Confirmation of the theory of the expanding universe

In July 2019, it's time: the space telescope Erosita (stands for: Extended Roentgen Survey with Imaging Telescope Array) was launched aboard the Russian Spektrum-RG satellite. In recent years, the telescope has taken X-ray images of many galaxies.

Scientists from the German EROSETA consortium led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) have now managed to The results of the first X-ray sky survey by the Aeroceta space telescope have been published.

The mission yielded precise measurements of the total amount of matter in the universe and supported prevailing theories about the expansion of space.

The same cosmic model – from the Big Bang to today

“Erosita tells us that the universe has behaved as expected throughout cosmic history,” Vittorio Gherardini, a postdoctoral researcher at MPE responsible for the cosmological study, says in a statement. press release Quoted. “There are no tensions with the CMB – maybe cosmologists can relax a little now.”

Reverse Sciences Gherardini also confirmed this statement. The new results would “make many theorists feel very sad,” who of course “would have liked to discover something new.”

X-ray images made it possible to find about 12,000 “galactic clusters”, which are among the largest structures in the universe. Researchers can draw conclusions about the composition of the universe from the galaxy clusters specifically searched for and found.

The “cosmological parameters” the team measured in galaxy clusters show that “the same cosmological model applies from shortly after the Big Bang until today,” says MPE's Esraa Bulbul.

Dark and visible matter make up 29 percent of the energy density

According to the so-called lambda model of cold dark matter, the universe in its early years consisted of a sea of ​​photons and particles. Observations of galaxy clusters by the Aerosita telescope show that all types of dark and visible matter currently make up 29 percent of the total energy density of the universe. This value agrees with the results of previous calculations with a very high degree of accuracy.

Aeroseta has also been involved in the search for the mass of so-called neutrinos. These are small particles created by the Big Bang.

Due to the fact that neutrinos rarely interact with other particles, measuring their mass is very difficult. But since they occur throughout the universe, their gravity affects the distribution of matter. The values ​​of these measurements are also consistent with the estimates of the AeroSita team.

“It may seem paradoxical, but we have found tight limits on the mass of the lightest known particles due to the abundance of the largest dark matter halos in the universe,” says Gherardini.

Publish the first 2.5 years of research in the next two years

The researchers at Erosita hope they can improve the accuracy of the measurements. Within two years, the remaining data collected in the first two and a half years of the observation period will likely be published.

Aeroceta's results are a precursor to data that other institutions will be able to work with in a few years. Large-scale surveys of the universe will continue in the future – including the European Euclid Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.