SPACE
Our universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate, a phenomenon that all theories of cosmology agree upon, but none can fully explain. Now, a new theoretical study offers an intriguing solution: perhaps our universe is expanding because it keeps colliding with and absorbing ‘baby’ parallel universes. Studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the afterglow of the Big Bang – have revealed that our universe is experiencing accelerated expansion. For this observation to fit alongside the main theory of cosmic evolution, called the Standard Cosmological Model, physicists assume that the universe is filled with an enigmatic substance, dubbed dark energy, that drives this expansion. But this elusive form of energy does not manifest itself in any other way, leading many astrophysicists to question its existence and explore the possibility of an alternative cause for the universe’s expansion.
In the recent study, scientists proposed the idea that the expansion of the universe may instead be driven by constantly merging with other universes. “The main finding of our work is that the accelerated expansion of our universe, caused by the mysterious dark energy, might have a simple intuitive explanation, the merging with so-called baby universes, and that a model for this might fit the data better than the Standard Cosmological Model,” said Jan Ambjørn, a physicist at the University of Copenhagen.
While the idea of multiple universes interacting with ours isn’t new, this study develops a mathematical model to explore the hypothetical impact of this on the evolution of our universe. The researchers’ calculations showed that merging with other universes should increase the volume of our universe, which could be perceived by our instruments as an expansion of the universe. The scientists also computed the rate of expansion of the universe using their theory, and their calculations more closely fit with observations of the universe than the traditional Standard Cosmological Model.
