Astronomers Find Anomaly That Defies Understanding of the Universe
A new discovery in space may make us rethink everything we know about the universe.
Scientists at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, have discovered a giant arc—an extremely large crescent structure of galaxies in distant space. Ph.D. candidate Alexia Lopez, who made the discovery, said, “It’s so big that it’s hard to explain with our current theories.”
The Cosmological Principle states that the universe is homogenous and isotropic, meaning the universe looks the same in all orientations. So how does the giant arc challenge our way of thinking about the universe?
Astronomer and Gaia News contributor Marc D’Antonio said, “this giant arc is really interesting because we’ve seen large-scale structures before in the universe, but nothing of this size. The proportion of this is something that’s actually outside our understanding of current cosmology.”
“What’s interesting about that is, this particular arc, it’s about 9.2 billion light-years away from us, and it’s about 3.4 billion light-years in size. Now keep in mind, that’s a good fraction of the size of the known universe, which is somewhere in the order of 91 or 92 billion light-years in diameter.”
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Is This a Solution to the Fermi Paradox?
A new theory has been devised on why aliens have never visited Earth, that we know of, as a possible resolution to the Fermi paradox.
Many who are curious about the existence of ETs have heard about the “Fermi paradox,” named after famous astrophysicist Enrico Fermi.
The story goes that in a lunchtime conversation with other astrophysicists who reasoned that, given the vast size and age of the universe it stands to reason, there must be other intelligent life out there, to which Fermi asked, “where is everybody?”
For decades people have tried to answer that question if there are so many possible ET civilizations, where are they? Now, astrobiologists Michael Wong, of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Stuart Bartlett, of the California Institute of Technology offer their hypothesis, and it’s a bit dark.
Using studies of the growth of cities on Earth, they argue that civilizations grow infinitely but in a finite time. This infinite growth of population and overuse of energy will eventually lead to the death of the civilization or possibly saving themselves.
“We propose a new resolution to the Fermi paradox: civilizations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritizing homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely.”
