Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Cosmology

An unprincipled Universe?

Nature volume 391, pages 120–121 (1998)Cite this article

One of the central tenets of cosmological orthodoxy is the Cosmological Principle, which states that, in a broad-brush sense, the Universe is the same in every place and in every direction. This assumption has enabled cosmologists to obtain relatively simple solutions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity that describe the dynamical behaviour of the Universe as a whole. These solutions, called the Friedmann models1, form the basis of the Big Bang theory. But is the Cosmological Principle true? Not according to Sylos-Labini et al.2, who argue, controversially, that the Universe is not uniform at all, but has a never-ending hierarchical structure in which galaxies group together in clusters which, in turn, group together in superclusters, and so on.

These claims are completely at odds with the Cosmological Principle and therefore with the Friedmann models and the entire Big Bang theory. The central thrust of the work of Sylos-Labini et al. is that the statistical methods used by cosmologists to analyse galaxy clustering data are inappropriate because they assume the property of large-scale homogeneity at the outset. If one does not wish to assume this then one must use different methods.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The big picture — the Las Campanas redshift survey, each dot marking a galaxy with a well-determined redshift.

References

  1. Friedmann, A. Z. Phys. 10, 377–386 ( 1922).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Sylos-Labini, F., Montuori, M. & Pietronero, L. Phys. Rep. (in the press).

  3. Shectman, S.et al. Astrophys. J. 470, 172–188 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Guzzo, L. New Astron. 2, 517–532 ( 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Paturel, G. et al. in Information and Online Data in Astronomy (eds Egret, D. & Albrecht, M.) 115 (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1995).

  6. Peebles, P. J. E. Principles of Physical Cosmology (Princeton Univ. Press, NJ, 1993).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Astronomy Unit, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, London, E1 4NS , UK

    Peter Coles

Authors
  1. Peter Coles
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Coles, P. An unprincipled Universe?. Nature 391, 120–121 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/34283

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/34283

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing