Universe may not be uniform at largest scales, challenging cosmological model

For nearly a century, the universe has been understood as a place of deep symmetry — the same in every direction, uniform at the grandest scales. Now, a team of physicists led by Asta Heinesen of the Niels Bohr Institute has found subtle but statistically meaningful cracks in that assumption, using machine learning to let observational data from supernovae and dark energy surveys speak without theoretical constraint. The findings, still preliminary, do not yet meet the threshold of confirmed discovery — but they whisper a possibility that has long unsettled cosmology: that the universe may not