The data collected by the researchers show that the spatial curvature corresponds to zero.
Physicists believe that the universe is flat. This is borne out by several lines of evidence. Specifically, the light left behind after the Big Bang, the rate at which the universe is expanding in different places, and what the universe looks like from different angles, experts told Live Science.
A theoretical astrophysicist and Distinguished Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University who has spent decades researching the shape of the universe, David Spergel measured the inhomogeneities of the cosmic microwave background, the light left over from the Big Bang, observed with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe of NASA.
He found that the amounts of positive and negative energy in a flat universe are exactly the same and, therefore, compensate each other. If the universe is curved, one is higher than the other.
“A flat universe corresponds to a universe with zero energy,” Spergel said.
Also, measurements of changes in the cosmic microwave background have shown that the Universe is both infinite and flat.
“We can measure the curvature with some uncertainty, so we can say that the curvature is zero with some uncertainty. Although we can reduce the uncertainty, we are only limiting the geometry to the best,” said by Spergel.
Another reason Spergel believed the universe was flat was because of its rapid expansion, fixed by the Hubble constant. Since the universe has gone from being a compact ball of matter to expanding outward at a phenomenal rate, all of this stretch has become flat, or as close to flat as possible.
Evidence for the flatness of the universe also appears in the so-called critical density. At critical density, the hypothetical universe would become flat and eventually stop expanding, but only after an infinite amount of time, according to Swinburne University of Technology.
Another proof of the plane of the universe is that it is isotropic, that is, it looks the same from all directions.
“In different geometries, matter and light are formed differently, which allows us to extract the three-dimensional shape of the universe from observational data,” said Anton Chudaikin, a physicist at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia.
Ultimately, researchers say the universe is flat to within 0.2%.
“The data we collected show that the spatial curvature corresponds to zero. This means that our Universe is infinite within the limits of statistical uncertainty,” concluded the scientists.
Recall that earlier a group of researchers in laboratory conditions at the University of Kyoto in Japan created the coldest object than even the deepest galaxy.
Scientists say the universe is a ‘giant doughnut’
News from Correspondent.net on Telegram. Subscribe to our channel Athletistic
Source: korrespondent
