rewarding moment.”

This research was supported in part by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Gauss Center for Supercomputing.

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MIT researchers have created Thesan, the most detailed model of the early universe to date, reports New Scientist . “Thesan shows how radiation shaped the universe from 400,000 to 1 billion years after the Big Bang,” writes New Scientist .

Scientific American

Scientists from MIT and other institutions have developed the largest, most detailed computer model of the universe’s first billion years, which could help shed light on how the early universe evolved, reports Charles Q. Choi for Scientific American . The model, named THESAN, “can track the birth and evolution of hundreds of thousands of galaxies within a cubic volume spanning more than 300 million light-years across.”

The Boston Globe

Researchers from MIT and other institutions have developed a new simulation that illuminates how stars formed in the early universe, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe . “It was a neutral, dark cosmos that became bright and ionized as light began to emerge from the first galaxies,” explains Aaron Smith, a NASA Einstein Fellow in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

MIT researchers have developed a new simulation of the early universe, shedding light onto the period when the first stars were formed, reports Audrey Carleton for Vice . “Using existing models of the early universe and of cosmic dust, matched with new code created to interpret how light and gas interacted with one another, they created a visual depiction of the growth of the universe,” writes Carleton.

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New research improves understanding of expansion of the Universe

9 January 2024

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration involving UCL researchers has achieved one of the most robust measurements of the constraints on the universe's expansion to date.

The international group of researchers, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), analysed nearly 1,500 supernovae using machine learning techniques.

The culmination of two decades’ work, the findings provide pivotal new support for the standard model of a universe with an accelerated expansion and mark a historic contribution to our understanding of the cosmos.

In 1998, astrophysicists discovered that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, attributed to a mysterious entity called dark energy that makes up about 70% of our universe at present.

The discovery was achieved by observing exploding stars called type Ia supernovae, which are a useful constant for scientists because they all have approximately the same brightness.

Now, for its latest study and the final study of the DES Supernova Working Group, the DES collaboration has adapted this same technique to probe the mysteries of dark energy and the expansion of the universe further than ever before.

Since beginning operations in 2012, the DES collaboration has mapped an area almost one-eighth the entire sky using a specially constructed ‘Dark Energy Camera’ at the US National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The 570-megapixel digital camera includes five precisely shaped lenses, the largest nearly a yard across, which were designed and fabricated at UCL.

DES scientists analysed data using a range of techniques such as comparing brightness of type Ia supernovae to determine how quickly they appear to be moving away from Earth due to the effects of dark energy and the expanding universe.

In doing this, they have been able to determine that the overall density of dark energy in the universe is likely constant. This provides some of the strongest support yet for the current understanding of the evolution of the universe, although does not rule out the possibility of something still more complex.

Professor Ofer Lahav (UCL Physics & Astronomy), who over many years has coordinated the DES Science programme and the DES:UK consortium, said: “Congratulations to the DES supernovae team on this remarkable measurement of dark energy and dark matter properties, from this large sample of over 1,500 supernovea, classified by advanced AI methods. Building DES science and instrumentation has been a journey over 20 years, with hundreds of collaborators from around the world, including UK universities. UCL has contributed, with STFC’s support, to the construction of the DES optical corrector and to the analysis infrastructure.

“This new supernovae result has validated beautifully that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, probably due a cosmological constant (proposed by Einstein in 1917), or a variant of it. This result paves the way to further ambitious projects in which UCL is heavily involved (e.g. the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), the Rubin Observatory LSST project, and the space telescope Euclid) to pin down the mysterious nature of dark energy and dark matter.”

Dr Paul Shah (Honorary Research Fellow at UCL Physics & Astronomy), who contributed to the analysis, said: “The DES supernovae allow us to see back almost eight billion years of the history of our expanding Universe. The key question we want to answer is: what is dark energy? Where did it come from and what will it do in future? These results from the DES say that even if dark energy does change over time, it did so very slowly, and it will continue to make up most of our Universe far into the future.”

Professor Dillon Brout at Boston University who co-led the cosmological analysis of the DES Supernova sample, said: “This new supernova result is exciting because it means we can really tie a bow on it and hand it out to the community and say, ‘This is our best attempt at explaining how the universe is working.

“These constraints will now be the gold standard in supernova cosmology for quite some time.”

The Dark Energy Survey is an international collaboration comprising more than 400 astrophysicists, astronomers, and cosmologists from over 25 institutions, including UCL as well as the Universities of Manchester, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Southampton and Sussex.

The UK has been involved in this international project from its conception, back in 2004, with the STFC providing funding on behalf of the UK for what is the largest galaxy survey ever undertaken.

The findings were presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society on 8 January and in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal in January titled: "The Dark Energy Survey: Cosmology results with ~1500 new high-redshift type Ia supernovae using the full 5-year dataset”.

• Preprint version of the research paper
• Dark Energy Survey website
• Professor Ofer Lahav’s academic profile
• UCL Physics & Astronomy
• UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences
• UCL News story – ‘Dark matter mapped using light from 100 million galaxies’
• ‘The Dark Energy Survey – The Story of a Cosmological Experiment’
• The Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, situated at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Sparks. Source: NOIRLab . CC BY 4.0

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Mark greaves.

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April 15, 2024

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Study uses thermodynamics to describe expansion of the universe

by José Tadeu Arantes, FAPESP

The idea that the universe is expanding dates from almost a century ago. It was first put forward by Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) in 1927 and confirmed observationally by American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) two years later. Hubble observed that the redshift in the electromagnetic spectrum of the light received from celestial objects was directly proportional to their distance from Earth, which meant that bodies farther away from Earth were moving away faster and the universe must be expanding.

A surprising new ingredient was added to the model in 1998 when observations of very distant supernovae by the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team showed that the universe is accelerating as it expands, rather than being slowed down by gravitational forces, as had been supposed. This discovery led to the concept of dark energy, which is thought to account for more than 68% of all the energy in the currently observable universe, while dark matter and ordinary matter account for about 27% and 5% respectively.

"Measurements of redshift suggest that the accelerating expansion is adiabatic [without heat transfer] and anisotropic [varying in magnitude when measured in different directions]," said Mariano de Souza, a professor in the Department of Physics at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Rio Claro, Brazil. "Fundamental concepts in thermodynamics allow us to infer that adiabatic expansion is always accompanied by cooling due to the barocaloric effect [pressure-induced thermal change], which is quantified by the Grüneisen ratio [Γ, gamma]."

In 1908, German physicist Eduard August Grüneisen (1877–1949) proposed a mathematical expression for Γ eff , the effective Grüneisen parameter, an important quantity in geophysics that often occurs in equations describing the thermoelastic behavior of material. It combines three physical properties: expansion coefficient, specific heat , and isothermal compressibility.

Almost a century later, in 2003, Lijun Zhu and collaborators demonstrated that a specific part of the Grüneisen parameter called the Grüneisen ratio, defined as the ratio of thermal expansion to specific heat, increases significantly in the vicinity of a quantum critical point owing to the accumulation of entropy. In 2010, Souza and two German collaborators showed that the same thing happens near a finite-temperature critical point.

Now Souza and fellow researchers at UNESP have used the Grüneisen parameter to describe intricate aspects of the expansion of the universe in an article published in the journal Results in Physics , presenting part of the Ph.D. research of first author Lucas Squillante, currently a postdoctoral fellow under Souza's supervision.

"The dynamics associated with the expansion of the universe are generally modeled as a perfect fluid whose equation of state is ω = p/ρ, where ω [omega] is the equation of state parameter, p is pressure, and ρ [rho] is energy density . Although ω is widely used, its physical meaning hadn't yet been appropriately discussed. It was treated as merely a constant for each era of the universe. One of the important results of our research is the identification of ω with the effective Grüneisen parameter by means of the Mie-Grüneisen equation of state," Souza said.

The Mie–Grüneisen equation of state relates to pressure, volume and temperature, and is often used to determine the pressure in a shock-compressed solid.

The authors show, using the Grüneisen parameter, that continuous cooling of the universe is associated with a barocaloric effect that relates pressure and temperature and occurs owing to adiabatic expansion of the universe. On this basis, they propose that the Grüneisen parameter is time-dependent in the dark energy-dominated era (the current universe era).

One of the interesting aspects of this research is its use of thermodynamics and solid-state physics concepts such as stress and strain to describe the anisotropic expansion of the universe. "We show that the Grüneisen parameter is naturally embodied in the energy–momentum stress tensor in Einstein's famous field equations, opening up a novel way to investigate anisotropic effects associated with the expansion of the universe. These don't rule out the possibility of a Big Rip," Souza said.

The Big Rip hypothesis, first put forward in 2003 in an article published in Physical Review Letters , posits that if the quantity of dark energy is sufficient to accelerate the expansion of the universe beyond a critical velocity, this could tear the "fabric" of space-time and rip apart the universe.

"Also in the perspective of the Grüneisen parameter, we conjecture that the shift from a decelerating expansion regime [in the radiation and matter-dominated eras] to an accelerating expansion regime [in the dark energy-dominated era] resembles a thermodynamic phase transition. This is because Γ eff changes sign when the expansion changes from decelerating to accelerating. The sign change resembles the typical signature of phase transitions in condensed matter physics," Souza said.

