The unexplained cause of the slowed growth of the cosmic web that connects galaxies could hint at new physics.
Something Mysterious Appears to Be Suppressing the Universe's Growth, Scientists Say::The unexplained cause of the slowed growth of the cosmic web that connects galaxies could hint at new physics.
For everyone talking about the expansion of the Universe, that's not what this is about. The Universe is still expanding, at an accelerating rate. This work is about the rate of structure formation (the large-scale clumpiness of matter) being slowed down, not the expansion of spacetime.
If I'm thinking of this right, yes, and it's like they have less than we thought and aren't splitting up into "droplets" (clusters of galaxies) as fast as we think they should be.
“The plot suggests that if there were nothing – a complete vacuum – beyond the observable universe, our Universe would be a large, low density black hole. This is a little scary, but we have good reason to believe that’s not the case,” Patel added."
The current unbiased status of the universe is in a black hole theory is that it is possible, The math could work*, but we don't have any good reasons to actually believe it is actually the case.
"In other words, if a black hole was as large as the universe we can see, it would have the same density as the universe."
The idea that we could be inside a black hole and just not know it is mind boggling.
"Lineweaver notes there is an event horizon around the observable universe, just as there is around a black hole, and this is just one of the parallels between them."
It is the weekend for whoever is running the universe experiment so they went home. Just wait a couple more gazillion years and they will be back adding more stuff to the mix.