{"id":166768,"date":"2023-07-02T09:22:24","date_gmt":"2023-07-02T14:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/cosmological-models-are-built-on-a-simple-century-old-idea-but-new-observations-demand-a-radical-rethink"},"modified":"2023-07-02T09:22:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T14:22:24","slug":"cosmological-models-are-built-on-a-simple-century-old-idea-but-new-observations-demand-a-radical-rethink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/cosmological-models-are-built-on-a-simple-century-old-idea-but-new-observations-demand-a-radical-rethink","title":{"rendered":"Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea, but new observations demand a radical rethink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cosmological-models-are-built-on-a-simple-century-old-idea-but-new-observations-demand-a-radical-rethink3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our ideas about the universe are based on a century-old simplification known as the cosmological principle. It suggests that when averaged on large scales, the Cosmos is homogeneous and matter is distributed evenly throughout.<\/p>\n<p>This allows a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Friedmann%E2%80%93Lema%C3%AEtre%E2%80%93Robertson%E2%80%93Walker_metric\">mathematical description of space-time<\/a> that simplifies the application of Einstein\u2019s general theory of relativity to the universe as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>Our <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cosmological+models\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cosmological models<\/a> are based on this assumption. But as new telescopes, both on Earth and in space, deliver ever more precise images, and astronomers discover massive objects such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20230302-the-giant-arcs-that-may-dwarf-everything-in-the-cosmos\">giant arc of quasars<\/a>, this foundation is increasingly challenged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our ideas about the universe are based on a century-old simplification known as the cosmological principle. It suggests that when averaged on large scales, the Cosmos is homogeneous and matter is distributed evenly throughout. This allows a mathematical description of space-time that simplifies the application of Einstein\u2019s general theory of relativity to the universe as [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}