We may have just found evidence of a cosmic string. This is kind of a fold of the universe

A team of scientists led by Margarita Safonova of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics described their research and doubts Latest articles Published in the Société Royale des Sciences de Liège. The hero of the article is a strange pair of galaxies located several billion light years away from us.

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The easiest way is to assume that we are dealing with gravitational lensing, which occurs when another massive galaxy is between a distant galaxy and an observer on Earth. Its mass bends spacetime and causes radiation traveling near it to be bent toward us. What we see are two images. For the same galaxy. The problem is that lensed images are always very distorted, while in this case we are dealing with images without any distortion. Moreover, intergalactic astronomers were unable to detect any massive object that could act as a lens.

Astronomers: This may be evidence of the existence of a cosmic thread

A theoretical cosmic string is a small one-dimensional ripple or crack in the field of the universe. Such strings would be created at an early stage of the universe’s existence during the intense expansion of the universe. Then it will stay in place. So far, the cosmic string is a purely theoretical topological defect that, on the one hand, is not wider than a proton, but extends the width of the entire universe. Moreover, the thread itself will be very dense and bulky. Its mass is such that it would create the double image of the galaxy SDSSJ110429.61+233150.3 that scientists observed.

Until now, little has been heard about cosmic strings for one simple reason. Well, no one can see the string itself, and its effect on the surrounding environment is in many ways similar to other phenomena, such as gravitational lensing mentioned above.

Safonova and her team have identified several candidate cosmic filaments in the microwave background radiation. But in her article, she focused on the most obvious, regarding the galaxy SDSSJ110429. The spectra of the two galaxies visible in the images were very similar: both galaxies are the same size, located at the same distance from us and have the same shape. Moreover, other galaxies in the field of the CSc-1 series show similar properties.

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By analyzing the image in detail, the scientists concluded that it was best to recreate the image of the CSc-1 pair of galaxies by changing the direction and bending the filament slightly. When the virtual side was tilted relative to the line of sight and curved in the image plane, the researchers were able to recreate the observed angle between the two galaxies in the image.

Are we actually dealing with the first cosmic chain? This cannot be decided yet. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve never come close to discovering convincing evidence that such strings actually exist.