Hubble identifies unusual wrinkles in the expansion rate of the universe

Scientists don’t understand the paradox, but admit it’s strange and might require new physics.

“You get the most accurate measure of the expansion rate of the universe from the gold standard for telescopes and cosmic tilt markers,” said Adam Rees, Nobel Prize winner at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University. in Baltimore. in the current situation.

“That’s what the Hubble Space Telescope was built for, using the best technology we know to do it. That’s probably the Hubble magnum, because it would take another 30 years of Hubble’s life to double the size of this sample.”

decades of surveillance

The telescope is named after pioneering astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered in the 1920s that distant clouds in the universe were actually galaxies. he (died 1953).

Hubble built on the 1912 work of astronomer Henrietta Swan-Levitt to discover periods of brightness in pulsars called Cepheid variables. Cepheids act as cosmic tilt markers because they periodically brighten and dim within our galaxy and beyond.

Hubble’s work led to the revelation that our galaxy was one of many that changed our perspective and our place in the universe forever. The astronomer continued his work and discovered that distant galaxies appear to be moving rapidly, suggesting that we live in an expanding universe that began with the Big Bang.

Reiss continues to lead SHOES, short for Supernova, H0, for the Dark Energy Equation of State, a scientific collaboration investigating the expansion rate of the universe. His team is publishing a paper in The Astrophysical Journal that provides the latest update on the Hubble constant, as the rate of expansion is known.

unresolved contradiction

Measuring distant objects has created a “cosmic distance ladder” that could help scientists better estimate the age of the universe and understand its foundations.

Multiple teams of astronomers using the Hubble Telescope have arrived at a Hubble constant of 73 plus or minus 1 kilometer per second per megaparsec. (One megaparsec is equal to one million parsecs, or 3.26 million light-years.)

“The Hubble constant is a very special number. It can be used to thread a needle from the past to the present to test a comprehensive understanding of our universe. This required an enormous amount of detailed work.” Lecia Verdi, cosmologist at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies and the Institute of Cosmology at the University of Barcelona, ​​​​in a statement.

But the actual expected rate of expansion of the universe is slower than that observed by the Hubble telescope, according to astronomers using the Standard Cosmological Model of the Universe (a theory that refers to the components of the Big Bang) and measurements taken by the European Space Agency. Planck. allocation between 2009 and 2013.

The Planck Observatory, another space observatory, was used to measure the cosmic microwave background, or residual radiation from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

Planck scientists have reached the Hubble constant of 67.5 plus or minus 0.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

It presents an exciting challenge to cosmologists who were once determined to measure the Hubble constant, and now wonder what additional physics might help them solve a new mystery about the universe.

“I actually don’t really care what the scale value is specifically, but I like to use it to learn about the universe,” Reese said.