The expansion of our Universe is none other than the aftermath of the Big Bang itself. The Universe began its existence 13.7 billion years ago, when it was all shrunk down to a size smaller than the peak of a needle. Despite its name, the ‘bang’ from the title of the famous theory doesn’t refer to an explosion. It refers to the constant expansion of the Universe that’s happening even now. Therefore, we could say that we’re all living within the Big Bang itself.
But what or who triggered the ‘bang’ in the first place? Well, science might one day find that piece of the puzzle missing, but it has to begin with tiny steps. One step is to understand the later stages of the expansion of the Universe as much as possible.
Is the universe NOT expanding at the same rate in all directions?
Even though this is what scientists thought for decades, a new study based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton, NASA’s Chandra and the German-led ROSAT X-ray observatories suggests the opposite.
Among the researchers were Konstantinos Migkas, a Ph.D. researcher in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Bonn from Germany, and his supervisor Thomas Reiprich. They started by verifying a new method of testing the so-called isotropy hypothesis. This claims that, generally, the Universe has the same properties in each of its directions.
Konstantinos said:
Together with colleagues from the University of Bonn and Harvard University, we looked at the behaviour of over 800 galaxy clusters in the present Universe,
If the isotropy hypothesis was correct, the properties of the clusters would be uniform across the sky. But we actually saw significant differences.
The new study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
No scientist knew until a century ago that the Universe is constantly expanding, although the Bible was claiming it firmly in 8 scriptures and in a rudimentary language. Even Einstein made his biggest blunder when he said that the Universe is static. However, science evolves, and making mistakes is totally normal. But the best part is that we’re still searching for answers. And what was there before the Big Bang seems to be the ultimate question in Astronomy.
