Many villages in the universe

Universum are universal

In our Milky Way galaxy alone, scientists estimate that there are about 300,000,000,000 stars.

There are about 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe.

This makes 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

The universe has been dynamically developing for 13,500,000,000 years.

But many scientists believe that intelligent life throughout the universe, as homo sapiens, accidentally originated on this planet 30,000 years ago and through random crossings they turned out - scientists .....

"So, the formulation of the first, or weak Gödel incompleteness theorem: "Any formal system of axioms contains unresolved assumptions." But Gödel did not stop there, formulating and proving the second, or strong Gödel incompleteness theorem: "The logical completeness (or incompleteness) of any system of axioms cannot be proved within the framework of this system.For its proof or refutation, additional axioms (strengthening of the system) are required.

It would be safer to think that Godel's theorems are abstract and do not concern us, but only areas of sublime mathematical logic, but in fact it turned out that they are directly related to the structure of the human brain. The English mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose (born 1931) showed that Gödel's theorems could be used to prove fundamental differences between the human brain and a computer. The point of his reasoning is simple. The computer operates strictly logically and is not able to determine whether statement A is true or false if it goes beyond the scope of axiomatics, and such statements, according to Gödel's theorem, inevitably exist. A person, faced with such a logically unprovable and irrefutable statement A, is always able to determine its truth or falsity - based on experience. At least in this human brain outperforms a computer shackled by pure logic circuits. The human brain is able to understand the full depth of truth contained in Gödel's theorems, but a computer one can never. Therefore, the human brain is anything but a computer."

Gödel's discovery

In 1949, the great mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel discovered an even more complex solution to Einstein's equations. He suggested that the universe rotates as a whole. Like the case of Van Stockum's spinning cylinder, everything is carried away by space-time, viscous like molasses. In Gödel's universe, a person can, in principle, travel between any two points in space or time. You can become a participant in any event that took place in any period of time, regardless of how far it is from

standing. Due to the action of gravity, Gödel's universe tends to collapse. Therefore, the centrifugal force of rotation must balance the gravitational force. In other words, the universe must rotate at a certain speed. The bigger the universe, the

the greater its tendency to collapse, and the faster it must rotate to prevent it.

For example, a universe our size according to Gödel would have to complete one revolution every 70 billion years, and the minimum radius for time travel would be 16 billion light years. However, when traveling in time to the past, you must

move at a speed slightly less than the speed of light.

It was known, that the solutions of Einstein's equations largely depend on the choice of coordinate system. When analyzing them, spherical coordinates are usually used. In this case, these solutions satisfy the requirements of spherical symmetry, which is quite reasonable - after all, both the Universe and its constituent "particles", that is, stars, planets, atoms, have the shape of a ball. Such arguments cannot be denied their beauty.
Godel's universe appeared suddenly different - thin, lanky, like a mathematician himself, reminiscent of a medieval mystic and ascetic. It took the form of a cylinder, and therefore Gödel resorted to the help of cylindrical coordinates, describing the universe.
His universe generally bore little resemblance to previous ideas about it. So, Gödel suggested that not only all objects in it rotate - these stars, planets, atoms - but also the Universe itself.
What happens? The behavior of all elements of the universe in Einstein's theory - in our space-time - is described by four-dimensional lines, a kind of "longitude-latitude" of any physical bodies that are both in space and time. According to Godel, due to the rotation of the universe, these four-dimensional lines - "world lines" - are bent so strongly that they twist into a loop. If we assume that we try to travel along such a closed line, then, in the end, we will meet ... ourselves, returning to our past. This is not fantasy, this is an exact mathematical calculation. Traveling into the distance of past times is possible along "curves closed in time," as Gödel called such lines.
These curves are like bridges over the turbulent waters of time. Would it be easy to cross the turbulent waters of the river, if not for the bridge erected over it? Likewise, there is only one way out of the waters of time, one possibility to bypass them - this line, this "bridge" that has curled up into the past. Stepping on this "Mirabeau bridge" - "the darkness descends midnight beats the days go away and life goes on" (G. Apollinaire) - you can find yourself where ... "night time has struck again, my past is with me again."
Thousands of roads lead us from our today to tomorrow, thousands of possibilities ready to be realized - and only one way back. How to find it? Godel, like God, proclaims the real: "If we, setting off on a journey to spaceship, we fly in a circle, describing a curve of a sufficiently large radius, then we can return to any corner of the past.

