Is The Universe's Expansion Slowing Down?
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As a science fiction writer I find myself reading a whole lot of bizarre articles and this often forms the basis for my weekly social media posting, and on Mondays I like to explore scientific concepts that I have come across!
When we take into account all the various ways in which we can measure the expansion of our universe, such as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Cepheids and recent factors such as gravitational influences, we come to a figure of approximately 70 kilometres per second per megaparsec and accelerating; where a megaparsec is a distance equivalent to 3.26 million light years.
This expansion was famously first devised by Albert Einstein and is known as βThe Cosmological Constantβ. Since its conception it has been subject to much debate over the years and has caused a great deal of self-conflict within the great man himself!
But is that acceleration now slowing down? Well, according to a recent study by the National Observatory of Arizona, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) they used to collect this data indicates that it could have in fact slowed over the past 2 billion years!
The DESI team are on a mission to shed light on the nature of βDark Energyβ, which is a theorised phenomenon thought to have a repelling action, making up approximately 70% of our universe. They are currently one year in to their five year mission to map its effects!
So, what do you think? Although we have now proven that there isnβt sufficient enough matter versus energy to cause the universe to eventually contract, what implications could a one-day static universe have? With such fixed points could gated travel, made famous by series such as βBabylon 5β and βStargateβ, actually be possible in the very distant future?
As a science fiction writer I find myself reading a whole lot of bizarre articles and this often forms the basis for my weekly social media posting, and on Mondays I like to explore scientific concepts that I have come across!
When we take into account all the various ways in which we can measure the expansion of our universe, such as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Cepheids and recent factors such as gravitational influences, we come to a figure of approximately 70 kilometres per second per megaparsec and accelerating; where a megaparsec is a distance equivalent to 3.26 million light years.
This expansion was famously first devised by Albert Einstein and is known as βThe Cosmological Constantβ. Since its conception it has been subject to much debate over the years and has caused a great deal of self-conflict within the great man himself!
But is that acceleration now slowing down? Well, according to a recent study by the National Observatory of Arizona, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) they used to collect this data indicates that it could have in fact slowed over the past 2 billion years!
The DESI team are on a mission to shed light on the nature of βDark Energyβ, which is a theorised phenomenon thought to have a repelling action, making up approximately 70% of our universe. They are currently one year in to their five year mission to map its effects!
So, what do you think? Although we have now proven that there isnβt sufficient enough matter versus energy to cause the universe to eventually contract, what implications could a one-day static universe have? With such fixed points could gated travel, made famous by series such as βBabylon 5β and βStargateβ, actually be possible in the very distant future?
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