Evidence is building of of parity violation in the large-scale structure of the universe. The Universe may not be symmetric after all. In other words, the idea that the universe looks the same in all directions at large scales may not be correct.
Scientists have built big tetrahedrons using distant galaxies as the nodes and discovered a bias in the “handedness” of these structures. Current theory says there should be roughly equal numbers of “right handed” tetrahedrons as “left handed” ones, but it looks like this is not the case.
Why does this matter?
Parity violation in the large-scale structure of the universe indicates the presence of new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics. It suggests the existence of additional fundamental forces (beyond the Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic and Gravitational forces) or interactions that played a role during the inflationary epoch.
Investigating and understanding these new forces could lead to the development of more comprehensive theories that unify gravity with the other fundamental forces. It may also, for example, be able to explain why there is so much more matter than anti-matter in the universe.
If independently confirmed, this discovery will fundamentally challenge many of the assumptions of our current model of how the universe came to exist as it is today.
Incredible Evidence That Universe Is Not Symmetric After All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d15b7udf_ac
Measurement of parity-odd modes in the large-scale 4-point correlation function of Sloan Digital Sky Survey Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey twelfth data release CMASS and LOWZ galaxies
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/522/4/5701/7169316?login=false
Jiamin Hou, Zachary Slepian, Robert N Cahn
Published: 22 May 2023
ABSTRACT
A tetrahedron is the simplest shape that cannot be rotated into its mirror image in three-dimension (3D). The 4-point correlation function (4PCF), which quantifies excess clustering of quartets of galaxies over random, is the lowest order statistic sensitive to parity violation. Each galaxy defines one vertex of the tetrahedron. Parity-odd modes of the 4PCF probe an imbalance between tetrahedra and their mirror images. We measure these modes from the largest currently available spectroscopic samples, the 280 067 luminous red galaxies (LRGs) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) twelfth data release (DR12) LOWZ (z¯=0.32
) and the 803 112 LRGs of BOSS DR12 CMASS (z¯=0.57
). In LOWZ, we find 3.1σ evidence for a non-zero parity-odd 4PCF, and in CMASS we detect a parity-odd 4PCF at 7.1σ. Gravitational evolution alone does not produce this effect; parity-breaking in LSS, if cosmological in origin, must stem from the epoch of inflation. We have explored many sources of systematic error and found none that can produce a spurious parity-odd signal sufficient to explain our result. Underestimation of the noise could also lead to a spurious detection. Our reported significances presume that the mock catalogues used to calculate the covariance sufficiently capture the covariance of the true data. We have performed numerous tests to explore this issue. The odd-parity 4PCF opens a new avenue for probing new forces during the epoch of inflation with 3D large-scale structure; such exploration is timely given large upcoming spectroscopic samples such as Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and Euclid.