It's fair to say that the vast majority of modern cosmology is based on a very simple but incredibly critical assumption: that the laws of the universe are, well, universal. That gravity works the same here on Earth as it does trillions of miles away. Pretty much all of physics rests upon these assumptions as well.
But as technology has progressed, we've observed stranger and stranger things about our universe. Not least of which that most of the matter in the universe is invisible and interacts with visible matter (and itself) in strange ways. In addition, there is also some hypothetical repulsive force, also invisible, that seems to be pushing the universe apart.
But what if the assumption above, called the Copernican Principle, is wrong? A group of researchers have designed an experiment to test it. I'm excited, as I've always felt that these strange observations seem to suggest some fundamental error in our approach. Let's see what happens.
|