Dark energy is often associated with the cosmological constant Λ [lambda], originally introduced by Einstein in 1917 as a repulsive force required to keep the universe in static equilibrium. Einstein later rejected the concept, according to some accounts. It was rehabilitated when the expansion of the universe was found to be accelerating instead of decelerating. The hegemonic model, known as Λ-CMD (Lambda-Cold Dark Matter), gives the cosmological constant a fixed value. That is, it assumes that the density of dark energy remains constant as the universe expands. However, other models assume that the density of dark energy, and hence Λ, vary over time.

"Assigning a fixed value to lambda means also assigning a fixed value to omega, but recognition of ω as the effective Grüneisen parameter enables us to infer time dependency for ω as the universe expands in the dark energy-dominated era. This directly entails time dependency for Λ, or the universal gravitation constant," Souza said.

The study could lead to important developments insofar as it affords a glimpse of a novel interpretation of the expansion of the universe in terms of thermodynamics and condensed matter physics.

Besides Souza and Squillante, the other co-authors of the article are Antonio Seridonio (UNESP Ilha Solteira), Roberto Lagos-Monaco (UNESP Rio Claro), Gabriel Gomes (Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of São Paulo, IAG-USP), Guilherme Nogueira (UNESP Rio Claro), and Ph.D. candidate Isys Mello, supervised by Souza.

Journal information: Physical Review Letters

Provided by FAPESP

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October 30, 2023

A Possible Crisis in the Cosmos Could Lead to a New Understanding of the Universe

Several unexplained measurements are threatening to upend scientists’ understanding of the universe’s origin and fate

By Michael D. Lemonick

Dark matter distribution simulation.

SPL/Science Source

Back in the mid-1990s, cosmologists—who study the origin, composition and structure of the universe—were beginning to worry that they were facing a crisis. For starters, two astronomers had observed that a huge swath of the cosmos, a billion light-years or so across, was moving in a direction inconsistent with the general expansion of the universe. Worse, astrophysicists using the Hubble Space Telescope, then relatively new, had determined that the cosmos was between eight billion and 12 billion years old. The problem: even the high end of that range couldn’t account for stars known to be closer to 14 billion years old, leading to the nonsensical implication that the stars existed before the universe did. “If you ask me,” astrophysicist Michael Turner told Time magazine at the time, “either we’re close to a breakthrough or we’re at our wits’ end.” But the first observation was never confirmed. And the impossibly old stars were explained a few years later with the discovery that a mysterious, and still unknown, dark energy had turbocharged the expansion of the universe, making it look younger than it actually is.

Now, however, cosmologists are facing a brand-new problem—or rather a couple of problems. The Hubble constant (named, as the telescope is, for Edwin Hubble, who discovered the expansion of the universe in the 1920s) is the number that shows how fast the cosmos is expanding; it’s been measured with greater and greater accuracy over the past few decades. Yet there’s still some uncertainty because two independent methods of calculating it have come up with different answers, giving rise to what’s called the “ Hubble tension .” Although the numbers aren’t dramatically different, they’re enough at odds to worry theorists. “In particle physics,” said David Gross of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at a conference in 2019, “we wouldn’t call it a tension or a problem but rather a crisis.”

Another issue is that the tendency of matter to clump together in the early universe is inconsistent with how it clumps together today. Known as the sigma-eight, or S 8 , tension , it is like a “little brother or sister of the Hubble tension.... So [it is] less significant but worth keeping an eye on,” says Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who shared of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-discovery of dark energy.

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Both problems could signal that scientists are misunderstanding something big about physics, and a recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters adds to the suspicion that this might be the case— for the S 8 tension, at least . In the so-called standard model of cosmology, the universe started off almost but not quite uniformly dense. We know that because the oldest light we can see, known as the cosmic microwave background, shows only tiny variations in temperature from one point on the sky to the next, reflecting variations in the density of energy and matter in the cosmos. As the universe expanded, gravity, as described by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, amplified those variations to create the huge variations we see today in the form of clusters and superclusters of galaxies. That process is somewhat suppressed, however, by dark energy—the still mysterious force causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate rather than slow down—which pushes matter apart before the density variations can get even greater.

In the new paper, scientists argue that this suppression of clustering is too large to explain with the standard model. Not only that, says Robert Caldwell, a cosmologist at Dartmouth College, who did not participate in the new study, “it seems like the timing of whatever’s causing the acceleration is not in synchrony with the effect on the clumpiness,” he explains. That is to say, the suppression of the growth of the so-called large-scale structure of the universe—the web of galaxies, clusters and other cosmic structures that are bound by gravity—begins to kick in later than you’d expect to see from dark energy alone. This observation suggests that some theory of gravity other than general relativity might conceivably be at play, the authors argue. “It’s a thought-provoking analysis,” says Benjamin Wandelt of the Lagrange Institute in France, who also wasn’t involved in the study. “Exciting if true—but changing general relativity is a high price to pay.”

So is it true? The answer so far is that nobody knows for sure. “It’s an interesting paper,” says David Weinberg , chair of the astronomy department at the Ohio State University, who wasn’t involved in the study, “but I wouldn’t say it’s a big deal on its own.” The investigation does, however, “fit into a larger set of papers that are maybe finding a discrepancy between the level of matter clustering in the present-day universe, compared to what we would predict based on what we observe in the cosmic microwave background,” he says. These discrepancies would be small enough to make theorists wary that they might not be significant at all, except that they all tend to point in the same direction, with modern-day density variations below what you’d expect, based on the standard model.

“If they’re real,” Weinberg says, “the implications are very profound because you would probably have to modify the theory of gravity on cosmological scales in order to explain it.” And, he adds, “that’s not easy to do.” (To be clear, this kind of change would be different from “modified Newtonian dynamics,” or MOND , a theory of modified gravity proposed to explain away dark matter. Here, too, the idea of tinkering with general relativity has been tough for astrophysicists to entertain.)

What might be different in this case is that the authors—Nhat-Minh Nguyen, Dragan Huterer and Yuewei Wen, all at the University of Michigan—didn’t set out to solve the problem of the S 8 tension. They were interested in whether the history of the universe’s expansion was consistent with the history of structure growth. “We expected,” says Nguyen, lead author of the paper, “that they would, in fact, be consistent.” When the researchers found this wasn’t the case, he adds, they went back and rechecked their analysis to make sure they weren’t missing something. “But we found that we weren’t,” Nguyen says. The inconsistency, it turned out, might be explained by some additional force layered on top of gravity and dark energy—a force that would add to the tendency of dark energy to tamp down structure formation. Or it could suggest that dark energy itself became stronger at some point, Caldwell says. “That’s what excited me about the paper,” he adds.

Caldwell doesn’t consider the paper definitive, though. Jo Dunkley, a physicist at Princeton University, who also wasn’t involved with the work, agrees. “This is interesting,” she says, “but to me, it is too soon to say that this shows significant evidence of a problem” with the standard model of cosmology. And a few scientists, including David Spergel, former chair of astrophysics at Princeton and now president of the Simons Foundation , think the argument isn’t very convincing. “[The authors] ignore recent measurements that are consistent with standard theory,” says Spergel, who wasn’t part of the study. “And as this paper argues , analyses of large-scale structure at [nearby distances] are probably underestimating the important role that galaxy winds play in driving gas out of galaxies. I’m not sure I would have published this paper.”

On Spergel’s first point, Nguyen agrees that he and his colleagues need to do more research. “We’re looking into more datasets from new, presumably independent experiments of the same observables,” he says. But Nguyen also points out that in the “recent measurements” that Spergel cites, the latter’s team actually references Nguyen and his colleagues’ latest work and the idea of tweaking with general relativity as a possible solution to the S 8 tension. And, Nguyen argues, “the community is still divided over the role of [winds] in reconciling S 8 .”

In short, everyone, including Nguyen and his co-authors, agree that their results are not definitive. “It’s useful to play these exercises,” says Nico Hamaus of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. “That’s exactly how you find loopholes in the models, and if we can really substantiate such things, that really means there’s something going on that we don’t understand.” But even if definitive confirmation comes, the Hubble tension remains, and almost everyone agrees that problem is a much bigger deal.

And “tensions” aren’t even the only things that keep cosmologists up at night. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times entitled “ The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel ,” astrophysicist Adam Frank of the University of Rochester and Marcelo Gleiser of Dartmouth College cite the thorniest issues facing cosmology. They focus primarily on the Hubble tension (but, interestingly, not the S 8 tension) and also point to discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope of surprisingly large galaxies that formed surprisingly soon after the big bang. “We may be at a point,” they write, “where we need a radical departure from the standard model, one that may even require us to change how we think of the elemental components of the universe, possibly even the nature of space and time.”

In other words, stay tuned.

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New research reveals age of universe estimated to be 26.7 billion years old

Challenging the current cosmological model, a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that the age of universe may be nearly twice as old

This research around studying space and our universe sheds light on the “impossible early galaxy problem.”

Age of the universe estimated at 26.7 billion years

According to the study’s author, Rajendra Gupta, a physics professor at the University of Ottawa, their newly-devised model indicates that the universe is 26.7 billion years old, significantly older than the previous estimate of 13.7 billion years.

The mystery of early galaxies and methuselah stars

Astronomers and physicists have traditionally determined the universe’s age by measuring the time since the Big Bang and studying the oldest stars based on redshift observations.

However, the existence of stars like Methuselah, which appear older than the universe’s estimated age, and the discovery of early galaxies with advanced evolutionary characteristics have perplexed scientists.

These early galaxies, observed only 300 million years after the Big Bang, exhibit levels of maturity and mass typically associated with billions of years of cosmic evolution, presenting a significant puzzle.

