Dark energy study reveals alien life could be found in parallel universe

Universe
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A team of researchers from Durham University has studied the dark energy and suggested that if there is any existence of alien life then it could be found in other universes. Previous theories have revealed that our universe has the perfect amount of dark energy, which makes the cosmos expand at an accelerated rate.

Depending on the multiverse theory, which was first put forward in the 1980s, researchers have come to this conclusion. They used giant computer simulations to find that celestial bodies would still have formed, even if another universe had 100 times the dark energy compared to ours. The team suggested that if other universes are a reality, then it could possibly harbour alien life.

The Sun reported, Professor Richard Bower of Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology said, "The formation of stars in a universe is a battle between the attraction of gravity and the repulsion of dark energy. We have found in our simulations that universes with much more dark energy than ours can happily form stars. So why such a paltry amount of dark energy in our universe? I think we should be looking for a new law of physics to explain this strange property of our Universe, and the multiverse theory does little to rescue physicists' discomfort."

The recent findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Jaime Salcido, a post-graduate student at the Durham University said that the dark energy conundrum has been perplexing scientists for years.

"Our simulations show that even if there was much more dark energy or even very little in the Universe then it would only have a minimal effect on star and planet formation," said Salcido.

Multiverse theory suggests the existence of parallel universes, where planets similar to earth exists. As per the strong proponents of this theory, these hypothetical universes may have humans living on it. Even late British physicist Stephen Hawking also described the existence of the parallel universe similar to our own in his research paper, which was published in the journal Journal of High-Energy Physics.

This article was first published on May 16, 2018
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