Until recently, simulations of the universe haven’t given its lumps their due
Science News said:If the universe were a soup, it would be more of a chunky minestrone than a silky-smooth tomato bisque.
Sprinkled with matter that clumps together due to the insatiable pull of gravity, the universe is a network of dense galaxy clusters and filaments — the hearty beans and vegetables of the cosmic stew. Meanwhile, relatively desolate pockets of the cosmos, known as voids, make up a thin, watery broth in between.
Until recently, simulations of the cosmos’s history haven’t given the lumps their due. The physics of those lumps is described by general relativity, Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. But that theory’s equations are devilishly complicated to solve. To simulate how the universe’s clumps grow and change, scientists have fallen back on approximations, such as the simpler but less accurate theory of gravity devised by Isaac Newton.
Relying on such approximations, some physicists suggest, could be mucking with measurements, resulting in a not-quite-right inventory of the cosmos’s contents. A rogue band of physicists suggests that a proper accounting of the universe’s clumps could explain one of the deepest mysteries in physics: Why is the universe expanding at an increasingly rapid rate?
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Now, many cosmologists follow a basic recipe to simulate the universe — treating the cosmos as if it has been run through an imaginary blender to smooth out its lumps, adding dark energy and calculating the expansion via general relativity. On top of the expanding slurry, scientists add clumps and track their growth using approximations, such as Newtonian gravity, which simplifies the calculations.
In most situations, Newtonian gravity and general relativity are near-twins. Throw a ball while standing on the surface of the Earth, and it doesn’t matter whether you use general relativity or Newtonian mechanics to calculate where the ball will land — you’ll get the same answer. But there are subtle differences. In Newtonian gravity, matter directly attracts other matter. In general relativity, gravity is the result of matter and energy warping spacetime, creating curves that alter the motion of objects (SN: 10/17/15, p. 16). The two theories diverge in extreme gravitational environments. In general relativity, for example, hulking black holes produce inescapable pits that reel in light and matter (SN: 5/31/14, p. 16). The question, then, is whether the difference between the two theories has any impact in lumpy-universe simulations.
Most cosmologists are comfortable with the status quo simulations because observations of the heavens seem to fit neatly together like interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces. Predictions based on the standard framework agree remarkably well with observations of the cosmic microwave background — ancient light released when the universe was just 380,000 years old (SN: 3/21/15, p. 7). And measurements of cosmological parameters — the fraction of dark energy and matter, for example — are generally consistent, whether they are made using the light from galaxies or the cosmic microwave background.
However, the reliance on Newton’s outdated theory irks some cosmologists, creating a lingering suspicion that the approximation is causing unrecognized problems. And some cosmological question marks remain. Physicists still puzzle over what makes up dark energy, along with another unexplained cosmic constituent, dark matter, an additional kind of mass that must exist to explain observations of how galaxies and galaxy clusters rotate. “Both dark energy and dark matter are a bit of an embarrassment to cosmologists, because they have no idea what they are,” says cosmologist Nick Kaiser of École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
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