Recent Hubble Space Telescope measurements revealed something interesting about the expansion of the universe. As strange as it might sound, it appears that the Universe is expanding faster than researchers would have expected.
The Hubble constant is the rate of expansion, and it is significant for scientists. It is calculated in various ways. Some useful information from supernovae while others calculate it based on the farthest radiation of our experiments. However, according to the latest Hubble results, the discrepancy as raised “beyond a plausible level of chance.”
The previous value was 67.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec. However, the estimate was no longer considered that accurate when the Hubble Space Telescope was released back in 1990. As it turns out the constant is more significant than the forecast.
Hubble Space Telescope measurements revealed that the Universe is expanding in a strange way
“The Hubble tension between the early and late Universe may be the most exciting development in cosmology in decades. This mismatch has been growing and has now reached a point that is really impossible to dismiss as a fluke. This disparity could not plausibly occur by chance,” lead researcher Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Johns Hopkins University said.
After using a new method to observe the stars in LMC, researchers concluded that the latest estimate for the Hubble constant is 74.03 kilometers per second per megaparsec.
“This is not just two experiments disagreeing,” Riess added. “We are measuring something fundamentally different. One is a measurement of how fast the universe is expanding today, as we see it. The other is a prediction based on the physics of the early universe and on measurements of how fast it ought to be expanding. If these values don’t agree, there becomes a very strong likelihood that we’re missing something in the cosmological model that connects the two eras.”
Doris’s passion for writing started to take shape in college where she was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. Even though she ended up working in IT for more than 7 years, she’s now back to what he always enjoyed doing. With a true passion for technology, Doris mostly covers tech-related topics.