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Earth Could Be in a Massive Cosmic Bubble That’s Warping the Universe, Astrophysicists Reveal



A cosmic void could be distorting how we see the universe expand. Sound from the Big Bang may hold the clues.

According to astronomers, Earth and the entire Milky Way galaxy might be located within a vast, low-density region of space essentially a cosmic void that causes the universe to expand more rapidly in our area compared to surrounding regions.

This hypothesis offers a possible explanation for the persistent discrepancy known as the ‘Hubble tension’ and could contribute to determining the universe’s actual age, currently estimated at approximately 13.8 billion years.

Presented at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) in Durham, recent findings suggest that primordial sound waves referred to as “essentially the sound of the Big Bang” lend support to this concept.

Edwin Hubble introduced the Hubble constant in 1929 as a way to describe how quickly the universe is expanding. Scientists calculate it by measuring the distance to celestial bodies and their speed as they move away from us.

The challenge arises when predictions based on early-universe observations, using the standard cosmological model, indicate a slower expansion than what is observed in the nearby, present-day universe. This inconsistency is what defines the Hubble tension.

Explaining faster local expansion

“A potential solution to this inconsistency is that our galaxy is close to the centre of a large, local void,” explained Dr Indranil Banik, of the University of Portsmouth.

“It would cause matter to be pulled by gravity towards the higher density exterior of the void, leading to the void becoming emptier with time. As the void is emptying out, the velocity of objects away from us would be larger than if the void were not there. This therefore gives the appearance of a faster local expansion rate.”

He added: “The Hubble tension is largely a local phenomenon, with little evidence that the expansion rate disagrees with expectations in the standard cosmology further back in time. So a local solution like a local void is a promising way to go about solving the problem.”

Conditions required for a local void

For this hypothesis to be valid, Earth and the solar system would need to be situated close to the center of a massive cosmic void roughly one billion light-years across, with a matter density around 20 percent lower than the cosmic average.

Observational data, such as galaxy counts, lend some support to this idea, as the density of galaxies in our local region appears to be lower than in adjacent areas of the universe.

Still, the concept of such a vast and pronounced void remains contentious, as it conflicts with the predictions of the standard cosmological model, which holds that matter should be more evenly distributed across the universe at these scales.

Evidence from baryon acoustic oscillations

Despite this, new data presented by Dr Banik at NAM 2025 shows that baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs)  the “sound of the Big Bang” support the idea of a local void.

“These sound waves travelled for only a short while before becoming frozen in place once the universe cooled enough for neutral atoms to form,” he explained. “They act as a standard ruler, whose angular size we can use to chart the cosmic expansion history.”

He continues, “A local void slightly distorts the relation between the BAO angular scale and the redshift, because the velocities induced by a local void and its gravitational effect slightly increase the redshift on top of that due to cosmic expansion.”

“By considering all available BAO measurements over the last 20 years, we showed that a void model is about one hundred million times more likely than a void-free model with parameters designed to fit the CMB observations taken by the Planck satellite, the so-called homogeneous Planck cosmology.”

Next steps and cosmic chronometer tests

The next step for researchers is to compare their local void model with other methods to estimate the history of the universe’s expansion, such as cosmic chronometers.

This involves looking at galaxies that are no longer forming stars. By observing their spectra, or light, it is possible to find what kinds of stars they have and in what proportion. Since more massive stars have shorter lives, they are absent in older galaxies, providing a way to establish a galaxy’s age.

Astronomers can then combine this age with the galaxy’s redshift how much the wavelength of its light has been stretched which tells us how much the universe has expanded while light from the galaxy was travelling towards us. This sheds light on the universe’s expansion history.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

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