The Local Void

Local difficulty for Big Bang in Nature.

The relativistic Big Bang theory of cosmic evolution gives a good description of our expanding Universe on the grand scale. But closer to home, where we can observe galactic properties in detail, its predictions go awry. For instance, some of the largest galaxies in our neighbourhood are found in less crowded regions, contrary to standard-model predictions. And the region known as the Local Void contains many fewer galaxies than expected. The observations of nearby galaxies are more understandable if it is assumed that matter forms more rapidly into galaxies and clusters than current theory allows. Jim Peebles and Adi Nusser outline recent efforts by cosmologists to adapt fundamental theory to let new physics operate on the scale of galaxies, yet preserve the properties of the present model on cosmological scales