According to NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope has hit a new milestone in its efforts to determine how rapidly the universe is expanding, and it strongly suggests that something weird is occurring in our universe.
In the
past few years,astronomers have used telescopes such as Hubble to determine how
fast our universe is expanding.
However,
when those measurements became more exact, they revealed something unusual.
When comparing data from soon after the Big Bang to the pace of expansion of
the universe as it is now, there is a significant difference.
Scientists
have been unable to explain the discrepancy. However, it shows that
"something weird" is going on in our cosmos, which might be the
product of undiscovered, new physics, according to NASA.
Hubble has
spent the last 30 years collecting data on a set of "milepost
markers" in space and time that can be used to trace the expansion rate of
the cosmos as it moves away from us.
According
to NASA, it has now calibrated more than 40 of the markers, allowing for even
more precision than previously.
In a
statement, Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute
(STScI) and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, stated, "You
are getting the most precise measure of the expansion rate for the universe
from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers."
He is the
leader of a group of scientists who have released a new research paper
detailing the largest and most likely last significant update from the Hubble
Space Telescope, tripling the previous set of mile markers and reanalyzing
existing data.
The hunt
for a precise estimate of how quickly space was expanding began when American
astronomer Edwin Hubble saw that galaxies beyond our own appeared to be moving
away from us – and moving faster the further away they are. Since then,
scientists have been working to gain a deeper understanding of that growth.
In honor
of the astronomer's effort, both the rate of expansion and the space telescope
that has been studying it are named Hubble.
When the
space telescope began gathering data on the universe's expansion, it was
discovered to be faster than models had expected. Astronomers anticipate that
it should be approximately 67.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec, plus or
minus 0.5, while measurements suggest that it is closer to 73.
Astronomers
have a one in a million probability of getting it incorrect. Instead, it
implies that the universe's growth and expansion are more intricate than we
previously thought, and that there is still much to discover about how the
cosmos is changing.
Scientists
plan to dive more into this challenge using the new James Webb Space Telescope,
which was just launched into space and will shortly bring back its first
observations. This should allow them to view new, more distant, and
higher-resolution mileposts.
Reference: NASA
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