GoKawiil
Tech News
Astronomers revisited a gravitational-wave detection that appeared to show an unusually massive black hole merger, one that seemed to defy current models of stellar evolution. New analysis suggests the signal may have been distorted by gravitational lensing, an intervening massive object bending and magnifying the waves, making the black holes appear far larger than they actually are.
Researchers propose that the apparent acceleration of the universe's expansion, long attributed to dark energy, could instead be an illusion caused by uneven distribution of matter across the cosmos. Their model suggests that variations in cosmic density affect how we measure distances and light from distant supernovae, mimicking the signature of accelerated expansion without requiring a mysterious energy field.
Researchers led by Teixeira, building on Khoury and Vafa's string theory work, propose that dark energy and dark matter interact and share a common origin tied to an extra 'dark dimension' far larger than other theorized hidden dimensions. In this framework, massive 'dark gravitons' leaking into this dimension could explain why the universe's measured expansion rate differs by about 9 percent depending on when it's measured, an anomaly known as the Hubble tension.