Universe: Why does it exist and why are we in it?
What lies beyond the observable Universe is a complete mystery, but one study suggests “some structure” is there and pulling matter towards it. The prospect of such a structure has left scientists completely flummoxed. The observable Universe is the part of the cosmos which experts are able to see, an area with a diameter of approximately 93 billion light-years.
In other words, it is the point in space which light has reached since the Big Bang.
However, the Universe is constantly expanding, but experts are unsure as to what it is expanding into.
The prospect of absolute nothingness is unfathomable for the human brain, which has led researchers to try and figure out where or what the cosmos is ballooning into.
However, the discovery of something known as Dark Flow has led some scientists to believe a structure of some form could be pulling the Universe in all directions, which would also explain the ever-constant expansion of the cosmos.
Universe mystery: Strange ‘structure’ could lie beyond known universe - NASA shock claim
By studying a series of galaxy clusters, NASA experts were shocked to see that hundreds of them were heading in the same direction.
To the space agency, this would suggest something with an unimaginable energy and immense gravitational pull is pulling galaxies towards it.
NASA said on its website: “The dark flow is controversial because the distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for it.
“Its existence suggests that some structure beyond the visible universe -- outside our ‘horizon’ -- is pulling on matter in our vicinity.”
The space agency states that the hypothetical structures beyond the edge of the observable Universe could be anything.
The most likely concept would energy on a scale which cannot be imagined, or gravitational warping.
What this might suggest is that our Universe is part of a multiverse – a never ending cluster of separate universes.
The Resonance Science Foundation said: “Dark Flow may be the result of residual galactic flow following the inflationary Big Bang towards a region of the multiverse with higher mass than average, or as physicist Nassim Haramein has suggested, a torus geometry of the universe in which it is rotating and has directional toroidal flow.”
The multiverse theory has been gaining traction for decades.
Experts also believed they had found the first solid evidence of this long-standing theory after finding a cold spot in the deep universe.
The cold spot was first discovered in 2015 and is a 1.8 billion light-year wide area where there are an estimated 10,000 galaxies ‘missing’.
The mysterious area contains 20 percent less matter than it should, according to the Standard Model, which left scientists baffled.
Professor Tom Shanks in Durham University’s Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy said: “One explanation for the Cold Spot is that it might be the remnant signal of the collision of our Universe and one of the trillions of others.
“If further, more detailed, analysis proves this to be the case then the Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse – and billions of other universes may exist like our own.”