While it might sound like we’re living in a parallel universe, scientists from the University of Portsmouth have made a recent claim that our universe is actually completely flat, contrary to what we’ve always been told to believe. And apparently, this new belief is based on very accurate measurements of dark energy. This team of scientists from Portsmouth has managed to improve the ways in which astronomers are capable of measuring the impact of dark energy, which has also led them to believe that the universe may very well be flat, rather than round like a bubble. In turn, they may have solved the largest astronomical debate in the history of all time, and it would be completely iconic.
In the past, scientists would measure dark energy through the tracking of distant supernovae. The researchers at the University of Portsmouth, however, did things slightly differently, this time around, exploring more than a million quasars and galaxies. The data that they were able to gather is believed to provide a much deeper understanding of how dark energy truly pushes the universe outwards, settling this never-ending astronomical debate once and for all. It’s important to note, however, that although these scientists are saying that the universe is in fact, flat, that it’s not like a piece of paper. It’s flat, but not that kind of flat.
Further research is required to truly understand whether or not the universe could really be bent into a torus (a donut shape), which is considered to be flat based on cosmological principles. According to Seshadri Nadathur, a cosmologist part of the team at the University of Portsmouth, the measurements currently being made are highly precise, and data is only going to continue to improve over time to know as much as we possibly can about our universe.