Zwicky’s tired light theory and coupling constants

To address these challenges, Gupta introduces Zwicky’s tired light theory, which proposes that the redshift of light from distant galaxies is caused by the gradual energy loss of photons over vast cosmic distances.

By allowing this theory to coexist with the expanding universe, Gupta suggests a hybrid interpretation of redshift that explains the observations more accurately.

Additionally, Gupta incorporates the concept of evolving “coupling constants,” as theorised by Paul Dirac, which are fundamental physical constants governing particle interactions.

By allowing these constants to vary over time, the formation timeframe for early galaxies observed by the James Webb Space Telescope can be extended from a few hundred million to several billion years.

This provides a plausible explanation for the advanced development and mass observed in these ancient galaxies.

Revising the cosmological constant

Gupta proposes that the traditional interpretation of the “cosmological constant,” responsible for the universe’s accelerating expansion, needs revision.

Instead, he suggests a constant that accounts for the evolution of coupling constants. This modification in the cosmological model helps solve the puzzle of small galaxy sizes observed in the early universe, allowing for more accurate observations.

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24 comments.

ok, look I’m no scientist and I don’t really claim to be of any religion but, and this is going to sound a bit crazy I have a stupid theory that kind of answers all our questions about this problem. I know that according to the bible and the book of genesis God created the universe. When exactly I can’t really say, but he did say that he created the heavens and earth all at the same time. Now, for the sake of argument lets say he did. That means he created all the galaxies and other stuff in an instant. ( impossible scientifically I know ). But lets say he did. Now in the aeons of time and space movement of matter will occur due to gravitational interaction of matter black holes and other stuff. Given that this movement has had a very long time to develop I would imagine that there would be plenty of time for things to get very far away. ( billions of years… ). What I’m saying is that what we are looking at when we see these galaxies ARE the perhaps some of the original galaxies that God, or who-ever made the universe. Of course we don’t know if they are…they could be much older than that.

Can you provide repeatable evidence that this “god” character is real? If not… Why would I have any reason to believe you? At all?

Fact: The universe exists. Fact: Every single thing inside the universe is the EFFECT of a CAUSE The only logical conclusion: The universe itself was created.

Just keep in mind that just because a human mind doesn’t perceive, understand, or see the creator behind the scenes, doesn’t negate the fact that there must BE a creator.

Please reply if you have a compelling, logical rebuttal.

Does the universe exist?

You’re simply saying that because we don’t know how everything in the universe happened it must have been god. People have been using that same argument since the Stone Age. Imagine trying to explain to a cave man how lightning and thunder actually works. Every time there’s a door science hasn’t been able to unlock yet people say “that’s unknowable because it’s just god back there”. God is just the simplest and easiest answer to these questions. The more we understand about the universe the more it becomes apparent that it is never a simple or easy answer. The universe is unfathomably large and perplexing and the human mind is not nearly big enough to probably ever understand it all. But I would think that after thousands of years of people using god to explain the unexplainable, only to inevitably have it explained, that people would stop falling back on this trope.

“The universe is unfathomably large and perplexing and the human mind is not nearly big enough to probably ever understand it all.”

Yet folks like you can “know” that God does not exist? Really?

A creator? Are you assuming a conscious creator? Some intention? Or just that some cause lead to another?

Let me give you another problem. Does the universe even exist? How we define existence? What about the fact that everything including atoms are 99.99 precent void?

The creation of the universe may be the effect of another cause that doesn’t require a creator. True enough, cause and effect seems to be consistent, but you made a link from cause to creator that doesn’t seem justified.

How does a creator decide to create without a constant such as entropy? Which by all accounts may be the reason we experience ‘time” as we know it. Without time, a creator cannot create, without a universe, there is no time, ergo, without a universe, there is no creator.

The logical conclusion of all of this is that the universe exists simply because it has to.

Please don’t try and bring an imaginary sky fairy into any serious scientific discussion

Find a massive problem with the fudge that is the standard model, then fudge the age of the universe, then expect that everything is okay! It’s NOT! Making stuff up, to solve ‘problems’ IS NOT Science! I propose a new universal constant, the fudge constant! It’s the value of the lengths scientists will go to, in order to pretend their holy grail is perfect. The fudge factor multiplied by amount of scientists who only care about funding = the fudge constant!!!

Solving problems in a theory and then testing the model using the stuff they “made up”, is the basis of all science.

You don’t have a clue.

Wow! Don’t be a tit! This is just a theory… that’s how science discovery works. Many theoretical scientists with intellects much bigger than either of ours will come up with different ideas of how to explain something we don’t understand, and then its the job of the engineers and mathematicians to create ways to test these ideas to see whether or not they are plausible. This is just a theory, which if correct could predict that the universe is much older than previously thought. No need to get all bitchy about it lol. Scientists have never said with any absolution that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, this is just the number that is churned out when using the best model available to them. I’m struggling to see how anyone can find a way to have a problem with this article.

Suspicious that the new number is roughly twice the original 13.7 billion years. Could it be that they simply didn’t factor in that WE are moving away at roughly the rate as what is being measured?

Prior to the very recent observation and confirmation of time dilation in redshifted light, and one entirely consistent with the stretching of space, there could have been room for something like a tired light hypothesis (tired light would not be subject to time dilation), but this now seems rather well excluded. In fact, we can now for the first time take the stretching of space, divide it by the measured time dilation, and compute a rough age for the universe in this new way, too. And guess what, if we do so, it’s still roughly the same ~13 billion years range, too. As for making up a “belief” that constants must have somehow been “different” and hence must have changed over time simply because that better fits your already desired outcome, that’s not science either.

I think the universe is infinite in time and space. Big Bangs happen regularly.

I Agree I don’t understand why everyone is so latched on to the Universe having a beginning and ending. I believe it has and always will be here, there is no real time it’s an illusion how else could 2 properly functioning clocks tick at a different speed due to their location to gravitional mass. Also how can we use time to evaluate the age of the universe when the Earth has not always revolved around the Sun. There is no time it always Now

It is an emerging theory. It will need to be tested and tossed around. it may be Supportable. it may be proved wrong. It does at least attempt to answer the question about extremely developed and mature galaxies etc existing so soon after the current estimated big bang date.

It would be interesting to find out what happens to the energy of photons that is so called lost in Tired Light theory? Conservation of energy would seem to state that energy is transferred or transformed or stored but not lost. We still don’t know what dark energy and dark matter are or how they are formed

It’s good to hear debate around this, though I lack in the depth of knowledge to add to the debate. I’ve never got the need for a “beginning” of a universe or thought it made sense. Or is that just my lack of ability to comprehend a time before matter existed?

It always seemed likely that what we can see is limited in some way, rather than not existing before the earliest light we can see.

26 billion years of earth time?with this gravity? Is it 26 billion years for a person in another Galaxy and maybe near a dark hole and with different gravity and different experience of passing time? What is this announced time based on?

A really interesting time for cosmology. Taking the red shift and working back came up with 13.8 billion years. Well that doesn’t work anymore so what now. Fudging the speed of light or the fundamental laws of physics to patch the method are a shot way out in left field. Once we do that we enter into a fantasy where anything is possible. Bright people are trying to come up with a testable new explanation.

Or it is a political agenda or preparation for the coming space age of competition, they are trying to manipulate the entire science of cosmology for their own benefit.

I don’t understand is why there is this apparent necessity in the human mind that there ever needed to be a beginning or an end to the universe; is the entire body of human kind’s accumulated scientific knowledge, really based upon observations of its own manifestation? We; for some childish reason can’t accept that the universe was always here, and always will be? We see an expansion; but was it really the beginning of everything, or did something really big, blow up in our neighborhood many long years ago? So, for the strange observation that some galaxies appear to have existed prior to the “Big Bang”, shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; those, apparently, were the galaxies that were far enough away from the blast site, that they survived the blast wave, what all that might have consisted of. As concerns black holes, we know that in the absence of countering forces, there’s an upper limit to how much mass can accumulate at a particular volume before it collapses into a black hole; but, is the opposite of that, also, possibly be true? Is there an upper limit to black hole mass before it becomes unstable and explodes? I’m not all that into math, but it seems that, like everything else in this universe, that there should be an upper limit. So, what would be the multiplicative inverse of planks constant if expressed as either mass and or energy? Since, supposedly, planks constant describes the smallest possible event in the universe, the the multiplicative inverse should describe the largest possible event; would that describe what happens when a black hole goes beyond that value? And; since, effectively, gravity is the equivalent of space-time distortion; couldn’t we figure out when a black hole would become unstable as a sort of a four dimensional geometric mathematical problem that our computers should be able to solve without too much difficulty? Not that it really matters all that much one way or the other, because it looks like our political leaders are hell bent on killing us all, because of some sort mental illness, genetically caused, or otherwise; the species is really sad sack; that the majority of the Earth’s population has no control over the destiny of their species, because, of the psychopathic behaviors of a very small number of its members; apparently, either no interest in stopping its inevitable extinction, or no ability to stop it. Science is nice, but if you all stand by and watch things like the genocide in the Ukraine go down, that the Western psychopathic leaders call a war; you’re all doomed to extinction, and probably very soon at that. I love science, but, as a species, humans are some really dumb animals.