And yet she turns around?

In 1999, Time Magazine, joining the general fuss about the entry of mankind into the new millennium, polled experts and compiled a list of the 100 greatest people of the outgoing century. As the most outstanding physicist, this list included, of course, Albert Einstein. And the greatest mathematician of the 20th century was the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), whose famous incompleteness theorem transformed the foundations modern science even more, perhaps, radically than Einstein's general theory of relativity.

It is noteworthy that both of these eminent scientists, in different time forced to leave Europe because of Nazism and the war, found work and shelter in the same place - the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, where their offices were not far from each other. Moreover, despite the almost thirty-year age difference, physics and mathematics have developed close friendships. It is known from Gödel's letters to his mother how highly he valued this friendship. And to make clear the extent of Einstein's respect for his young colleague, it is enough to recall his well-known words that he (being in a very advanced age) goes to the institute every day mainly in order to chat with Gödel on the way back home. This kind of walking conversation between the two scientists was regular and continued until the death of Einstein in 1955.

No one but the scientist friends themselves knows for sure what topics they discussed during these walks. But at least one of the immediate consequences of their close association is very well known. Although the area of ​​the main scientific interests Godel lay very far from the problems of physics, in the late 1940s the mathematician turned his attention to the equations general theory Einstein's relativity and was able to find an exact solution for them. This solution, called the “Gödel metric”, has a very simple, beautiful and, one might say, elegant look (which is especially appreciated in science). But, ironically, it was these circumstances that extremely puzzled scientific world, because a simple and beautiful solution - this is how everything is arranged in nature - with a high probability should be the most correct. However, Gödel's elegant metric describes the universe with rather strange properties. From the point of view of modern science, anyway.

Now it is customary to say that the solution found by a mathematician is, alas, unrealistic and unphysical. Unrealistic, because the Gödel metric describes a stationary (ie, volume-conserving) universe rotating at a constant non-zero speed. While astronomical observations, on the one hand, convincingly testify to the constant expansion of the universe, and on the other hand, they do not provide indisputable evidence in favor of the rotation of the universe. This solution is called non-physical for the reason that Gödel's universe admits the existence of trajectories closed in loops along the time coordinate. In other words, as the discoverer himself strictly showed, here one can return to the past, albeit a very distant one. And this violates the cause-and-effect relationships of phenomena and thus contradicts the fundamental ideas of physical science about the structure of the surrounding world.

Every aspect of the criticism of Gödel's solution deserves careful examination. So, let's say, "non-physical" giant time loops imply an endless sequence of cycles of existence of the universe, where it itself is own cause. And this, in essence, is an idea expressed by thinkers since ancient times and graphically often illustrated by images of the cosmos in the form of an ouroboros - a huge snake that grabbed its own tail. Or, if you look a little differently, vomiting itself out of its own mouth ... However, at the moment, the question of the rotation of the universe is of the greatest interest. Already because, at least, that actually in the fact of rotation there is nothing unphysical. Rather, on the contrary, everywhere - from the microscopic world elementary particles to planets, stars, galaxies and galactic clusters - the objects of nature are in constant rotation. However, the universe itself, according to the views now dominant in science, does not rotate.

True, it cannot be said that this fact is strictly substantiated in theory and convincingly proved by experiments. It's just that in a world without rotation, scientists, one might say, live more comfortably. First, everyone already agreed that according to the theory of relativity, the universe should look the same everywhere, regardless of where the observer is located. And from the idea of ​​the rotation of the universe it follows that the direction along the axis of such rotation turns out to be in a certain sense "special" and different from the others. If, secondly, we talk about experiments and astronomical observations, then here, as is commonly believed, there is no convincing evidence for the rotation of the universe. But, this, however, depending on how you look.

