Galaxies
According to theory, all structures in the universe can be traced back to the CMB radiation — the so-called 'fireball of the Big Bang' that scientists observe filling the. During the first 300,000 years of cosmic history, the universe was a sea of dense plasma — that is, atomic nuclei and free electrons. Waves crashed through this plasma, with matter bunching up at the peaks and becoming more sparse in the troughs. Scientists call these waves baryonic acoustic oscillations, or BAOs.
Exotic Physics and the Big Ring
One possibility is that the structures are hinting at exotic forms of currently known physics, or perhaps even new physics. For example, the Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Oxford, has suggested a model called to describe a cyclical universe. Per this model, evidence for gravitational waves from previous eons of the universe could manifest as giant ring-shaped structures in the CMB.
Penrose's model has not proven popular among cosmologists, but could the Big Ring and Giant Arc give it a worthy shot?
Unanswered Questions about Galaxies
Are gaps in the Andromeda galaxy filled with dark matter? This NASA telescope could find out.
Feel free to inform my unedufied ignorance.
Early in the Universe things were much more compact/dense. Mass didn’t just magically appear when atomic nuclei distilled, did it? If mass existed prior to distilled matter, it seems like gravity and possibly black holes might have readily formed when everything was so much more compact, even before identifiable...
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