This translation by Google, I hope it conveys what I want.. In the religion of Islam, the Creator says that contemplating the creation of the heavens, the creation of the earth, and the creation of the human soul will lead to human thought going astray. And far from the truth. Therefore, the Creator explained to us the events of creation with extreme precision and their stages, and Muslims who are close to the religion teach them. They must reveal it to the world so that they know that the Holy Qur’an is the truth revealed by the Creator of the universe. One of the most evidences is that the Earth is the oldest body in the universe. Scientists will find out soon

The Problem is, when someone mentions God, people go on the defensive, & therefore go to extremes in their Responses & comments. I’m a Christian. I also believe in the Scientific Standard Model of the universe. ( even though it has been tweaked over the years). What people forget is, that, on a universal scale, we have only existed for a brief flicker. This leaves plenty of time for a higher being, like God to have done something. Looking at the Cosmos Objectively, despite the fact that it could have come into existence by itself, no one can really prove one way or the other.

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The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, new theoretical study suggests

New research looking at the cosmological constant problem suggests the expansion of the universe could be an illusion.

The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, a potentially controversial new study suggests. This rethinking of the cosmos also suggests solutions for the puzzles of dark energy and dark matter, which scientists believe account for around 95% of the universe's total energy and matter but remain shrouded in mystery.

The novel new approach is detailed in a paper published June 2 in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity , by University of Geneva professor of theoretical physics Lucas Lombriser . 

Related: Dark energy could lead to a second (and third, and fourth) Big Bang, new research suggests

Scientists know the universe is expanding because of redshift, the stretching of light's wavelength towards the redder end of the spectrum as the object emitting it moves away from us. Distant galaxies have a higher redshift than those nearer to us, suggesting those galaxies are moving ever further from Earth. 

More recently, scientists have found evidence that the universe's expansion isn't fixed, but is actually accelerating faster and faster. This accelerating expansion is captured by a term known as the cosmological constant , or lambda.

The cosmological constant has been a headache for cosmologists because predictions of its value made by particle physics differ from actual observations by 120 orders of magnitude . The cosmological constant has therefore been described as "the worst prediction in the history of physics." 

Cosmologists often try to resolve the discrepancy between the different values of lambda by proposing new particles or physical forces but Lombriser tackles it by reconceptualizing what's already there..

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"In this work, we put on a new pair of glasses to look at the cosmos and its unsolved puzzles by performing a mathematical transformation of the physical laws that govern it," Lombriser told Live Science via email.

In Lombriser's mathematical interpretation, the universe isn't expanding but is flat and static, as Einstein once believed. The effects we observe that point to expansion are instead explained by the evolution of the masses of particles — such as protons and electrons — over time.

In this picture, these particles arise from a field that permeates space-time. The cosmological constant is set by the field's mass and because this field fluctuates, the masses of the particles it gives birth to also fluctuate. The cosmological constant still varies with time, but in this model that variation is due to changing particle mass over time, not the expansion of the universe. 

In the model, these field fluctuations result in larger redshifts for distant galaxy clusters than traditional cosmological models predict. And so, the cosmological constant remains true to the model's predictions.

"I was surprised that the cosmological constant problem simply seems to disappear in this new perspective on the cosmos," Lombriser said. 

A recipe for the dark universe

Lombriser's new framework also tackles some of cosmology's other pressing problems, including the nature of dark matter. This invisible material outnumbers ordinary matter particles by a ratio of 5 to 1, but remains mysterious because it doesn't interact with light.

Lombriser suggested that fluctuations in the field could also behave like a so-called axion field, with axions being hypothetical particles that are one of the suggested candidates for dark matter. 

These fluctuations could also do away with dark energy, the hypothetical force stretching the fabric of space and thus driving galaxies apart faster and faster. In this model, the effect of dark energy, according to Lombriser, would be explained by particle masses taking a different evolutionary path at later times in the universe.

In this picture "there is, in principle, no need for dark energy," Lombriser added.

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Post-doctoral researcher at the Universidad ECCI, Bogotá, Colombia, Luz Ángela García , was impressed with Lombriser's new interpretation and how many problems it resolves. 

"The paper is pretty interesting, and it provides an unusual outcome for multiple problems in cosmology," García, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. "The theory provides an outlet for the current tensions in cosmology."

However, García urged caution in assessing the paper's findings, saying it contains elements in its theoretical model that likely can't be tested observationally, at least in the near future.

Editor's note: This article was corrected at 1:30 p.m. ET on June 20, to reflect that redshift is evidence of cosmic expansion, but not evidence of  accelerated cosmic expansion.

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. who specializes in science, space, physics, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, quantum mechanics and technology. Rob's articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University

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• LaraK Is this new? I thought this already was a way to throw out the need for a dark matter and dark energy. Isn't that why protons decaying is something we want to observe? Reply
• Johnnyreddogg Another theoretical and unobserved opinion. Acceleration has already been proven by observation and sound science. Reply
• Aby "In this picture, these particles arise from a field that permeates space-time." How is this different from the Higgs Field? Reply
• Jim H As an amateur observer I have a couple of issues with the assertion that the universe is undergoing an accelerating expansion based on increasing red shift at its distant regions. If the red shift is the same in all directions, does that mean we are at the center of the universe? The raw data that is observed at those great distances is many billions of years old. Reply
• Joe Cogan If the universe is static, then General Relativity, which forbids a static universe, is fundamentally wrong. Given that it's among the most confirmed theories in the history of science, that seems wildly unlikely. And the notion of particle masses fluctuating over time completely blows up Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, nuclear physics, cosmology, and chemistry just off the top of my head, so pardon me if I take it less than seriously. Reply

Jim H said: As an amateur observer I have a couple of issues with the assertion that the universe is undergoing an accelerating expansion based on increasing red shift at its distant regions. If the red shift is the same in all directions, does that mean we are at the center of the universe? The raw data that is observed at those great distances is many billions of years old.

Joe Cogan said: If the universe is static, then General Relativity, which forbids a static universe, is fundamentally wrong. Given that it's among the most confirmed theories in the history of science, that seems wildly unlikely. And the notion of particle masses fluctuating over time completely blows up Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, nuclear physics, cosmology, and chemistry just off the top of my head, so pardon me if I take it less than seriously.

• Hartmann352 An international team’s project using cosmic microwave background data inferred a Hubble constant of 67, substantially less than the 73 or 74 based on actually measuring the expansion (by analyzing how the light from distant supernova explosions has dimmed over time). When this discrepancy first showed up a few years ago, many experts believed it was just a mirage that would fade with more precise measurement. But it hasn’t. “This starts to get pretty serious,” Adam Riess said at the astronomy meeting. “In both cases these are very mature measurements. This is not the first time around for either of these projects.” One commonly proposed explanation contends that the supernova studies are measuring the local value of the Hubble constant. Perhaps we live in a bubble, with much less matter than average, skewing expansion measurements. In that case, the cosmic microwave background data might provide a better picture of the “global” expansion rate for the whole universe. But supernovas observed by the Hubble telescope extend far enough out to refute that possibility, Riess said. “Even if you thought we lived in a void…, you still are basically stuck with the same problem.” Consequently it seems most likely that something is wrong with the matter-energy recipe for the universe (technically, the cosmological standard model) used in making the expansion rate prediction. Maybe the vacuum energy driving cosmic acceleration is not a cosmological constant after all, but some other sort of field filling space. Such a field could vary in strength over time and throw off the calculations based on a constant vacuum energy. But Riess pointed out that the evidence is growing stronger and stronger that the vacuum energy is just the cosmological constant. “I would say there we have less and less wiggle room.” Another possibility, appealing to many theorists, is the existence of a new particle, perhaps a fourth neutrino or some other relativistic (moving very rapidly) particle zipping around in the early universe. “Relativistic particles — theorists have no trouble inventing new ones, ones that don’t violate anything else,” Riess said. “Many of them are quite giddy about the prospect of some evidence for that. So that would not be a long reach.” Other assumptions built into the current cosmological standard model might also need to be revised. Dark matter, for example, is presumed to be very aloof from other forms of matter and energy. But if it interacted with radiation in the early universe, it could have an effect similar to that of relativistic particles, changing how the energy in the early universe is divided up among its components. Such a change in energy balance would alter how much the universe expands at early times, corrupting the calibrations needed to infer the current expansion rate. It’s not the first time that determining the Hubble constant has provoked controversy. Edwin Hubble himself initially (in the 1930s) vastly overestimated the expansion rate. Using his rate, calculations indicated that the universe was much younger than the Earth, an obvious contradiction. Even by the 1990s, some Hubble constant estimates suggested an age for the universe of under 10 billion years, whereas many stars appeared to be several billion years older than that. Hubble’s original error could be traced to lack of astronomical knowledge. His early overestimates turned out to be signals of a previously unknown distinction between different generations of stars, some younger and some older, Riess pointed out. That threw off distance estimates to some stars that Hubble used to estimate the expansion rate. Similarly, in the 1990s the expansion rate implied too young a universe because dark energy was not then known to exist and therefore was not taken into account when calculating the universe’s age. So the current discrepancy, Riess suggested, might also be a signal of some astronomical unknown, whether a new particle, new interactions of matter and radiation, or a phenomenon even more surprising — something that would really astound a visitor from another universe. See: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/speed-universe-expansion-remains-elusive Recent efforts to measure the Universe further from Earth, like the SH0ES project led by Nobel laureate Adam Riess, have used Cepheids alongside Type Ia supernovae, which was used as a standard candle by Nobel Prize winning Saul Permutter's team when they extrapolated the ever faster expansion rate.. There are also other methods to measure Hubble's constant, such as one that uses the cosmic microwave background - relic light or radiation that began to travel through the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. The problem is that these two measurements, one nearby using supernovae and Cepheids, and one much farther away using the microwave background, differ by nearly 10%. Astronomers call this difference the Hubble tension, and have been looking for new measurement techniques to resolve it. But, the data from a magnified, multiply imaged supernova, which was discovered by a team of astronomers, including Dr Or Graur at the University of Portsmouth, provides insight into a longstanding debate in the field and could help scientists more accurately determine the Universe's age and better understand the cosmos. Hartmann352 Reply
• Kurt Poulsen Yes and no. Expansion is universe in relative. Like time. Every single gravity is universe in relative. Yes black hole is a black hole from outside. From inside is expansion. Not White hole. But universe in relative. Watch that to understand 9cO1O6smTH0 View: https://youtu.be/9cO1O6smTH0 Reply
• Yvonne F What a wonderful article. Nothing in science is ever completely "proven", though many things can be disproven. There is only ever, at best... tons of supporting evidence and no good alternative theories to evaluate and compare. So a whole new way to look at things that causes many inconsistencies with and among current theories is spectacular. Yay for mathematical transformations! Ok maybe that was a little geeky. However if this holds, who knows what else might pop out of the math. Reply
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The 10 biggest space science stories of 2021