In 1982, a young English astrophysicist, Paul Birch from the University of Manchester, discovered in the highest degree asymmetric distribution for the angles of rotation of the polarization of radiation from one and a half, approximately hundreds of extragalactic radio sources. After analyzing independently obtained data sets from different researchers, Birch showed that they all demonstrate the same pattern - in the northern hemisphere of the celestial sphere, the polarization vector of radio emission is directed mainly in one direction, and in the southern hemisphere in the opposite direction.

In the same work, Birch also made the corresponding conclusion - that the most natural explanation for the observed phenomenon would be the rotation of the universe ... Over the years that have passed since then, no one has been able to convincingly refute this inconvenient result, which contradicts the views generally accepted in cosmology. However, the researcher, who began his journey into big science with such a challenging discovery, unfortunately failed to make a further career in the world of scientists.

A decade and a half after Burch's publication, in the spring of 1997, a very consonant work appeared by Borge Nodland and John Ralston, two researchers from the American universities of Rochester and Kansas. Nodland and Ralston studied the data on the rotation of the polarization plane of the waves of the so-called synchrotron radiation from 160 galaxies and also found a remarkable dependence for the polarization angles. It turned out that the angle of rotation varies depending on the direction in which the observation is made - as if the universe had some kind of special axis.

Namely, it turned out that the magnitude of the rotation of the polarization of waves from the observed galaxy directly depends on the cosine of the angle between the direction to this galaxy and the axis passing through the equatorial constellation Eagle, the planet Earth and the equatorial constellation Sextant. It turned out that the discovered anomaly again seriously undermined important physical concepts about the isotropy of the universe (should be the same for observations in all directions) and the homogeneity of the universe (should be the same in all places). For obvious reasons, the "axis of anisotropy" of the universe, discovered by Nodland and Ralston, took a place in science next to the result of Birch - among amusing, but not worthy of special attention incidents.

However, as more and more accurate observational data are collected in cosmology, the more and more clearly inconvenient anisotropy axes appear in them. Moreover, these axes, as a rule, in some puzzling way strive to pass through the Earth, as if it were a special frame of reference. Thus, among the many mysteries brought by the data of the WMAP satellite, which registers the anisotropy of the background microwave radiation of the universe, a prominent place is occupied by the problem with the nonrandom orientation of low-frequency vibrational modes.

According to the theory, the lower modes, like all the others, must be randomly oriented in space. But instead, the WMAP map shows that their location clearly gravitates toward the equinoxes and toward the direction of travel. solar system. Moreover, the spatial axes of these oscillations lie near the plane of the ecliptic, and two of them are in the plane of the Supergalaxy, which unites our Galaxy, neighboring to it star systems and their collections. It is estimated that the probability of a random coincidence of these directions is less than 1/10000.

In other words, all this looks extremely strange and difficult to explain. Because if we continue to consider the universe motionless, then our solar system and the planet Earth appear as if in the center of all outer space. However, if we turn to the concept of Kurt Gödel, where the entire universe rotates like a giant roulette wheel, the oddities disappear by themselves. For in a universe of this kind, every observer, wherever he is, sees things as if he were at the center of rotation, and the whole universe seemed to revolve around him. Visually, this effect is easier to visualize if the open universe-cylinder of Gödel's original model is transformed into a torus. Then, as the German theorists Istvan Oswat and Engelbert Schücking showed in the early 1960s, there is no single axis in the closed space of the universe-torus, and all elements rotate around each other in the general rotation of the vortex ring.

Void of Bootes

Named for its proximity to the constellation Bootes, this void is also known as the Great Void. It was discovered in 1981 by Robert Kirshner and his colleagues, who were shocked to find a seemingly empty ball in space. After careful analysis, Kirchner and his team were only able to detect 60 galaxies in this region, spanning a whopping 250-300 million light-years.

