A new study suggests that our universe might not be isotropic like we thought, but instead it could actually be anisotropic—meaning we might live in a lopsided universe.
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In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble noticed that almost all galaxies had a red shift to their color, and the farther away they were, the redder they appeared. He concluded that the waves of light from the galaxies had been stretched as they traveled to us, meaning space itself was expanding in all directions. This observation shaped our image of the universe... up until now.

Some researchers think that shape might be a bit more lopsided than we originally thought as new research provides possible evidence for anisotropy.

Astronomers used x-ray emissions from galaxy clusters and concluded that the universe might not be as isotropic as we thought. The researchers looked at data from almost 850 galaxy clusters. Using their X-ray emissions, the astronomers estimated each cluster’s temperature, and thus its luminosity. They then cross-checked the numbers using another method that relies on the rate we assume the universe is uniformly expanding.

And when they compared the two values, they found two areas of the night sky where the numbers didn’t match up.

Find out more about these new discoveries and what they could mean for our future understanding of our potentially lopsided universe in this Elements.

#universe #xray #isotropic #anisotropic #space #observation #science #seeker #elements

Read More:

Do We Live in a Lopsided Universe?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
"If your life sometimes seems directionless, you might legitimately blame the universe. According to the key tenets of modern physics, the cosmos is 'isotropic' at multi-billion-light-year scales—meaning it should have the same look and behavior in every direction. Ever since the big bang nearly 14 billion years ago, the universe ought to have expanded identically everywhere. And that expectation matches what astronomers see when they observe the smooth uniformity of the big bang’s all-sky afterglow: the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Now, however, an x-ray survey of distances to galaxy clusters across the heavens suggests some are significantly closer or farther away than isotropy would predict."

Universe is Anisotropic on Large Scales, New Study Suggests
http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/ani...
"'One of the pillars of cosmology is that the Universe is isotropic, meaning the same in all directions. Our work shows there may be cracks in that pillar,' said Dr. Konstantinos Migkas, an astronomer at the University of Bonn."

Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the LX–T scaling relation
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/ful...
"This result demonstrates that X-ray studies that assume perfect isotropy in the properties of galaxy clusters and their scaling relations can produce strongly biased results whether the underlying reason is cosmological or related to X-rays. The identification of the exact nature of these anisotropies is therefore crucial for any statistical cluster physics or cosmology study."
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