Researchers from the University of Portsmouth , UK have puzzle out an challenging cosmological mystery by create the largest ever map of how thing is distributed in the universe .
Dr. Seshadri Nadathur and Professor Robert Crittenden face at how photons from the cosmic microwave background ( CMB ) , the light impart over from the Big Bang , are affected by the areas of the existence that are full of extragalactic nebula , the superclusters , and the uninhabited cosmic voids .
accord to Einstein ’s theory of world-wide relativity , photon travel through the emptiness should reckon slightly colder , and the I traveling through the superclusters slightly hotter . This phenomenon is known as the Integrated Sachs - Wolfe ( ISW ) issue .
“ When this essence was studied by astronomer at the University of Hawai’i in 2008 using an older catalog of voids and superclusters , the effect seemed to be five times bigger than prognosticate , ” lead-in generator Nadathur say in astatement .
“ This has been nonplus scientist for a long time , so we looked at it again with new data . ”
The effect is very insidious , so the Portsmouth team had to construct an incredibly detailed map of the complex body part in the universe of discourse . They used the statistical distribution of 750,000 galaxy from the Sloane Digital Sky Survey and give to the microwave background mathematical function adopt by the Planck satellite . This map is 300 times big than the one antecedently used .
The research worker show , in a newspaper write in theAstrophysical Journal Letters , that the observed effect is in agreement with worldwide relativity and with our current understanding of the world . But , as in all sound physics narrative , every discovery leads to new enquiry .
“ Our results settle one long - stand cosmogenic puzzle , but doing so has deepened the mystery story of a very strange ‘ Cold Spot ’ in the CMB , " added Nadathur .
The region is related to a cosmic supervoid but that is not enough to excuse the unusual coolness . There must be something unseasonable with general theory of relativity to explain that , and we have n’t find any evidence suggesting this is the causa yet .
“ It was thought that there was some alien gravitational event contradicting Einstein which would simultaneously explicate both the Cold Spot and the unusual ISW result from Hawai’i , " stay on Nadathur . " But this possibility has been determine away by our new measurement . ”
The mystery of the Cold Spot remains without an explanation . At least for now .
