Standard Model

They hope to be surer of that fact after a couple of years more data. From ScienceDaily: It all started with the measurements of the Planck satellite, which was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) to measure the cosmic background radiation. This radiation is, to some extent, an afterglow of the big bang. It conveys crucial information on the matter distribution in the early universe; showing the distribution as it was only 380.000 years after the big bang. According to the Planck measurements, this initial distribution was such that, over cosmic time, more galaxy clusters should have formed than we observe today. “We have measured with an X-ray satellite the number of galaxy clusters at different distances from ourselves,” Read More ›

Better known as Big Bang cosmology, it is not very popular in some quarters: Developed in the 1960s and ’70s, the standard model has some sizable holes: It can’t explain dark matter — an ethereal substance so far detected only by its gravitational effects — or dark energy, a mysterious oomph that causes the cosmos to expand at an increasing rate. The theory also can’t explain why the universe is made mostly of matter, while antimatter is rare (SN: 9/2/17, p. 15). So physicists are on a quest to revamp particle physics by probing the standard model’s weak points. Major facilities like the Large Hadron Collider — the gargantuan accelerator located at CERN near Geneva — haven’t yet found where Read More ›