• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Challenge To Theory Of The Universe Reignited In New Publication

December 11, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The universe is undergoing an accelerated expansion. The so-called Hubble constant indicates the rate of that expansion, and there are a few ways for astronomers to measure it. But there is a major problem. The main methods profoundly disagree with each other. This is the saga of the Hubble tension, challenging everything we know (and some of the things we do not know) about the universe.

The two main approaches to working out the expansion rate are as follows. You can measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the first light that was released in the universe, roughly 400,000 years after the Big Bang. Alternatively, you can measure the distances of a lot of galaxies and how fast they appear to move away from us due to the space in between expanding.

Advertisement

The first method gives a value of 67.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This unit of measurement might seem a bit weird at first. It means that if two galaxies are 1 megaparsec (3.26 million light-years) apart, the universe expanding makes them look like they are moving away from each other at a speed of 67.4 kilometers (41.9 miles) per second. Using the galaxy distance method instead, the value is 72.8 kilometers per second per megaparsec. The uncertainties on each value are small and they don’t overlap.

The [JWST] measurements give the same results as the Hubble telescope for the same objects, so it strengthens the case for the tension.

Professor Adam Riess

The Hubble Space Telescope was the source of the Hubble tension saga; its observations have been a crucial part of the challenge. Astronomers have been using its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to confirm or deny this data.

The team, led by Nobel laureate Adam Riess, has used the largest sample of JWST data to better estimate the Hubble constant and once again, found that the tension remains. The JWST data, although with wider uncertainty, found the expansion rate to be 72.6 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

“The [JWST] measurements give the same results as the Hubble telescope for the same objects, so it strengthens the case for the tension because it rules out that the tension was caused by a flaw in the Hubble telescope measurements,” Professor Riess, from John Hopkins University, told IFLScience.

Advertisement



Earlier this year, work carried out by Professor Wendy Freedman, of the University of Chicago, and her team used a data sample from JWST to estimate the expansion rate and found a value between Hubble data and the CMB. This was not seen as the end of the discussion, but it gave some hope that maybe the solutions were truly in between.

In our interview with Freedman, she stated how more observations from JWST were need for more data; this new work incorporates the Freedman data and other observations. It is perfectly possible for small samples of similar or overlapping objects to find different central values and large uncertainties. This is known as sample variance.

“Here is a useful analogy: you are trying to measure the speed of traffic on a highway. You use a radar gun to measure several cars and get an average. Someone else uses a different radar gun. When they measure the same cars they get the same average. That is what has happened with [JWST] and Hubble and confirms Hubble,” Professor Riess told IFLScience. 

Advertisement

“However, if they measured the speed of a different set of cars and both samples were small, you might see differences. The answer is to measure a bigger sample (to reduce sample variance) or compare the same cars (apples-to-apples) to cross-check the radar guns.”

The JWST data by itself has large uncertainties, and while the agreement with the Hubble data strengthens the case, more data will need to be collected from even more distant galaxies to strengthen the claim. Few other methods have been able to support one camp or the other. It might be possible that either or both approaches are not estimating their uncertainty correctly and the answer is in the middle. Or, it could be that our theory of the universe needs to be altered. Is the fault in our stars, or ourselves?

“The discrepancy between the observed expansion rate of the universe and the predictions of the standard model suggests that our understanding of the universe may be incomplete. With two NASA flagship telescopes now confirming each other’s findings, we must take this [Hubble tension] problem very seriously—it’s a challenge but also an incredible opportunity to learn more about our universe,’’ explained Professor Riess in a statement.

Advertisement

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. EU to attend U.S. trade meeting put in doubt by French anger
  3. Soccer-West Ham win again, Leicester and Napoli falter
  4. Lacking Company, A Dolphin In The Baltic Is Talking To Himself

Source Link: Challenge To Theory Of The Universe Reignited In New Publication

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Get Ready, Skywatchers: A “Dazzling” Total Lunar Eclipse Is Coming In 2025
  • How A Man Won The Lottery 14 Times Using Unbelievably Basic Math
  • What Are The Amazon’s “Flying Rivers”? And Why Every Single One Of Us Relies On Them
  • Curious New Microbe With Tiny Genome Toes The Line Between Cell And Virus
  • We’ve Just Found Out Where The World’s Longest-Living Vertebrate Has Its Babies
  • For The First Time, An Animal Has Been Shown Responding To Plant-Produced Sounds
  • Deep Ocean Currents Have “Weather” And Seasonal Changes That We’re Only Just Learning About
  • Stratus: What Are The Symptoms Of The Latest COVID-19 Subvariant To Spread Around The World?
  • In 1927, Henry Ford Tried To Build A Town In The Amazon And Things Went Very, Very Badly
  • Human Botfly: Say Hello To The Parasite That Would Love To Get Under Your Skin
  • Is The Weather Making Your Headache Worse?
  • “Zoning Out” Actually Helps You Learn? Data From Up To 90,000 Brain Cells Says So
  • Over Past 250,000 Years, Three Major Waves Of Human-Neanderthal Interbreeding Have Been Identified
  • Zebrafish “Catch” Yawns Just Like Us – We Might Need To Rethink Evolution To Account For That
  • 80,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Footprints Reveal How Children Hunted On Beaches
  • 5 Animals That Have Absolutely No Business Jumping (In Our Very Humble, Definitely Unbiased Opinion)
  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Why Do Many Large Language Models Give The Same Answer To This “Random” Number Query?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version