14 DAY TRIAL // One of the two most important forces controlling the fate of our Universe – gravity and dark energy – may be behaving strangely, astronomers say. The experts say that the largest cosmic structures, such as superclusters and galactic walls, should not exist.
Data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) indicate that the number of such structures is a lot higher than theoretically possible. At very large scales, dark energy should defeat gravity, preventing structures from being attracted to each others in such massive volumes.
What this implies is that very few superclusters should form. Yet, SDSS observations have identified dozens upon dozens of such structures, containing billions of galaxies amongst themselves. What this implies is that either gravity or dark energy do not function as we believe them to, Daily Galaxy reports.