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New research based on observations from the James Webb Telescope suggests that the universe may be contained within a black hole, challenging traditional concepts of cosmology
More than a century ago, Karl Schwarzschild developed equations that mathematically described black holes. His work paved the way for black hole cosmology, known as Schwarzschild cosmology.
Decades later, in the 1970s, scientists Raj Kumar Pathria and I. J. Good advanced this idea. They suggested that the Schwarzschild radius, known today as the event horizon, could be the boundary of our universe.
In other words, they proposed that we live in a black hole embedded in a larger universe. Now, a new study, based on data from the James Webb Telescope, suggests that this theory may be correct.
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A favorite direction
Scientists generally assume that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic. Homogeneity means that its properties are uniform at any point, while isotropy indicates that it looks the same in all directions.
However, a study analyzing 263 galaxies observed by the JADES (James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) project found something unexpected.
If the universe were isotropic, galaxies should rotate in a balanced way: half clockwise and half counterclockwise.
But the researchers found that the rotation of the galaxies was not balanced. About a third of them rotated counterclockwise, while more than two-thirds rotated clockwise.
"The analysis of the galaxies was done by quantitatively analyzing their shapes, but the difference is so obvious that anyone looking at the image can see it. There is no need for special skills or knowledge to see that the numbers are different. With the power of the James Webb Space Telescope, anyone can see it.“, said Lior Shamir, author of the study and professor at Kansas State University.
This asymmetry suggests that the universe may have a preferred direction of rotation. But what could explain this?
Two possibilities
According to the researchers, the discrepancy in the rotation of galaxies could indicate that the universe was born spinning. This idea is in line with black hole cosmology, which suggests that the entire universe may be contained within a larger black hole.
"One explanation is that the universe was born spinning. This explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole. But if the universe really was born spinning, it means that existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete.“, said Shamir.
Another possibility involves the Doppler effect. This phenomenon occurs when the light or sound from an object changes frequency due to its motion relative to the observer. In the astronomical context, the Earth rotates around the center of the Milky Way, moving in a specific direction.
If a galaxy rotates in the opposite direction to Earth's motion, the light it emits may appear brighter and therefore be more easily detected by telescopes. This effect may be influencing the observed proportion of galaxies that rotate in a particular direction.
If this explanation is correct, distance measurements in the deep universe would need to be recalibrated. This could impact other cosmological questions, such as the different expansion rates of the universe and the ages of certain galaxies.
"If this is indeed the case, we will need to recalibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe. Recalibrating distance measurements could also explain several other unresolved questions in cosmology, such as differences in the expansion rates of the universe and large galaxies that, according to existing distance measurements, are expected to be older than the universe itself.“, concluded Shamir.
With information Interesting Engineering.
