Paradoxes, the solution of which can change our view of the Universe

Revolutions in science often occur in the process of researching seemingly intractable paradoxes. Focusing on them and, ultimately, finding a solution is exactly what led us to many important breakthroughs.

It will be curious to list those of the paradoxes that are associated with modern ideas about cosmology. It is possible that their decision will lead to a breakthrough and the development of ideas about the structure of the universe of the next generation.
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Yuri Baryshev from St. Petersburg State University is working on issues of modern cosmology. The result of his work is a list of paradoxes, based on well-known ideas and observations about the origin of the Universe.

Perhaps the most dramatic and, at the same time, the most important paradox for cosmology is associated with one of the greatest achievements of this science - the statement that the Universe is expanding.

And it is based on the following observations.

We know that other galaxies are moving away from us. The proof of this fact is that the light from these galaxies has a red shift , and the greater the distance - the stronger it is.

Astrophysicists interpret this fact as evidence that more distant galaxies are moving away from us with greater speed. Moreover, recent data suggests that the expansion rate is increasing.

What is really interesting is that for such an expansion the appropriate conditions must be created - space and vacuum. But how this happens, we still do not understand. Space creation has not yet been described in cosmology, this is a new phenomenon, the existence of which has not been confirmed by us in the laboratory.

Everything else, in a given volume of the universe can exist only the corresponding amount of energy. If we observe an increase in the size of the Universe, then the total amount of energy corresponding to it should also increase. But if we turn to physics, the Law of Conservation of Energy says: energy cannot appear from nowhere and disappear into nowhere.

The British cosmologist, Ted Harrison, comments on it in the following way: "Summing up, whether we like it or not, it becomes obvious: the energy in the universe is not conserved ."

This problem is well known to space researchers, but if you ask them directly, they will only shift from one foot to the other and silently look at the floor. It is obvious that any theorist who can solve this problem will secure a bright scientific future in cosmology.

The nature of the energy associated with the vacuum is still a mystery. This phenomenon is called differently: either the energy of zero oscillations, or Planck vacuum energy. Quantum physicists have spent enough time trying to calculate it.

The results of their work show that the vacuum energy density is enormous, of the order of 10 ⁹⁴ g / cm ³ . Since energy is equivalent to mass, it must have a gravitational effect on the Universe.

Cosmologists searched for this gravitational effect (cosmological constant) and calculated its value based on their observations. According to calculations, the vacuum energy density (in broad masses, more commonly known as “Dark Energy” ) is about 10 ^-29 g / cm ³ .

The figures obtained by scientists are difficult to combine, since their values ​​differ by 120 orders of magnitude. For whatever reason, this contradiction arises no one can explain, which is extremely embarrassing to all cosmologists.

In cosmology, there is another mystery - the redshift mentioned above. Physicists attribute this phenomenon to the Doppler effect , comparing it with a change in the pitch of a police siren as the car drives past.

The Doppler effect occurs due to the relative movement of objects. But in our case, the cosmological redshift is different in that, according to cosmologists, space itself moves as the universe expands, and the galaxies remain fixed in it.

Therefore, to describe this expansion, a different mathematical apparatus is also used, not least because in ordinary physics relative speed must always be less than the speed of light. But the rate of expansion of the space itself can be anything.

What is interesting is that the nature of the cosmological redshift opens up the possibility of direct measurements in the coming years. The idea of ​​such measurements is that the redshift of very distant objects should increase with distance. For a distant quasar, this change may be about one centimeter per second per year. Such a change can already be observed with the help of the largest telescopes of the next generation.

And finally, we mention another paradox. It originates in one of the assumptions of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that, if one observes the universe with sufficient distance, it must be the same in all directions.

It is clear that the assumption of homogeneity is not applicable at the local level. Our Galaxy is part of the Local Group of galaxies, and that, in turn, is part of an even larger supercluster.

Such a device assumes the fractal structure of the Universe, i.e. The universe consists of clusters, regardless of the point of observation.

The problem is that this contradicts one of the main ideas of cosmology, the Hubble Law , the observation that the redshift of an object is linearly proportional when it is removed from the Earth.

The Hubble Law is deeply integrated into the structure of modern cosmology. At the moment it is the most common theory and states that the expansion of the universe is linear. And all is well if the Universe is homogeneous and, as a result, linear with large scales.

But the results of the observations are contradictory. Astrophysicists measured linearity according to the Hubble's Law at a distance of several hundred megaparsecs. And the presence of clusters on the same scale indicates that the Universe is heterogeneous .

So the arguments in favor of the fact that the linear dependence in the Hubble law is due to the homogeneity of the Universe (or vice versa) do not stand up to criticism. And modern cosmologists again feel embarrassed because of this failure.

Sometimes it is difficult to resist the temptation to assert that the cosmological picture of the world as a whole is almost complete, that the Big Bang model and everything that follows from it correctly describes everything that we see around. No matter how wrong! Cosmologists have only succeeded in temporarily patching holes in their theories. Such a “success” is nothing more than an illusion.

But it should be so. If scientists really begin to think that they are close to a complete and definitive description of reality, then a simple list of paradoxes can do them a tremendous service and return them from heaven to earth.