Quantum Fluctuations Keeps the Universe Swell

Unsolved Mysteries in Science – Universe Expanding

One of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science is that our universe seems to be expanding and how and why this expansion has been quickening is not known. Academics this month recommended that it was owing to every point in space oscillating between expansion and contraction and instead of these changes cancelling each other out, there is a small net effect resulting in the universe to gradually expand normally.

A PhD student at the University of British Columbia, Canada, Qingdi Wang leading a team looking into these tiny fluctuations stated that space-time was not as static as it appeared and is continuously moving. This tends to take place at very tiny scales, billions and billions times smaller than even an electron.

 Physicists estimate that the expansion of the universe is due to the dark energy pushing matter away and though we are not aware of precisely what dark energy tends to be, there is something known as vacuum energy. It is said to be continuously altered by the fluctuation of virtual particles bursting in and out of way of life. It is said to be background energy created in the universe and is connected to uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics of Heisenberg.

Every Point in Space – Yo-Yoing – Expansion/Contraction

If the theory of quantum mechanics is applied to this vacuum energy concept it turns out to have additional energy than the total energy of all the particles in actuality. This would result in explosion of the place. Wang and Co had calculatedthat vacuum energy tends to be present without blowing apart the universe and have done so in a manner which puts the idea forward that every point in space is yo-yoing between expansion and contraction with a small increase in the direction of expansion.

Their effort had been published in Physical Review D recently. Co-author of their paper and a professor of physics and astronomy at the University, William Unruhhad compared the effects to waves rippling through an ocean.

The vacuum energy procedure is said to be alike the waves seen on the ocean. Unruh stated that they are not affected by the intense dance of the single atoms which makes up the water where the waves tend to ride. The fluctuations occur at the Planck scale at 10-33 cm which is complex to prove. However the researchers expect that it may indirectly be confirmed in the future.

Accelerated Expansion – Recognized Observation

Wang had explained to the Reg that accelerated expansion was already a recognized observation of the universe with tons of experimental consequences and their theory had explained this occurrence successfully. They would be generalizing the theory to be capable of clarifying the evolution of the universe in details, predict some latest patterns that could be examined in the near future in the interplanetary microwave background radiation.

Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Reiss, Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist had learned that the universe had been increasing at a fast rate in 1998. They found that the redshift for observed supernovae had been bigger than speculated. It recommended that the blowing up of stars had been moving at a quicker pace than believed earlier and the expansion of the universe had to be hurrying.