The bold paper published on November 4th, 2019 in Nature Astronomy argues that the universe curve around and close itself like a sphere, rather than lying flat like a sheet of paper as predicted by the standard theory of cosmology. The researchers reanalyzed a major set of cosmological evidence and concluded that with 99 percent accuracy, and reached the conclusion that the data supports a closed universe.
The Planck Space Telescope’s observations of ancient light called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)—”clearly point to a closed model, “said Alessandro Melchiorri of the University of Sapienza in Rome, who o-authored the new paper with Eleonora di Valentino of the University of Manchester and Joseph Silk, principally of the University of Oxford. In their view, the discrepancy between CMB data, which suggests that the universe is closed, and other data pointing to flatness, is a “cosmological crisis” that calls for “drastic rethinking.”
It depends critically on the density of the universe whether the universe is flat — that is, whether two light beams shooting side by side through space will remain parallel forever, rather than eventually crossing and swinging back to where they began, as in a closed universe. If all matter and energy in the universe, including dark matter and dark energy, adds up to the exact concentration at which the energy of outward expansion balances the energy of inward gravitational pull, space extends flatly in all directions.
The new paper effectively argues that we may need to add a seventh parameter to the CDM: a number that describes the curvature of the universe. In order to measure the lens, adding a seventh number improves the data fit.
All other researchers consulted for this article think the weight of the evidence points to the universe being flat. “Given the other measurements,” Addison said, “the clearest interpretation of this behavior of the Planck data is that it’s a statistical fluctuation. Maybe it’s caused by some slight inaccuracy in the Planck analysis, or maybe it’s completely just noise fluctuations or random chance. But either way, there’s not really a reason to take this closed model seriously.”
“Time will tell, but I am not, personally, terribly worried about this one,” Kinney said, referring to the suggestion of curvature in the CMB data. “It’s of a kind with similar anomalies that have proven to be vapour.”
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