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Seven-Year Microwave Sky image credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) |
One the local scale, matter in the universe demonstrably is neither homogeneous nor isotropic. However, since we’re are talking about the universe, it is important not to sweat the local things but concentrate on the big picture. In these terms, homogeneity means that, to all observers throughout the universe, the universe should look the same. Of course, since we are restricted to one place in the universe, we cannot directly test the assumption of homogeneity. In fact, studies of the distribution of matter in the universe show that there is clumping of matter at very large scales in the universe. It is assumed that on the grandest scales the clumping smooths out, but this has not yet been observed.To read the rest of this rather technical article, click on "The Cosmological Principle Fails?"
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