By all laws, there should be at least 10,000 galaxies in this place. By comparison, the Milky Way has 24 neighbors within 3 million years.

Technically, this void should not exist, since modern theories allow the existence of only much smaller "empty" spaces.

Z->Z^2+C

When studying the topic of fractals, it is necessary to take into account several aspects that Mandelbrot did not voice:

1) Fractals built using mathematics and computer modeling are artificial fractals. They have no meaning or content.

2) Fractals are a form. That is, fractals occur at the boundary of media. The medium itself is not a fractal.

3) Fractals are the place where ideas come into contact with matter. When constructing fractals of living beings, such qualities of life as instincts, feelings, will, etc. are not taken into account. That is why ideal fractals do not exist in living nature, each living being has certain deviations from ideal forms, asymmetry.

One of the main questions that do not come out of human consciousness has always been and is the question: “how did the Universe appear?”. Of course, a clear answer to this question no, and it is unlikely to be obtained in the near future, however, science is working in this direction and forming a certain theoretical model of the origin of our Universe. First of all, we should consider the main properties of the Universe, which should be described within the framework of the cosmological model:

• The model must take into account the observed distances between objects, as well as the speed and direction of their movement. Such calculations are based on the Hubble law: cz =H0D, where z is the redshift of the object, D- distance to this object, c is the speed of light.
• The age of the Universe in the model must exceed the age of the oldest objects in the world.
• The model must take into account the initial abundance of elements.
• The model must take into account the observable .
• The model must take into account the observed relict background.

Let us briefly consider the generally accepted theory of the origin and early evolution of the Universe, which is supported by the majority of scientists. Today, the Big Bang theory refers to the combination of the hot universe model with the Big Bang. And although these concepts first existed independently of each other, as a result of their combination, it was possible to explain the initial chemical composition Universe, as well as the presence of cosmic microwave background radiation.

According to this theory, the Universe arose about 13.77 billion years ago from some dense heated object - which is difficult to describe within the framework of modern physics. Problem cosmological singularity, among other things, in the fact that when describing it, most physical quantities, like density and temperature tend to infinity. At the same time, it is known that at infinite density (the measure of chaos) should tend to zero, which is in no way compatible with infinite temperature.

• • The first 10 -43 seconds after the Big Bang is called the stage of quantum chaos. The nature of the universe at this stage of existence cannot be described within the framework of physics known to us. There is a disintegration of a continuous single space-time into quanta.

• The Planck moment is the moment of the end of quantum chaos, which falls on 10 -43 seconds. At this moment, the parameters of the Universe were equal, like the Planck temperature (about 10 32 K). At the time of the Planck era, all four fundamental interactions (weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravitational) were combined into a single interaction. It is not possible to consider the Planck moment as a certain long period, since modern physics does not work with parameters less than the Planck ones.
• Stage. The next stage in the history of the universe was the inflationary stage. At the first moment of inflation, the gravitational interaction separated from a single supersymmetric field (previously including the fields of fundamental interactions). During this period, the matter has a negative pressure, which causes an exponential increase in the kinetic energy of the Universe. Simply put, during this period, the Universe began to swell very quickly, and towards the end, the energy of physical fields turns into the energy of ordinary particles. At the end of this stage, the temperature of the substance and radiation increases significantly. Along with the end of the inflation stage, a strong interaction also emerges. Also at this moment arises.
• Stage of radiation dominance. The next stage in the development of the Universe, which includes several stages. At this stage, the temperature of the Universe begins to decrease, quarks are formed, then hadrons and leptons. In the era of nucleosynthesis, the formation of initial chemical elements, helium is synthesized. However, radiation still dominates matter.
• The era of the dominance of matter. After 10,000 years, the energy of matter gradually exceeds the energy of radiation and their separation occurs. The substance begins to dominate over the radiation, a relict background appears. Also, the separation of matter with radiation significantly increased the initial inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter, as a result of which galaxies and supergalaxies began to form. Laws of the Universe came to the form in which we observe them today.

