Does the Universe have a center and where does the “devil's axis” point?
For the first five hundred years of the last millennium, no one doubted that an unshakable center of the world existed – and the Earth was located in it. Then Copernicus shook the foundations of the universe, moving the Sun to the center of the Universe and lowering the Earth to an ordinary planet. The center of the Universe has been preserved, but the sediment remains. Further – more: then the Sun was equated with ordinary stars and they began to believe that the Milky Way is the Universe, accordingly, the center of our Galaxy is the center of the world.
The 20th century arrived, bringing with it a complete mess in science. Vesto Slipher, a farmer's son and an employee of the private Lowell Observatory, had already shown in the first decade of this turbulent century that the Milky Way was also an ordinary galaxy, despite the fact that it was so familiar to us. Where should we make the center of the Universe? – the astronomers were completely at a loss. But in 1922, the wise Friedman, based on Einstein's recently created theory, came up with such a clever model of an expanding Universe, in which there was no center! A model of raisin dough swelling in all directions, where all the raisins (galaxies) were moving away from each other, or, in other words, the distance between all the galaxies was growing. So, wherever you want, make the center of the Universe, even on Earth! Do you feel like the circle has closed?
Of course, the concept of something that expands from nowhere and into all points at once is hard to wrap your head around. So what? But everyone understands that only cosmologists can grasp the immensity, and let others simply stand in awe, looking at them.
Observers in 1965 confirmed the concept of an isotropically expanding (around us) universe by discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation, which arrives uniformly from all directions, except for a slight anisotropy associated with the movement of the Earth through this radiation.
Therefore, when scientists began to study satellite data WMAP And Planck on the relic radiation, we first took into account the kinematic dipole, which corresponds to the Earth's motion relative to the background radiation at a speed of about 630 km/sec. The point where this dipole is directed (that is, where the Earth is moving, if this dipole is of a purely Doppler nature) has a galactic latitude of 48° and a longitude of 264° (see Fig.). All other fluctuations in the microwave radiation were supposed to represent random deviations from the average. But it unexpectedly turned out that the orientation of the quadrupole (latitude 13.4° and longitude 238.5°) and octupole (latitude 25.7° and longitude 239.0°) components of the relic radiation fluctuations almost coincide with each other, and both are close to the orientation of the dipole.
Cosmologists Kathy Land and João Magueijo, in a 2005 paper, coined the term “devil axis” along which these large-scale components of the cosmic microwave background radiation line up. This term reflects the degree of amazement that scientists raised in the paradigm of isotropic cosmology experience when they encounter the facts of anisotropy in the real Universe.
But this “devilish axis” turned out to be a mere twig compared to the monster, the contours of which quickly began to appear in other observations. Let's start with the fresh stuff:
Sensational news about the gamma-ray dipole was published by cosmologist Alexander Kashlinsky and co-authors on January 10, 2024 in the journal ApJ (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acfedd).
This discovery was unexpected because the authors were looking for something completely different and in the wrong place. They were, in fact, testing the fact of the isotropy of the Universe, which few dare to dispute. In the model of the isotropic Universe, only one global inhomogeneity is allowed – a dipole one, associated with the movement of the Earth through this thermal radiation. The speed of this movement is small compared to the speed of light, therefore the magnitude of the dipole anisotropy is only ~0.1%. When this dipole is subtracted from the data on the relic radiation, there remain fluctuations at the level of 10-5.
The group led by A. Kashlinsky decided to obtain a dipole of background gamma-quantum radiation in the energy range from 2.74 to 115 GeV according to satellite data Fermi. If the Earth's motion is the only source of global anisotropy in space, then the direction and magnitude of the gamma dipole should coincide with the parameters of the relic radiation dipole. But the analysis showed that the gamma-quantum background dipole is shifted from the relic radiation dipole so much that, in galactic coordinates, it migrated from the northern hemisphere to the southern (Risu). Its amplitude turned out to be about 7%, which is an order of magnitude greater than expected.
Kashlinsky and co-authors note that cosmic ray particles with energies greater than 8 exaelectronvolts (let's call them “superparticles”) also have a dipole close to the gamma-quantum one, both in location and in amplitude. But these are not all the amazing coincidences. In the region of the South Pole, the Hubble constant experiences a minimum, deviating from the average by ~10% (Fig). In addition, back in 2009, Russian astronomer V. Amirkhanyan published data in the Astrophysical Bulletin on the anisotropy of the distribution of the rotation axes of galaxies, which avoid the direction to the South Pole.
Rice. CMB dipole anisotropy map (NASA/WMAP Science Group) with the axis marked with a black circle (in galactic coordinates; the Milky Way is visible along the horizontal axis). A similar dipole for gamma rays turned out to be strongly shifted to the south (blue ellipse), while high-energy cosmic particles (“superparticles”; red square) have a similar anisotropy – Kashlinsky et al. (2024). The black ellipse indicates the minimum of the Hubble constant (Migkas, K., Schellenberger, G., Reiprich, T. H. et al.Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the LX−T scaling relation. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 636, A15, 2020). The asterisk marks the Earth's South Pole. According to V.R. Amirkhanyan (“Anisotropy of the spatial orientation of radio sources. II: Axial distribution function,” Astrophysical Bulletin, vol. 54, N4, pp. 350-356, 2009), the axes of galaxies also avoid the direction of the poles. These “super-devil axis” phenomena point to the center of our Universe, apparently located near the South Pole.
Data on the anisotropy of the Universe signify a deep crisis in modern cosmology, which is aggravated by the fact that the group of Nobel laureate Adam Riess found an inhomogeneity of the Hubble constant at the level of 10% – in addition to its anisotropy of a similar order.
