• Universe’s Expansion May Not Be The Same In All Directions (Chandra X-Ray Observatory)
• Rethinking cosmology universe expansion may not be uniform (ESA)

There are different things in our universe that physics tells us should all give us off the same amount of light. Hot gas, for instance, obeys standard gas laws, and should glow with consistent luminosity when heated to a characteristic temperature by a given mass’ crushing gravity. In theory, if we see systems of similar temperature, we should see them glowing with the same luminosity and appearing equally bright when placed at equal distances.

But apparently we don’t. 

PhD Researcher Konstantinos Migkas unexpectedly made this discovery while looking at 800 galaxy clusters across the entire sky. Distances were based on the observed redshifts of the clusters – the observed recessional velocity caused by the expansion of the universe. If the universe has had the same expansion velocity everywhere at any given moment in time, all objects at the same distance will be moving at the same velocity, and standard candles – objects that give off a standard luminosity – will all appear equally bright. 

Again though – this isn’t what was seen. What was seen was galaxy clusters at the same temperature and same redshift had different brightnesses. This implies that all else corrected for, these systems aren’t actually at the same distance, and the expansion of the universe isn’t the same everywhere. 

In mapping out these variations, they found smooth changes over the sky, and it appears that they can’t explain these results with intervening dust that might be blocking light or with any other natural phenomena. 

This variation isn’t small either. This is a variation of 30%. Researchers from multiple institutions did everything they could to figure out what this graduate student had accidently found while doing an all sky, big data analysis of galaxy cluster X-Ray brightnesses.  They couldn’t make the result go away. It appears real.

And I’m going to try and get this young researcher on to talk about these results, because I personally want to know what it feels like to accidentally turn our basic understanding of the universe on its head. If this result proves true, everything is about to get a whole lot more difficult to study, and this early career research may be in line for a lot of awards and a more interesting career than they may have expected.