Galaxy Group Ellipticity Confirms a Younger Cosmos

Abstract

We present an analysis of the ellipticities of galaxy groups, derived from the spatial distribution of member galaxies, revealing a notable incongruity between the observed local galaxy groups and their counterparts in the Lambda cold dark matter cosmology. Specifically, our investigation reveals a substantial disparity in the ellipticities of observed groups with masses 1013.0<Mh<1014.5M⊙h−1 exhibiting significantly higher ellipticities (at a confidence level of approximately 4σ) compared to their simulated counterparts. Notably, the consistent use of the same group finder for identifying galaxy groups in both observational and simulated datasets underscores the robustness of this result. This observation may imply a potential incongruence between the inferred age of the Universe from observations and the predictions of the model, which aligns with the younger Universe hypothesis suggested by the elevated fraction of observed satellite pairs with correlated line-of-sight relative velocities compared to simulations. Our findings significantly strengthen the plausibility of a younger age for our Universe.