The universe revealed more of its secrets this year, and new missions will further explore our solar system and beyond.

The year 2021 was one of major scientific expansion. Thanks to a variety of exploratory missions and their cutting-edge instruments, astronomers have been able to peer into the cosmos like never before.

Researchers have turned the Earth into a giant telescope to view powerful jets from a black hole. Solar system surveys have revealed new moons and massive comets previously lurking undetected by scientists. The sun has also been a main attraction for research as it reawakens from its recent slumber.

Here's our look back at the 10 biggest space stories of 2021.

1. Discovery of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein

Two researchers unexpectedly discovered the largest-known comet to date .

Graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli was looking through Dark Energy Survey data to find objects that live beyond Neptune's orbit when he noticed an object significantly farther from the sun than the objects he planned to study. He asked his advisor, cosmologist Gary Bernstein, to have a look. 

They had actually detected a comet that is much larger than any of the ones known so far to science: It may be 10 times wider and 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet.

On top of that, this comet has not swung around the sun since the hominid ancestor Lucy walked on the Earth approximately 3 million years ago. 

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Their finding was officially designated a comet on June 23, 2021 and named Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein after its discoverers.

In a big sweep of scientific luck, astronomers will only have to wait a decade to see this comet approach the sun. Comets come from very far away, originating from one of the outermost regions of the solar system known as the Oort Cloud . Comets journey through our cosmic neighborhood in long elliptical orbits and can take thousands of years to complete one trip around the sun. 

Scientists should be able to get a more accurate reading of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein's size and composition when the comet makes its closest to Earth in the year 2031, although it will still be beyond Saturn's average orbit when it swings nearby. 

2. Amateur astronomer discovers a new moon around Jupiter

A previously-unknown moon has been detected around the largest planet in the solar system.

Jupiter is a giant, so it gravitationally attracts many objects into its vicinity. Earth has one major moon, Mars has two: but Jupiter boasts at least 79 moons, and there may be dozens or hundreds more of them that astronomers have yet to identify.

The latest discovery was made by amateur astronomer Kai Ly, who found evidence of this Jovian moon in a data set from 2003 that had been collected by researchers using the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea. Ly they confirmed the moon was likely bound to Jupiter's gravity using data from another telescope called Subaru. 

The new moon, called EJc0061, belongs to the Carme group of Jovian moons. They orbit in the opposite direction of Jupiter's rotation at an extreme tilt relative to Jupiter's orbital plane.

3. NASA will return to Venus this decade

Mars is a popular target for space agencies, but Earth's other neighbor has been garnering more attention recently. 

In 2020, researchers announced that they had detected traces of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere. It is a possible biosignature gas, and the news certainly reawakened interest in the planet. 

In early June 2021, NASA announced it will launch two missions to Venus by 2030. One mission, called DAVINCI+ (short for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging, Plus) will descend through the planet's atmosphere to learn about how it has changed over time. The other mission, VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) will attempt to map the planet's terrain from orbit like never before. 

Venus has been visited by robotic probes, but NASA has not launched a dedicated mission to the planet since 1989. 

The interest in Martian exploration may be one reason why Venus has been neglected in recent decades, but the second planet from the sun is also a challenging place to study. Although it may have once been a balmy world with oceans and rivers, a runaway greenhouse effect took hold of Venus around 700 million years ago and now the planet's surface is hot enough to melt lead.

4. The sun is reawakening

The sun was experiencing a quiet time in its roughly decade-long cycle, but it is now exiting that phase.

The sun has had very little activity in recent years, but the star's surface is now erupting in powerful events that spew out charged particles towards Earth. In early November, for instance, a series of solar outbursts triggered a large geomagnetic storm on our planet. 

This eruption is known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. It's essentially a billion-ton cloud of solar material with magnetic fields, and when this bubble pops, it blasts a stream of energetic particles out into the solar system. If this material heads in the direction of Earth, it interacts with our planet's own magnetic field and causes disturbances. These can include ethereal displays of auroras near Earth's poles, but can also include satellite disruptions and energy losses.

5. James Webb Space Telescope flies into space

A whole new era of space science began on Christmas Day 2021 with the successful launch of the world's next major telescope. 

NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency are collaborating on the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a project more than three decades in the making. Space telescopes take a long time to plan and assemble: The vision for this particular spacecraft began before its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, had even launched into Earth orbit.

Whereas Hubble orbits a few hundred miles from Earth's surface, JWST is heading to an observational perch located about a million miles from our planet. The telescope began its journey towards this spot, called the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), on Dec. 25, 2021 at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) when an Ariane 5 rocket launched the precious payload from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The telescope will help astronomers answer questions about the evolution of the universe and provide a deeper understanding about the objects found in our very own solar system.

6. Event Horizon Telescope takes high-resolution image of black hole jet

In July 2021, the novel project behind the world's first photo of a black hole published an image of a powerful jet blasting off from one of these supermassive objects. 

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global collaboration of eight observatories that work together to create one Earth-sized telescope. The end result is a resolution that is 16 times sharper and an image that is 10 times more accurate than what was possible before. 

Scientists used EHT's incredible abilities to observe a powerful jet being ejected by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Centaurus A galaxy, one of the brightest objects in the night sky. The galaxy's black hole is so large that it has the mass of 55 million suns.

7. Scientists spot the closest-known black hole to Earth

Just 1,500 light-years from Earth lies the closest-known black hole to Earth, now called " The Unicorn ." 

Tiny black holes are hard to spot, but scientists managed to find this one when they noticed strange behavior from its companion star, a red giant. Researchers observed its light shifting in intensity, which suggested to them that another object was tugging on the star.

This black hole is super-lightweight at just three solar masses. Its location in the constellation Monoceros ("the unicorn") and its rarity have inspired this black hole's name.

8. Earth's second 'moon' flies off into space

An object dropped into Earth's orbit like a second moon, and this year, it made its final close approach of our planet. 

It is classified as a "minimoon," or temporary satellite. But it's no stray space rock — the object, known as 2020 SO, is a leftover fragment of a 1960s rocket booster from the American Surveyor moon missions. 

On Feb. 2, 2021, 2020 SO reached 58% of the way between Earth and the moon, roughly 140,000 miles (220,000 kilometers) from our planet. It was the minimoon's final approach, but not its closest trip to Earth. It achieved its shortest distance to our planet a few months prior, on Dec. 1, 2020. 

It has since drifted off into space and away from Earth's orbit, never to return.

9. Parker Solar Probe travels through the sun's atmosphere

This year, NASA's sun-kissing spacecraft swam within a structure that's only visible during total solar eclipses and was able to measure exactly where the star's "point of no return" is located.

The Parker Solar Probe has been zooming through the inner solar system to make close approaches to the sun for the past three years, and it is designed to help scientists learn about what creates the solar wind, a sea of charged particles that flow out of the sun and can affect Earth in many ways.

The spacecraft stepped into the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona , during its eight solar flyby. The April 28 maneuver supplied the data that confirmed the exact location of the Alfvén critical surface: the point where the solar wind flows away from the sun, never to return.

The probe managed to get as low as 15 solar radii, or 8.1 million miles (13 million km) from the sun's surface. It was there that it passed through a huge structure called a pseudostreamer, which can be seen from Earth when the moon blocks the light from the sun's disk during a solar eclipse . In a statement about the discovery, NASA officials described that part of the trip as "flying into the eye of a storm." 

10. Perseverance begins studying rocks on Mars

Last but not least, this year marked the arrival of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. 

The mission has been working hard to find traces of ancient Martian life since it reached the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. Engineers have equipped Perseverance with powerful cameras to help the mission team decide what rocks are worth investigating. 

One of Perseverance's most charming findings has been " Harbor Seal Rock ," a curiously-shaped feature that was probably carved out by the Martian wind over many years. Perseverance has also obtained several rock samples this year, which will be collected by the space agency for analysis at some point in the future.

Perseverance is taking its observations from the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, which was home to a river delta and a deep lake billions of years ago. 

Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Doris is a science journalist and Space.com contributor. She received a B.A. in Sociology and Communications at Fordham University in New York City. Her first work was published in collaboration with London Mining Network, where her love of science writing was born. Her passion for astronomy started as a kid when she helped her sister build a model solar system in the Bronx. She got her first shot at astronomy writing as a Space.com editorial intern and continues to write about all things cosmic for the website. Doris has also written about microscopic plant life for Scientific American’s website and about whale calls for their print magazine. She has also written about ancient humans for Inverse, with stories ranging from how to recreate Pompeii’s cuisine to how to map the Polynesian expansion through genomics. She currently shares her home with two rabbits. Follow her on twitter at @salazar_elin.

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Early universe articles from across Nature Portfolio

The early Universe refers to the onset and first couple of billion years of the Universe. Research topics include but are not limited to the radiation leftover from the Big Bang (cosmic microwave background), the formation of the first stars, and high-redshift galaxies.

Latest Research and Reviews

A massive interacting galaxy 510 million years after the Big Bang

JWST detections of Si, C and Fe absorption lines in a bright z  = 9.31 galaxy with a two-component clump structure suggest that mergers contributed to the rapid build-up of mass and chemical enrichment soon after the Big Bang.

• Kristan Boyett
• Michele Trenti
• Benedetta Vulcani

A recently quenched galaxy 700 million years after the Big Bang

• Tobias J. Looser
• Francesco D’Eugenio
• Jan Scholtz

Most of the photons that reionized the Universe came from dwarf galaxies

An analysis of eight ultra-faint galaxies during the epoch of reionization with absolute magnitudes between −17 mag and −15  mag shows that most of the photons that reionized the Universe come from dwarf galaxies.

• Katherine E. Whitaker

The accretion of a solar mass per day by a 17-billion solar mass black hole

A black hole at the centre of a quasar at a redshift of z  = 4 is accreting the mass of the Sun every day. The quasar’s extreme luminosity is equivalent to 50,000 times that of the Milky Way. Its broad-line region should be resolvable observationally and will provide an important test for broad-line region size–luminosity relationships.

• Christian Wolf
• Rachel L. Webster

A population of faint, old, and massive quiescent galaxies at \(3 <4\) revealed by JWST NIRSpec Spectroscopy

• Themiya Nanayakkara
• Karl Glazebrook
• Kim-Vy H. Tran

A dynamical measure of the black hole mass in a quasar 11 billion years ago

Using the GRAVITY+ instrument, dynamical measurement of the black hole mass in a quasar at a redshift of 2.3 (11 billion years ago) shows how the relationship between galaxies and black holes evolves with time.

• F. Allouche

News and Comment

Sowing the seeds of early galaxy evolution.

• Morgan Hollis

Objects in JWST’s mirrors are closer than they appear

JWST has revealed the most distant galaxies known, but photometric estimates of their redshifts are likely to be overly generous, owing to a statistical effect identified by Sir Arthur Eddington.

• Stephen Serjeant
• Tom J. L. C. Bakx

Clues to galaxy assembly and chemical enrichment in the early Universe

Through the past 12 billion years of cosmic time, galaxies have been in a near-equilibrium state, with their star-formation rates, stellar masses and chemical abundances tightly connected. But, from JWST observations, it now seems that at earlier times galaxies deviated from this relation, owing to the inflow of pristine gas in the early Universe.

High-redshift galaxies don’t fit the mould

Exquisite detail from gn-z11’s emission lines, complex molecules in an early galaxy, quick links.

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Antimatter Discovery at CERN: The Universe’s Greatest Mystery

A cosmic clash of epic proportions plays out across the universe as matter and antimatter, its enigmatic counterpart, vie for dominance. Once merely a theoretical curiosity confined to the pages of speculative fiction, the study of antimatter has now become a pivotal element in our quest to unravel the fundamental mysteries of reality.

The discovery of antimatter has dramatically expanded our exploration into the building blocks of the universe, challenging what we thought we knew and expanding the limits of physics.

Central to this exploration is a baffling enigma: why is the universe we live in overwhelmingly made of matter, despite theories predicting equal amounts of matter and antimatter?

This question invites us into the nature of everything around us, promising to reshape our understanding of the cosmos.

The Discovery of Antimatter

The journey into the realm of antimatter began in the early 20th century, not in the depths of space but within the confines of a laboratory.

In 1932, Carl D. Anderson’s experiment marked the first sighting of antimatter through the detection of positrons, particles with the same mass as electrons but with a positive charge. This groundbreaking discovery, which earned Anderson a Nobel Prize, was the first evidence that our universe had a hidden dimension, one made of particles mirroring those of the matter we interact with daily. 1

British physicist Paul Dirac had already laid the theoretical groundwork for Anderson’s discovery. Dirac’s equations suggested that every particle we know has an antiparticle counterpart, a prediction that expanded our understanding of the quantum world. This revelation was not just a triumph of theoretical physics but a gateway to a universe far more complex and intriguing than previously imagined.

Antimatter in the Universe

The existence of antimatter raises a cosmic conundrum: why does our universe consist almost entirely of matter? If matter and antimatter were created equally during the Big Bang, they should have annihilated each other, leaving nothing but energy.

Yet, here we are, in a universe dominated by matter, with antimatter seemingly scarce. This imbalance, known as the “baryonic asymmetry of the universe,” is one of the most compelling mysteries in physics.

Scientists have been searching for differences between matter and antimatter that might explain this asymmetry ( ref ). Experiments at particle colliders like CERN have produced, trapped, and studied antiparticles, confirming that their intrinsic properties, such as mass and charge, mirror those of their matter counterparts.

However, when it comes to the weak nuclear force, particles and antiparticles behave differently, a discovery that hinted at a possible explanation for the matter-dominated universe.

The Role of Fundamental Forces

The exploration of how antimatter interacts with the fundamental forces of nature has been at the forefront of research. While electromagnetism treats particles and antiparticles identically, the weak force does not, exhibiting a preference for “handedness” and differing strengths in its interactions with matter and antimatter.

This asymmetry provided hope for explaining the universe’s baryonic asymmetry. Yet, the puzzle remains unsolved, as the differences observed are insufficient to account for matter’s dominance.

The strong nuclear force, another fundamental interaction, was also scrutinized for potential differences in how it affects matter versus antimatter. However, experiments have consistently shown that it treats both equally, deepening the mystery.

Antimatter & Gravity

Perhaps antimatter research’s most speculative and intriguing aspect is its interaction with gravity. Whether antimatter falls up or down might sound like science fiction, but it is a legitimate scientific inquiry with profound implications for our understanding of the universe.

Experiments at CERN, such as those conducted by the ALPHA collaboration, have sought to measure the gravitational acceleration of antimatter, with results suggesting that antimatter, much like matter, is pulled downwards by gravity. 2

The Future of Antimatter Research

The quest to understand antimatter is far from over. Future experiments aim to measure the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter with even greater precision, hoping to uncover new physics that could explain the universe’s baryonic asymmetry.

The possibility of undiscovered forces or particles interacting uniquely with antimatter remains an exciting frontier in physics.

Antimatter’s mirror-like properties and enigmatic presence continue to challenge our understanding of the physical universe. Its study not only pushes the boundaries of what we know about fundamental particles and forces but also holds the key to unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have used an innovative technique to reconstruct what the average American Christian thinks God looks like.

The results, published in the journal PLOS One, offer a fascinating glimpse into the psychology of religious belief and how our own biases shape our perceptions of the divine.

• Don’t Miss: This Is What God Looks Like to Americans, According to Science
• timeline.web.cern.ch/carl-anderson-discovers-positron
• nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06527-1

Cosmic History

The Universe’s History

The origin, evolution, and nature of the universe have fascinated and confounded humankind for centuries. New ideas and major discoveries made during the 20th century transformed cosmology – the term for the way we conceptualize and study the universe – although much remains unknown. Here is the history of the universe according to cosmologists’ current theories.

Cosmic Inflation

Around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light for a fraction of a second, a period called cosmic inflation. Scientists aren’t sure what came before inflation or what powered it. It’s possible that energy during this period was just part of the fabric of space-time. Cosmologists think inflation explains many aspects of the universe we observe today, like its flatness, or lack of curvature, on the largest scales. Inflation may have also magnified density differences that naturally occur on space’s smallest, quantum-level scales, which eventually helped form the universe’s large-scale structures.

Big Bang and Nucleosynthesis

When cosmic inflation stopped, the energy driving it transferred to matter and light – the big bang. One second after the big bang, the universe consisted of an extremely hot (18 billion degrees Fahrenheit or 10 billion degrees Celsius) primordial soup of light and particles. In the following minutes, an era called nucleosynthesis, protons and neutrons collided and produced the earliest elements – hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium and beryllium. After five minutes, most of today’s helium had formed, and the universe had expanded and cooled enough that further element formation stopped. At this point, though, the universe was still too hot for the atomic nuclei of these elements to catch electrons and form complete atoms. The cosmos was opaque because a vast number of electrons created a sort of fog that scattered light.

Big Bang News

What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe

NASA’s Webb Identifies the Earliest Strands of the Cosmic Web

Lunar Crater Radio Telescope: Illuminating the Cosmic Dark Ages

Roman Space Telescope Could Image 100 Hubble Ultra Deep Fields at Once

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Uncover Echoes of the Universe’s Creation

Recombination

Around 380,000 years after the big bang, the universe had cooled enough that atomic nuclei could capture electrons, a period astronomers call the epoch of recombination. This had two major effects on the cosmos. First, with most electrons now bound into atoms, there were no longer enough free ones to completely scatter light, and the cosmic fog cleared. The universe became transparent, and for the first time, light could freely travel over great distances. Second, the formation of these first atoms produced its own light. This glow, still detectable today, is called the cosmic microwave background. It is the oldest light we can observe in the universe.

