A team of astronomers analyzed more than million galaxies explore the origin of the structure of the early universewhich details its findings in a new study.
I turn to the world’s largest galaxy survey —Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) —researchers focused on elucidating what exactly determines the formation of the cosmic structures we see today, such as stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters.
That’s what they found out The spatial distribution and shape pattern of galaxies in the universe is not as random as it seems. In fact, there are correlations between galaxies formed millions of light-years away, even though their formation processes are apparently unrelated.
Initial fluctuations
So far, accurate observations of the early universe have led to the establishment of a standard framework known as ΛCDM modelwho dark matter and energy They are key components.
This model suggests that the beginning of the universe was flooded with so-called initial fluctuations — variations in density that acted as seeds for all celestial objects in the universe. These primordial fluctuations are therefore of great interest to astronomers trying to unravel the mysteries of the early universe.
Since the nature of the spatial distribution of galaxies is strongly influenced by the nature of the primordial fluctuations that created them, there has long been galaxy distribution analysis for this purpose.
However, what has not been rated to the same extent is shape pattern of these galaxiesalthough it is also strongly related to the underlying primordial fluctuations.
Hence the study the shapes of the galaxies were a key aspect of the new study, as explained by co-author Toshiki Kurita, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.
“There is little precedent for research using galaxy shapes explore the physics of the early universeand the research process, from generating the idea and developing analytical methods to analyzing the actual data, was a series of trials and errors,” Kurita said. “But I believe this success will be the first step to open a new field of research in cosmology using galaxy shapes“.
inflationary theory
In their research, the authors found a “statistically significant” alignment of the orientations of the two shapes galaxies more than 100 million light years apart.
This shows that even though the processes of galaxy formation are seemingly independent and unrelated, the correlations remain in the shape and orientation in which they end up.
This is important, the researchers say, because it will allow physicists to test it further in the future inflationary theory: a thought The universe has been expanding since the big bang.
