Article Posted on : - Jun 09, 2010

A File Photo.

NEW DELHI (BNS): Russian scientists have managed to measure emptiness, thus providing the opportunity to check any hypothesis defining the essence of the Universe, Roscosmos said.

According to Astrophysicists of Puschino Radio Astronomical Observatory of RAS, vacuum, or space emptiness, consists of interstellar plasma, so the parameters of “space gas”- density, magnetic field, motion rate – change randomly in all the points accessible for measurement.

The scientists managed to estimate the so-called outer scale of turbulence. It turned out to be about 0.03 parsecs. Parsec - a Common Units of measurement used in astronomy, which exceeds the 3.26 light-years. One light-year, incidentally, is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one earth calendar year without affecting his movement gravitational fields.

The findings were made as a result of observing changes in the parameters of radio pulsars that pervade interstellar plasma. This radio emission of pulsars is easily recorded on the Earth with radio telescopes.

"The nature of these changes is still unclear,” lead researcher Vladimir Shishov told Itar-Tass in an interview. “We can only assess the distribution of cosmic disturbances ‘in scope’ he said.

Changes in the pulsar wave parameters have been studied since 2002 by Puschino Radio Astronomical Observatory, Big Synphase Antenna, and other observatories in the USA and Germany.