After the cosmic microwave background, the universe again became opaque at shorter wavelengths due to the absorbing effects of all those hydrogen atoms. For the next 200 million years the universe remained dark. There were no stars to shine. The cosmos at this point consisted of a sea of hydrogen atoms, helium, and trace amounts of heavier elements.

First Stars

Gas was not uniformly distributed throughout the universe. Cooler areas of space were lumpier, with denser clouds of gas. As these clumps grew more massive, their gravity attracted additional matter. As they became denser, and more compact, the centers of these clumps became hotter – hot enough eventually that nuclear fusion occurred in their centers. These were the first stars. They were 30 to 300 times more massive than our Sun and millions of times brighter. Over several hundred million years, the first stars collected into the first galaxies.

Reionization

At first, starlight couldn’t travel far because it was scattered by the relatively dense gas surrounding the first stars. Gradually, the ultraviolet light emitted by these stars broke down, or ionized, hydrogen atoms in the gas into their constituent electrons and protons. As this reionization progressed, starlight traveled farther, breaking up more and more hydrogen atoms. By the time the universe was 1 billion years old, stars and galaxies had transformed nearly all this gas, making the universe transparent to light as we see it today.

For many years, scientists thought the universe’s current expansion was slowing down. But in fact, cosmic expansion is speeding up. In 1998, astronomers found that certain supernovae, bright stellar explosions, were fainter than expected. They concluded this could only happen if the supernovae had moved farther away, at a faster rate than predicted.

Scientists suspect a mysterious substance they call dark energy is accelerating expansion. Future research may yield new surprises, but cosmologists suggest it’s likely the universe will continue to expand forever.

Discover More Topics From NASA

Dark Matter & Dark Energy

The Big Bang

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The big idea: are we about to discover a new force of nature?

The wealth of emerging evidence suggest that physics may be on the brink of something big

M odern physics deals with some truly mind-boggling extremes of scale. Cosmology reveals the Earth as a tiny dot amid an observable universe that is a staggering 93bn light years across. Meanwhile, today’s particle colliders are exploring a microcosmic world billions of times smaller than the smallest atom.

These two extremes, the biggest and smallest distances probed by science, are separated by 47 orders of magnitude. That’s one with 47 zeros after it, a number so ludicrously huge that it isn’t worth trying to get your head around. And yet, despite exploring such radically different distances and phenomena, cosmology and particle physics are deeply connected. Observing the motions of stars and galaxies can reveal the influence of as-yet-undiscovered particles, while studying fundamental particles in the lab can tell us about the birth and evolution of the cosmos.

Intriguingly, both disciplines are grappling with unexplained results that could be pointing to the existence of a new force of nature. If such a new force were to be confirmed, the implications for our understanding of the universe, its history and makeup would be profound.

There are four forces that we already know about. Gravity governs the grandest scales, marshalling the planets in their orbits and shaping the evolution of the universe as a whole. Electromagnetic force gives rise to a vast range of phenomena, from the magnetic field of the Earth to radio waves, visible light and X-rays, while also holding atoms, molecules and, by extension, the physical world together. Deep within the atomic nucleus, two further forces emerge: the vice-like “strong force”, which binds atomic nuclei, and the “weak force”, which among other things causes radioactive decay and enables the nuclear reactions that power the sun and the stars.

Studying these forces has transformed our understanding of nature and generated revolutionary new technologies. Work on electromagnetism in the 19th century gave us the electric dynamo and radio broadcasts, the discovery of the strong and weak forces in the 1930s led to nuclear energy and atomic bombs, while understanding gravity has made it possible to put astronauts on the moon and to develop GPS satellites that can tell us our location anywhere on Earth to within a few metres. Uncovering a fifth force would be one hell of a prize.

Hints that physicists may be on the brink of making such a breakthrough have been accumulating over the past decade. The first tranche of evidence comes from particle physics experiments here on Earth, the results of which appear to conflict with our current best theory of fundamental particles, the standard model.

Notwithstanding its rather uninspiring name, the standard model is one of humankind’s greatest intellectual achievements, the closest we have come to a theory of everything, and has passed almost every experimental test thrown at it with flying colours. So far at least.

However, the BaBar experiment in California, the Belle experiment in Japan and the LHCb experiment at Cern have all spied exotic fundamental particles known as “beauty quarks” behaving in ways that go against the predictions of the standard model. Meanwhile, just outside Chicago, Fermilab’s Muon g–2 experiment has been busily studying another type of fundamental particle called a muon, finding that it emits a slightly stronger magnetic field than expected.

The most exciting explanations for these anomalies involve hitherto unknown forces of nature that subtly alter the way beauty quarks transform into other particles or mess with the muon’s magnetism. Such a new force could help unlock a deeper structure at the base of reality, explaining why we have the fundamental particles in nature that we do. Another tantalising possibility is that it could act as a link to the unseen “dark universe”, made from invisible dark matter.

That said, for now the overall picture remains frustratingly murky. Just over a year ago, new results from LHCb poured cold water on the prospects of a big breakthrough, after missed biases were found in some of the earlier measurements. Meanwhile, theorists have been debating just how magnetic the muon really ought to be, leaving open the possibility that this anomaly is down to a calculational problem.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for a new force at work in the universe comes from the other end of the cosmic scale. For the past few years, cosmology has been riven by what has become known as the “Hubble crisis” – a dramatic disagreement over how fast the universe is expanding.

According to the accepted cosmological story, the universe as we know it began with the big bang around 13.8bn years ago and has been expanding ever since, with galaxies carried ever farther apart as the space between them stretches. Cosmologists have two ways of figuring out how fast space is stretching. One involves studying a host of far-off galaxies through telescopes, then determining the relationship between their distance and how fast they appear to be rushing away from us. The other exploits exquisitely precise maps of faded light from the fireball of the big bang – known as the “cosmic microwave background” – to infer the properties of the infant universe. Then you apply current cosmological theory to run the clock forward and predict how fast the universe ought to be expanding today.

The fact that these two methods give different answers is the strongest evidence we have that there is more to the universe than we’ve imagined so far. Possibilities abound. A popular proposal involves a form of energy that drove the universe to expand even more rapidly than thought soon after the big bang. Others involve “dark forces” acting in the hidden world of dark matter. Some have even proposed that gravity itself behaves differently over the vast spaces between galaxies.

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How the story of these anomalies will end is unclear. But the wealth of emerging evidence does suggest that physics may be on the brink of something big. The discovery of a new force would mark the start of a new age of exploration, perhaps offering a deeper understanding of the basic building blocks of nature, or opening the door to a vast, unknown dark realm, which, despite being invisible, contains 95% of everything that exists. Such breakthroughs are always hard won, but following nature’s breadcrumb trail may soon lead to a profound new view of the universe.

Harry Cliff is the author of Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe (Picador).

Further Reading :

White Holes: Inside the Horizon by Carlo Rovelli (Allen Lane, £14.99)

The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack (Penguin, £10.99)

The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter by Govert Schilling (Belnap, £24.95)

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Redefining the Fabric of Reality: The Growing Evidence for a Simulated Universe

By Melvin M. Vopson, University of Portsmouth October 23, 2023

The simulated universe theory proposes that our reality is a complex computer simulation, an idea echoed throughout history and popular culture. The second law of infodynamics, a concept introduced using information theory, suggests that information entropy must decrease or remain constant over time. This new law might provide evidence for the simulated universe theory, as it implies universal data optimization and compression, which are characteristics of a simulation.

New research on information entropy may offer evidence for the theory that our universe is a sophisticated simulation, with deep implications for various fields, from biology to cosmology.

The simulated universe theory implies that our universe, with all its galaxies, planets and life forms, is a meticulously programmed computer simulation. In this scenario, the physical laws governing our reality are simply algorithms. The experiences we have are generated by the computational processes of an immensely advanced system.

While inherently speculative, the simulated universe theory has gained attention from scientists and philosophers due to its intriguing implications. The idea has made its mark in popular culture, across movies, TV shows, and books – including the 1999 film The Matrix .

Historical Context

The earliest records of the concept that reality is an illusion are from ancient Greece. There, the question “What is the nature of our reality?” posed by Plato (427 BC) and others, gave birth to idealism . Idealist ancient thinkers such as Plato considered mind and spirit as the abiding reality. Matter, they argued, was just a manifestation or illusion.

Fast forward to modern times, and idealism has morphed into a new philosophy. This is the idea that both the material world and consciousness are part of a simulated reality. This is simply a modern extension of idealism, driven by recent technological advancements in computing and digital technologies. In both cases, the true nature of reality transcends the physical.

The Scientific Perspective

Within the scientific community, the concept of a simulated universe has sparked both fascination and skepticism. Some scientists suggest that if our reality is a simulation, there may be glitches or patterns within the fabric of the universe that betray its simulated nature.

However, the search for such anomalies remains a challenge. Our understanding of the laws of physics is still evolving. Ultimately, we lack a definitive framework to distinguish between simulated and non-simulated reality.

A New Law of Physics

If our physical reality is a simulated construct, rather than an objective world that exists independently of the observer, then how could we scientifically prove this? In a 2022 study , I proposed a possible experiment, but it remains untested today.

