Astronomers Find Anomaly That Defies Understanding of the Universe
A new discovery in space may make us rethink everything we know about the universe.
Scientists at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, have discovered a giant arc—an extremely large crescent structure of galaxies in distant space. Ph.D. candidate Alexia Lopez, who made the discovery, said, “It’s so big that it’s hard to explain with our current theories.”
The Cosmological Principle states that the universe is homogenous and isotropic, meaning the universe looks the same in all orientations. So how does the giant arc challenge our way of thinking about the universe?
Astronomer and Gaia News contributor Marc D’Antonio said, “this giant arc is really interesting because we’ve seen large-scale structures before in the universe, but nothing of this size. The proportion of this is something that’s actually outside our understanding of current cosmology.”
“What’s interesting about that is, this particular arc, it’s about 9.2 billion light-years away from us, and it’s about 3.4 billion light-years in size. Now keep in mind, that’s a good fraction of the size of the known universe, which is somewhere in the order of 91 or 92 billion light-years in diameter.”
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Scientists to Broadcast New Message to ETs Across the Galaxy
Scientists are planning a new message for any potential extraterrestrials in the universe, by sending a cosmic ‘hello’ to any intelligent life in space.
When we make contact with extraterrestrials, how will we communicate with them? What if we sent them a message showing information about Earth, humanity, and our technological capabilities?
That was the idea behind the Arecibo message in 1974, designed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan. The now-famous message was the most powerful broadcast sent into space, from the, now defunct, Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. The binary message consisted of our solar system, strands of DNA, a human figure, and chemicals related to Earth, among other things.
Now, nearly 50 years later an international team of researchers introduced a new message intended for extraterrestrials. The team, led by Jonathan Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, felt it was time to update the Arecibo message since we have come so far technologically since 1974.
The proposed message dubbed “the beacon in the galaxy” will include some similar information as Arecibo, including, “[B]asic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of communication followed by information on the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the Solar System’s time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System, and Earth’s surface.
