Our universe is much more “homogenous” than would be expected, scientists have said after producing a detailed map of matter in the cosmos.

The findings could suggest that there is something deeply strange about our understanding of the universe, which could require a new kind of physics or fundamentally alter our understanding of dark matter.

The new results come from the Kilo-Degree Survey, or KiDS, which uses the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to map the distribution of matter across our universe. So far, it has charted roughly 5% of the extragalactic sky, from an analysis of 31 million galaxies that are as much as 10 billion light years away.

Producing such a detailed map allows scientists to examine the “clumpiness” of how galaxies are distributed through the cosmos. That allows researchers to build up a picture of all matter in the universe, of which some 90 per cent is invisible, made up of dark matter and tenuous gas.

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That in turn allows astronomers to watch the processes that gradually make the universe less homogenous, or evenly distributed: parts of the universe that have more than the usual mass attract matter from their areas around them, which makes them less similar to those other parts. The expansion of the universe counteracts that growth.

Read more: yahoo