However, there is hope. Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification, storage and communication of information. Originally developed by mathematician Claude Shannon , it has become increasingly popular in physics and is used a growing range of research areas.

In my recent research , published in AIP Advances , I used information theory to propose a new law of physics, which I call the second law of infodynamics. And importantly, it appears to support the simulated universe theory.

At the heart of the second law of infodynamics is the concept of entropy – a measure of disorder, which always rises over time in an isolated system. When a hot cup of coffee is left on the table, after a while it will achieve equilibrium, having the same temperature with the environment. The entropy of the system is at maximum at this point, and its energy is minimum.

The second law of infodynamics states that the “information entropy” (the average amount of information conveyed by an event), must remain constant or decrease over time – up to a minimum value at equilibrium.

So it is in total opposition to the second law of thermodynamics (that heat always flows spontaneously from hot to cold regions of matter while entropy rises). For a cooling cup of coffee, it means that the spread of probabilities of locating a molecule in the liquid is reduced. That’s because the spread of energies available is reduced when there’s thermal equilibrium. So information entropy always goes down over time as entropy goes up.

Applications and Implications of the New Law

My study indicates that the second law of infodynamics appears to be a cosmological necessity. It is universally applicable with immense scientific ramifications. We know the universe is expanding without the loss or gain of heat, which requires the total entropy of the universe to be constant. However, we also know from thermodynamics that entropy is always rising. I argue this shows that there must be another entropy – information entropy – to balance the increase.

My law can confirm how genetic information behaves. But it also indicates that genetic mutations are at the most fundamental level not just random events, as Darwin’s theory suggests . Instead, genetic mutations take place according to the second law of infodynamics, in such a way that the genome’s information entropy is always minimised. The law can also explain phenomena in atomic physics and the time evolution of digital data.

Most interestingly, this new law explains one of the great mysteries of nature. Why does symmetry rather than asymmetry dominate the universe? My study demonstrates mathematically that high symmetry states are the preferred choice because such states correspond to the lowest information entropy. And, as dictated by the second law of infodynamics, that’s what a system will naturally strive for.

I believe this discovery has massive implications for genetic research, evolutionary biology, genetic therapies, physics, mathematics, and cosmology, to name a few.

Simulation Theory

The main consequence of the second law of infodynamics is the minimization of the information content associated with any event or process in the universe. This in turn means an optimization of the information content, or the most effective data compression.

Since the second law of infodynamics is a cosmological necessity, and appears to apply everywhere in the same way, it could be concluded that this indicates that the entire universe appears to be a simulated construct or a giant computer.

A super complex universe like ours, if it were a simulation, would require built-in data optimization and compression in order to reduce the computational power and the data storage requirements to run the simulation. This is exactly what we are observing all around us, including in digital data, biological systems, mathematical symmetries and the entire universe.

Further studies are necessary before we can definitely state that the second law of infodynamics is as fundamental as the second law of thermodynamics. The same is true for the simulated universe hypothesis.

But if they both hold up to scrutiny, this is perhaps the first time scientific evidence supporting this theory has been produced – as explored in my recent book .

Written by Melvin M. Vopson, Associate Professor of Physics, University of Portsmouth .

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6 comments on "redefining the fabric of reality: the growing evidence for a simulated universe".

This is dealt with interestingly in author Douglas Phillips latest SF book in his Quantum series (book 5) titled ‘Quantum Chaos’.

this is silly. If a simulation, then a simulator. that in turn is either real, by some definition, or a simulation. all we have evidence for, in this scenario, is that continous realities are simulations, sample size of one. Therefore, this new one is a simulation. Rinse, repeat. Turtles, I say! Turtles all the way down~

False flags and psyops; how great it would be to change history with just a few key strokes, I see it all, this apparent psychopathic need to lie about everything; not that I’m calling this research a falsehood, but it leads itself to abuse, since if everything is in fact nothing more than illusion including ourselves, then there can be no such thing as murder, since we don’t really even exist. I suspected something of the sort from reading Stephen Hawking, I wouldn’t even be a bit surprised if he wasn’t even murdered, just to be able to try to sell this illusion of a universal truth.

Physics ran up against the limits of reality about a century ago. None of this is a surprise. It’s going to get worse.

Maybe the reason why the universe doesn’t seem to be completely “real”, is because as of yet it’s only a probability. What event might make the possible a reality? For the mind of a primate probably nothing, it’s mind appears to be eternally flawed, like an animal without eyes humans seem to be completely incapable of “seeing”, that, which is clearly starring them in their face.

Great article Melvin.

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8 facts about atheists

Atheists make up 4% of U.S. adults, according to our 2023 National Public Opinion Reference Survey . That compares with 3% who described themselves as atheists in 2014 and 2% who did so in 2007 .

Here are some key facts about atheists in the United States and around the world, based on several Pew Research Center surveys.

This analysis draws on several Pew Research Center studies. Data on the share of atheists in the United States is from the  2023 National Public Opinion Reference Survey , as well as the Center’s  2007  and  2014 Religious Landscape Studies .

Other data on U.S. atheists comes from various waves of the American Trends Panel, collected in  September and December 2017 ,  February 2019 ,  September 2022 , and  July and August 2023 .

For data from countries other than the U.S., this analysis draws on nationally representative surveys conducted in 2019, 2022 and 2023. Read more details about our  international survey methodology and country-specific sample designs .

For the purposes of this analysis, “wealthy nations” are those that were classified as “high income” according to the  World Bank Income Classifications .

In the U.S., atheists are mostly men and are relatively young,  according to a Center survey conducted in summer 2023 . Around six-in-ten U.S. atheists are men (64%). And seven-in-ten are ages 49 or younger, compared with about half of U.S. adults overall (52%).

Atheists also are more likely than the general public to be White (77% vs. 62%) and have a college degree (48% vs. 34%). Roughly eight-in-ten atheists identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

Almost all U.S. atheists (98%) say religion is not too or not at all important in their lives, according to the same summer 2023 survey. An identical share say that they seldom or never pray.

At the same time, 79% of American atheists say they feel a deep sense of wonder about the universe at least several times a year. And 36% feel a deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being at least that often.

U.S. atheists and religiously affiliated Americans find meaning in their lives in some of the same ways. In a 2017 survey , we asked an open-ended question about this. Like a majority of Americans, most atheists mentioned family as a source of meaning.

However, atheists (26%) were far more likely than Christians (10%) to describe their hobbies as meaningful or satisfying. Atheists were also more likely than Americans overall to describe finances and money, creative pursuits, travel, and leisure activities as meaningful. Very few atheists (4%) said they found life’s meaning in spirituality.

Atheists make up a larger share of the population in many Western European countries than in the U.S.,  according to a spring 2023 Center survey that included 10 European countries. For example, nearly a quarter of French adults (23%) identify as atheists, as do 18% of adults in Sweden, 17% in the Netherlands and 12% in the United Kingdom.

Most U.S. atheists express concerns about the role religion plays in society. An overwhelming majority of atheists (94%) say that the statement “religion causes division and intolerance” describes their views a great deal or a fair amount, according to our summer 2023 survey. And 91% say the same about the statement “religion encourages superstition and illogical thinking.” Nearly three-quarters (73%) say religion does more harm than good in American society.

At the same time, 41% of atheists say religion helps society by giving people meaning and purpose in their lives, and 33% say it encourages people to treat others well.

Atheists may not believe religious teachings, but they are  quite informed about religion . In our 2019 religious knowledge survey , atheists were among the best-performing groups. On average, they answered about 18 out of 32 fact-based questions correctly, while U.S. adults overall got roughly 14 questions right. In particular, atheists were twice as likely as Americans overall to know that the U.S. Constitution says no religious test is necessary to hold public office.

Atheists were also at least as knowledgeable as Christians on Christianity-related questions. For example, roughly eight-in-ten in both groups knew that Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus.

Most Americans don’t think believing in God is necessary to be a good person, according to the summer 2023 survey. When we asked people which statement came closer to their views, 73% selected “it is possible to be moral and have good values without believing in God,” while 25% picked “it is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values.”

Adults in some other wealthy countries tend to agree with this sentiment, based on responses to a similar question we asked in 2019 and 2022 . For example, nine-in-ten Swedish adults say belief in God is not necessary to be moral and have good values, while 85% in Australia, 80% in the Czech Republic and 77% in France say this.

However, fewer than one-in-ten adults in some other countries surveyed say that a person can be moral without believing in God. That includes 5% of adults in Kenya, 4% in the Philippines and 2% in Indonesia. In all three nations, more than nine-in-ten say instead that a person must believe in God to be a moral person.

About three-quarters of U.S. atheists (77%) do not believe in God or a higher power  or in a spiritual force of any kind, according to our summer 2023 survey. At the same time, 23% say they do believe in a higher power of some kind, though fewer than 1% of U.S. atheists say they believe in “God as described in the Bible.”

This shows that not all self-described atheists fit the literal definition of “atheist,” which is “a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods,”  according to Merriam-Webster .

Note: This is an update of a post originally published on Nov. 5, 2015. It was last updated Dec. 6, 2019.

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Around 4 in 10 Americans have become more spiritual over time; fewer have become more religious

Spirituality among americans, chinese communist party promotes atheism, but many members still partake in religious customs, many people in u.s., other advanced economies say it’s not necessary to believe in god to be moral, how the political typology groups compare, most popular.

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