The above picture is composed of several fundamental theories and gives general view about the formation of the universe early stages her existence.

Where did the universe come from?

If the universe originated from a cosmological singularity, then where did the singularity come from? It is not yet possible to give an exact answer to this question. Let's consider some cosmological models that affect the "birth of the Universe".

Cyclic models

These models are based on the assertion that the Universe has always existed and over time its state only changes, moving from expansion to contraction and vice versa.

• Steinhardt-Turok model. This model is based on string theory (M-theory), as it uses such an object as a "brane". According to this model, the visible Universe is located inside a 3-brane, which periodically, every few trillion years, collides with another 3-brane, which causes a kind of Big Bang. Further, our 3-brane begins to move away from the other and expand. At some point, the share of dark energy takes precedence and the rate of expansion of the 3-brane increases. The colossal expansion scatters matter and radiation to such an extent that the world becomes almost homogeneous and empty. Eventually the 3-branes collide again, causing ours to return to the initial phase of its cycle, re-creating our "Universe".

• The theory of Loris Baum and Paul Frampton also states that the universe is cyclical. According to their theory, after the Big Bang, the latter will expand due to dark energy until it approaches the moment of “disintegration” of space-time itself - the Big Rip. As you know, in a "closed system, entropy does not decrease" (the second law of thermodynamics). It follows from this statement that the Universe cannot return to its original state, since during such a process the entropy must decrease. However, this problem is solved within the framework of this theory. According to the theory of Baum and Frampton, in a moment before the Big Rip, the Universe breaks up into many "rags", each of which has a rather small value of entropy. Experiencing a number of phase transitions, these "patches" of the former Universe give rise to matter and develop similarly to the original Universe. These new worlds do not interact with each other, as they fly apart at a speed greater than the speed of light. Thus, scientists also avoided the cosmological singularity, which begins the birth of the Universe according to most cosmological theories. That is, at the moment of the end of its cycle, the Universe breaks up into many other non-interacting worlds, which will become new universes.
• Conformal cyclic cosmology – the cyclic model of Roger Penrose and Vahagn Gurzadyan. According to this model, the Universe is able to move into a new cycle without violating the second law of thermodynamics. This theory is based on the assumption that black holes destroy the absorbed information, which in some way "legitimately" lowers the entropy of the universe. Then each such cycle of existence of the Universe begins with the likeness of the Big Bang and ends with a singularity.

Other Models for the Origin of the Universe

Among other hypotheses explaining the appearance of the visible Universe, the following two are most popular:

• The chaotic theory of inflation is the theory of Andrey Linde. According to this theory, there is some scalar field, which is non-uniform throughout its volume. That is, in different regions of the universe, the scalar field has a different meaning. Then, in areas where the field is weak, nothing happens, while areas with a strong field begin to expand (inflation) due to its energy, thus forming new universes. Such a scenario implies the existence of many worlds that did not arise simultaneously and have their own set of elementary particles, and, consequently, the laws of nature.
• Lee Smolin's theory suggests that the Big Bang is not the beginning of the existence of the Universe, but is only a phase transition between its two states. Since before the Big Bang the Universe existed in the form of a cosmological singularity, close in nature to the singularity of a black hole, Smolin suggests that the Universe could have arisen from a black hole.

Results

Despite the fact that cyclic and other models answer a number of questions that the Big Bang theory cannot answer, including the problem of the cosmological singularity. Yet, together with the inflationary theory, the Big Bang more fully explains the origin of the Universe, and also converges with many observations.

Today, researchers continue to intensively study possible scenarios for the origin of the Universe, however, to give an irrefutable answer to the question “How did the Universe appear?” — is unlikely to happen in the near future. There are two reasons for this: direct proof of cosmological theories is practically impossible, only indirect; even theoretically there is no way to get accurate information about the world before the Big Bang. For these two reasons, scientists can only put forward hypotheses and build cosmological models that will most accurately describe the nature of the Universe we observe.

A group of scientists from the University of Michigan (USA), led by Michael Longo, exploring the direction of rotation of 15,872 spiral galaxies, came to the conclusion that our Universe can rotate around its axis from the moment of birth, like a top. In addition, American studies actually refute the hypothesis that the Universe is isotropic and symmetrical.

The research was carried out as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) project. Initially, scientists tried to find evidence that the universe has the properties of mirror symmetry. In this case, they reasoned, the number of galaxies that rotate clockwise and those that "twist" in the opposite direction would be the same.

However, it turned out that in the direction of the north pole of the Milky Way among spiral galaxies, counterclockwise rotation predominates, that is, they are oriented to the right. This trend is visible even at a distance of more than 600 million light years.

Of course, all this seems very conditional: after all, if the observer is on the other side, then it will seem to him that the galaxy is moving in the opposite direction. But, nevertheless, the concept of the direction of rotation is quite applicable to the visible projections of galaxies onto the celestial sphere.

“The symmetry breaking is small, only about seven percent, but the probability that this is such a cosmic accident is somewhere around one in a million,” commented Michael Longo, leader of the research team. “The results obtained by us are very important, since they seem to contradict almost universal the notion that if you take a large enough scale, then the universe will be isotropic, that is, it will not have a pronounced direction.

Experts say that a symmetrical and isotropic universe must have arisen from a spherically symmetrical explosion. Such an explosion was supposed to resemble a basketball in shape. However, if at birth the Universe rotated around its axis in a certain direction, then the galaxies would have retained this direction of rotation. But, since they revolve in different directions, therefore, the Big Bang had a versatile direction. Nevertheless, most likely, the Universe still continues to rotate. "The universe may well be spinning now. Our result suggests that it is," Longo said.

By the way, a few years ago the American space probe, who measured the temperature of radiation in different parts of galaxies, discovered in space a mysterious linear region that permeates the Universe through and through. It turned out that it is this line that is the "ridge" around which the spatial model of the universe is formed. This discovery has made significant adjustments to the ideas that existed until recently about the evolution of the Universe.

For example, according to the theory of relativity, after the Big Bang, the Universe developed chaotically. However, measurements of the temperature of the relic radiation indicate that a certain systematic order is visible in its structure. In this case, the entire structure of the universe is formed around the region of linear radiation, the so-called "axis of evil", as the researchers dubbed it.

Previously, Michael Longo already assumed a "right-handed" orientation of the universe. But then his calculations caused sharp criticism from colleagues. In particular, many have pointed out that people, when analyzing any image, unconsciously give priority to the right side, since most of us are right-handed.

However, using special probabilistic methods, Longo managed to correct the errors and obtain results similar to the previous ones. True, an intelligible answer to the question why there are more "right" galaxies has not yet been obtained.

However, the principle of asymmetry is typical for most objects in the Universe. If you look closely, even the human body is not symmetrical: there are always more or less noticeable differences between its right and left sides, not to mention the location internal organs: on the left - the heart, on the right - the liver, and so on. It can be assumed that the same principle is observed in other spheres of the universe.

Left turn

More recently, it was customary to assume that the Universe is homogeneous in all directions. Wherever you look, it looks about the same. And energy and matter are more or less evenly distributed in space. In the 90s of the last century, it became clear that the Universe is expanding, and with acceleration.

Now there is reason to believe that the Universe, most likely, also rotates around its axis. At least the data that testify to such an amazing phenomenon was obtained by physicist Michael Longo from the University of Michigan.

As part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Michigan studied images of more than 15 thousand spiral galaxies, determining which way they are twisted - clockwise or counterclockwise, right or left. The researchers were looking for mirror symmetry in the universe, assuming that there should be equal numbers of right and left galaxies. It turned out that the left ones - those that rotate counterclockwise - are much more.

Longo's group looked at about 1.2 billion light years - the anomaly, that is, the asymmetry, persisted.

Followers of Longo University of Technology Lawrence Technological University, with the help of a special computer program, has already examined 250,000 spiral galaxies, glancing as far as 3.4 billion light-years. And they also found more left galaxies than right ones.