These data are a complete disaster for the theory of inflation, which in principle does not allow for anisotropic effects (although it tries to solve problems with heterogeneity using new fitting parameters). Shocked theorists hold on to their chairs in horror and do not intervene, pretending that nothing terrible is happening. But observers of the “devilish axis” are throwing more and more wood on the fire, the frying pans are heating up, and the theorists’ pants are already burning and their shoes are smoking. We can safely consider recent years to be the time of a cosmological revolution, which should replace the paradigm of a homogeneous and isotropic Universe with a new model.
What concept will the current paradigm of a quantum disposable Universe be replaced by? I am sure that we should expect a revival of cyclic cosmology, but at a new level – taking into account dark matter from black holes, as well as the entire set of discovered phenomena of cosmological inhomogeneity and anisotropy. New cosmology suggests that our Universe pulsates in a huge black hole (this idea is far from new, but the mechanisms of this pulsation in the proposed theory are different from old models).
From the point of view of cyclic cosmology, the appearance of the “superdevil's axis” is natural and is associated with the global anisotropy of the Universe, which is more complex than the Doppler dipole and can manifest itself in both the dipole and quadrupole-octupole components of the relic radiation, as well as in other anisotropic effects. We can confidently say that the Universe has a center – and it is located in the area of the Earth's South Pole (this “earthly” direction of the axis of the Universe, of course, is just a coincidence with an accuracy of about 20 degrees). Recently, this theory predicted the existence of a nanohertz relic background of gravitational waves – and this prediction was confirmed by the NANOGrav consortium of radio telescopes. I will not go into details, because the publishing house “Piter” has just released the book “Pulsating Universe”, which opens up our amazing Phoenix Universe to anyone who dares to make a cosmological flight (https://www.piter.com/collection/soon/product/pulsiruyuschaya-vselennaya).
The book is written in a popular style, and an Appendix with basic mathematical solutions has been compiled for specialists. You can try out the eighth chapter of the books here, on Habr: https://habr.com/en/companies/piter/articles/815713/. The book's contents are briefly presented on the Elements website, where you can participate in the fifth hundred comments: https://elementy.ru//novosti_nauki/434235/Gipoteza_o_tsiklicheskoy_Vselennoy_poluchila_nablyudatelnuyu_podderzhku
PS I saw a comment somewhere: why did the planetary scientist Gorky decide to study cosmology in his declining years? Yes, there is a tendency when older geologists begin to build global models of the world in their old age. Well, if you really want to, you can include me in this venerable cohort, but there are still nuances. Therefore, I found it useful to briefly outline the history of the creation of this cosmological theory and book.
This story begins in 1974 or 1975, when I, at the age of 15-16, bought a small monograph by Rodichev on GTR (1974) in a Chelyabinsk bookstore and became interested in the problem of the non-tensor nature of gravitational energy. After university, where I received an education as a theoretical physicist and astrophysicist (still not a geologist!), I worked for many years on theoretical problems of celestial mechanics and planetology, but at the same time I thought about the non-tensor nature of gravitational energy and collected a library of 250 volumes on the theory of gravity in three languages, becoming an expert on this topic.
There are two main points of view on this problem. According to the most popular point of view, held by Einstein himself before 1916, gravitational waves have energy and gravitational mass. According to the less well-known point of view, held after 2019 (and until the end of his life) by Einstein, Eddington, Schrödinger and others, gravitational waves have a non-tensor pseudo-energy, which is not the source of the gravitational field. (Appendix 1 of the book summarizes the main information I have collected on this topic.) As a physicist, I initially supported the first point of view, but then I realized that the Einstein-Eddington-Schrödinger interpretation is correct, and therefore the problem of the non-tensor nature is solved without my efforts. I thought that the difference between the two interpretations was practically insignificant, since gravitational waves have negligible energy.
But then came 1998, when an unknown factor accelerating the expansion of the universe was discovered. At that time, I was working in the cosmology group at the Goddard Space Flight Center, processing data from the COBE satellite, helping to choose a site for the future Webb telescope, where the zodiacal light is minimal. I shared an office with cosmologist Sasha Kashlinsky, who repeatedly suggested that I investigate the mysterious acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Not immediately, but I began to wonder: where in general relativity could the antigravitational forces responsible for events like the Big Bang or the acceleration of the universe come from? Suddenly, my experience with gravitational energy resonated with this cosmological problem: I realized that the collapse of the universe would look completely different in the two interpretations of general relativity.
If gravitational waves have gravitational mass, then the collapse does not change the total mass of the Universe and singularity is inevitable. However, if the generation of gravitational radiation, which has no gravitational mass, reduces the total mass of the world, this will open up prospects for solving the problems of the Big Bang and singularity. After all, the generation of gravitational waves increases as R^-5, quickly outpacing the growth of gravity R^-2. By 2003, within the framework of quasi-Newtonian physics, I managed to show (and briefly publish) that due to the decrease in the gravitational mass of the system, a new term appears in the law of gravity, which can describe both antigravity and hypergravity. This was an insight and a breakthrough – and then I was not yet the old man of today, but a quite vigorous scientist in his forties!
Then I moved on to other projects. Only in the fall of 2015, after conversations with my co-author Sasha Vasilkov, a graduate of MIPT, did I return to the topic of cosmology. We decided to confirm the 2003 formula for antigravity and hypergravity within the framework of general relativity. And we succeeded – in 2016 a seminal article was published in MNRAS (https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/461/3/2929/2608669 – by the way, 17 thousand views!). From 2016 to 2022, we, together with other co-authors, obtained a number of new results within the framework of the cyclic Universe model. These results formed the basis of this book, which has already been published and which will still make a lot of noise, because it opens up a completely new view of our unique Universe!
