Thomas Buchert, researcher at Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL) and Professor of the Universities at Lyon (UCBL1), has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his project « arthUs ».
For his project arthUs - advances in the research on theories of the dark Universe - Thomas Buchert proposes for the first time in cosmology to describe the Universe with a novel approach. He started with the idea that the cosmological standard model established 100 years ago does not correspond anymore to what we observe nowadays. His theory consists in understanding the effects linked to the inhomogeneous curvature of the Universe without taking into account the preexisting principles of the dark matter and dark energy. The goal is to introduce new perspectives without questionning in its globality the theory of Einstein. In the next 5 years, he will verify his hypothesis in quantying these effects of inhomogeneity in relativistic cosmology on the average properties of the standard cosmological model, and whether these quantitatively important effects could solve the problems linked to the dark matter and dark energy of the standard cosmological model.
Thomas Buchert outlines : "We have developed in my laboratory models without Dark Energy that describe the emergent curvature as a result of the formation of structures. They are compatible with the average properties of Einstein’s equations and the main observational cornerstones. We can construct observables and infer predictions from these models and compare them with current and future observations."
The cosmological standard model is also based on Einstein’s theory. According to it, the Universe is modeled with a homogeneous geometry. Clearly, no matter from which place it is observed, the Universe has the same geometric structure. But, observations have shown that the cosmological system could not have been maintained only by the known sources of energy. An explanatory void is then filled by the hypothesis of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which together account for 96% of the energy budget of the Universe. Through his research, Thomas Buchert would now like to determine what exactly are these sources of energies, to what they correspond and in what quantities they are present in the Universe.
Image credit = Eric Le Roux, Direction Communication UCBL1
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