The symmetry breaking is small, only about seven percent, but the probability that this is such a cosmic accident is somewhere around one millionth, Michael Longo said. - Our results contradict the almost universal idea that the Universe on a sufficiently large scale is homogeneous and symmetrical.

Scientists believe that the Universe would have been symmetrical and homogeneous - isotropic, in scientific terms, if it had arisen from a spherically symmetrical Big Bang. And if it is not like that, then something broke the symmetry during the Origin. Most likely, some initial rotation - counterclockwise, which accompanied the Big Bang. Spiral galaxies have kept it.

The universe may well be spinning now, says Longo. “Our result suggests that this is likely the case.

Where exactly is the axis of the universe? Where does it end up? What is the universe revolving about? And in what environment? Physicists and astronomers find it difficult to answer these questions.

According to some data, the celestial axis is tilted 25 degrees to the left of the direction by North Pole of the Milky Way, according to others it is tilted 60 degrees to the right.

The scientists plan to examine another 10 billion galaxies, the images of which will be obtained using the so-called Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, equipped with three mirrors (8, 3 and 5 meters in diameter) and a 3200-gigapixel camera (200 thousand photos per year). His work will begin in 2020 in Chile. It seems that before the axis can not be dealt with.

And our world suddenly began to slow down

According to the results of studies published recently in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement, the solar system is moving more and more slowly. Over the past 15 years, its speed in interstellar space has decreased by more than 10 percent - from 26.3 kilometers per second to 22.8. Such conclusions were reached by scientists of a large international team, comparing data obtained from satellites.

The direction of movement has also changed. In 1993, the instruments installed on the Ulysses apparatus showed that we were flying through the Universe from a point with ecliptic coordinates of 75.2 degrees north latitude and 5.2 degrees west longitude. Now the "starting point" has shifted to 79.2 degrees north latitude at the same longitude. Such data was transmitted in 2010 by the IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) satellite, launched in 2008.

What is the reason for the phenomenon, scientists do not know. And they don't understand if it's good.

- What is the reason for such a slowdown in the movement of the Sun in the interstellar medium, remains to be understood, - said Vladislav Izmodenov, head of the laboratory of the Institute space research Russian Academy Sciences (RAS) involved in data analysis with IBEX. - Several scientific groups are working on this now, including ours.

The solar system is located in one of the arms of the Milky Way - a spiral galaxy. Maybe its rotation slowed down relative to the galactic center? Or did we find ourselves in a region with some other interstellar medium? And the slowdown is related to this? It is not clear... As well as there is no answer yet to the question of whether the decrease in the speed and change in the direction of the Solar System's motion will affect terrestrial processes. For example, the climate.

AND AT THIS TIME

Milky Way twin found

The Hubble Space Telescope has transmitted to Earth a photo of the galaxy NGC 1073, located in the constellation Cetus. Scientists assure that it is an exact copy of ours. That is the Milky Way. Same spiral. By observing the twin from the side, astronomers hope to better understand the processes taking place in the original. Maybe they will deal with the phenomenon of slowdown.
In a galaxy so similar to ours, someone must be living. But it's unlikely to be seen. NGC 1073 is about 55 million light-years from us.

AUTHORITIVE OPINION

Astrophysicist Martin RIS:“We will never understand how the universe works”

In the UK, the Royal Society of London is essentially the national academy of sciences. So its ex-president, astrophysicist Martin Rees, part-time astronomer royal, doubted intellectual abilities human civilization. He has no illusions about the prospect of answering questions about the formation of the universe. Like, we don’t understand this, as well as the laws of the universe ... And hypotheses, for example, about big bang, which allegedly gave rise to the world around us, or that many others can exist in parallel with our Universe, will remain unproven assumptions.

Undoubtedly, there are explanations for everything, - says Lord Rhys, - but there are no such geniuses who could understand them. The human mind is limited. And he has reached his limit.
According to the astrophysicist, we are as far from understanding the microstructure of the vacuum as the fish in the aquarium, which are completely unaware of how the environment in which they live works.

