New Map Of Universe May Poke Holes In Existing Model

A new map of the structure of the universe that over 150 researchers worked on reveals that the existing standard model of the universe may not be as well-supported as previously imagined.

The current Standard Model of Cosmology (SMC) states that the “Big Bang” that created the universe used pure energy and left the universe with roughly 5% ordinary matter, 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy. But the new map indicates that six times as much dark matter exists in the universe compared to visible matter, and that the matter is not as “clumpy” as hitherto suspected.

“It seems like there are slightly less fluctuations in the current universe than we would predict, assuming our standard cosmological model anchored to the early universe,” astronomer Eric Baxter from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy stated. “The high precision and robustness to sources of bias of the new results present a particularly compelling case that we may be starting to uncover holes in our standard cosmological model.”

The SMC argues that gravitational interactions among ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy are described by the General Theory of Relativity and that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on cosmic scales, as Professor Brian Albert Robson of the Australian National University points out.

“Unfortunately, both the SMPP (Standard Model of Particle Physics) and the GTR are considered to be incomplete in the sense that they do not provide any understanding of several empirical observations,” Robson notes, adding that the SMPP “does not provide any understanding of the existence of three families or generations of leptons and quarks, the mass hierarchy of these elementary particles, the nature of gravity, the nature of dark matter” while the GTR “does not provide any understanding of the Big Bang cosmology, inflation, the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, the nature of dark energy.”

The research team utilized the Dark Energy Survey (DES) as well as the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT has more range than the DES; it maps the radiation left over from the Big Bang, called Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

“It functions like a cross-check, so it becomes a much more robust measurement than if you just used one or the other,” Chihway Chang, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago who collaborated with Baxter, asserted.

“Determining whether hints of problems in the standard cosmological model are real or just chance fluctuations will require more data,” The University of Hawaii noted.