I, for one, have reason to suspect that space has a cellular structure, Lord Rhys continues. - And each of its cells is trillions of trillions of times smaller than an atom. But we cannot prove or disprove this or understand how such a construction works.

The task is too difficult, prohibitive for human mind. Like Einstein's theory of relativity for a monkey.

As a result, the lord concludes: they say, I believe that the Unified Theory that explains the structure of the universe exists in principle. But to create it, no human mind is enough. Moreover, all applicants for such authorship will certainly be mistaken.

MOSCOW, August 29 - RIA Novosti. At the center of the Milky Way, there is a giant "pit" filled with hot gas that arose about 6 million years ago when the black hole at the center of our Galaxy was constantly "chewing" and "spitting out" huge masses of matter, according to a paper accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal.

“We played hide and seek in space, trying to figure out where at least half of the mass of visible matter in the Milky Way disappeared. To do this, we turned to archive data collected by the XMM-Newton telescope and realized that this mass was not hidden anywhere and what it is hot gas that permeates almost the entire galaxy. This "fog" absorbs X-rays, "says Fabrizio Nicastro (Fabrizio Nicastro) from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge (USA).

As scientists explain, today most astronomers believe that supermassive black holes live in the center of all galaxies - objects weighing millions and billions of Suns, continuously capturing and absorbing matter, some of which is "chewed" by a black hole and ejected in the form of jets - thin plasma beams, accelerated to near-light speeds.

In the Milky Way and in a number of other galaxies, this black hole is in "hibernation" and has no jets. Scientists have been trying for quite a long time to understand when she "fell asleep" and how active she was in the past, and how this activity influenced the life of stars in the center of the Galaxy and on its outskirts.

Nicastro and his colleagues unexpectedly found the answer to this question, trying to solve another old cosmic riddle - the question of where the "missing" matter of the Galaxy has gone. The fact is that astronomers have been trying for several decades to understand why the mass of visible matter - stars, planets, dust, clouds of gas and other structures - is about 2.5-5 times less than calculations based on the speed of stars around the center predict. Milky Way.

The Fermi telescope has discovered giant bubbles above the center of the galaxyThe "bubbles" stretch up and down almost half of the visible sky - from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Crane, 50 degrees north and south, are about 40 degrees wide and millions of years old.

Relatively recently, observations of other galaxies, carried out using the Chandra X-ray observatory and the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, showed that this "missing mass" may be hiding outside the galaxy in the form of "ears" - giant clouds of hot gas above and below the Milky A path that is not visible in any other range of radiation, except for x-rays and gamma rays.

Nicastro's team tested whether this was indeed the case using data collected by the European X-ray telescope XMM-Newton. Focusing on the lines of oxygen in the X-ray spectrum of the interstellar medium, "giving out" the presence of hot gas, the authors of the article calculated its mass and density in different parts of the galaxy.

It turned out that at the center of the Milky Way there is a giant "bubble" of rarefied hot gas, stretching for a distance of about 20,000 light-years from its center. The masses of this gas and other accumulations of hot matter above and below the galaxy, according to astronomers, are just enough to cover the difference between observations and calculations.

Scientists have revealed the secret of the poor appetite of black holes in the centers of galaxiesAstrophysicists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst traced the sources x-ray radiation in the vicinity of the black hole Sgr A* at the center of the Milky Way.

Its "parent" appears to have been the supermassive black hole Sgr A* at the center of our Galaxy - if it was active in the past, it ejected huge masses of hot gas moving at about a thousand kilometers per second. These ejections "cleared" those parts of the Milky Way through which they flew from any serious accumulations of cold and more noticeable matter for us.

This bubble, as shown by scientists' calculations and observations of young stars in the vicinity of the center of the Galaxy, formed about 6 million years ago, when a black hole "ate" all its reserves of matter and went into "hibernation" after 8 million years of "gluttony". Similarly, according to astrophysicists, the work of distant quasars, active supermassive blacks in distant galaxies, may stop working.