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Hubble discovers unusual wrinkles in the rate of expansion of the universe
Over the past 30 years, the Space Observatory has helped scientists discover and refine this rate of acceleration, as well as reveal puzzling problems that only new physics can solve.
Hubble has detected more than 40 galaxies containing pulsars as well as exploding stars called supernovae to measure large cosmic distances. These two phenomena help astronomers define astronomical distances as miles markers that indicate expansion rates.
In their quest to understand how rapidly our universe is expanding, astronomers made an unexpected discovery back in 1998: “dark energy.” This phenomenon acts as a mysterious driving force, accelerating the rate of expansion.
And there is another event: the inexplicable difference between the rate of expansion of the local universe and the rate of expansion of the distant universe immediately after the Big Bang.
Scientists do not understand the paradox, but admit that it is strange and may require new physics.
“You get the most accurate measure of the expansion rate of the universe with the gold standard for telescopes and space tilt markers,” said Adam Reese, Nobel Prize winner at the Space Telescope Science Institute and professor emeritus 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. This is probably the Hubble magnum, because it will take another 30 years of Hubble’s life to double the size of this sample.”
decades of observation
The telescope is named after pioneering astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered in the 1920s that distant clouds in the universe are actually galaxies. (died 1953).
Hubble built on astronomer Henrietta Swan-Levitt’s 1912 work to detect periods of brightness in pulsars called variable Cepheids. Cepheids act as cosmic tilt markers because they periodically light up and dim in our galaxy and beyond.
Hubble’s work led to the discovery that our galaxy was one of many that forever changed our perspective and our place in the universe. The astronomer continued his work and found 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 equation of state for dark energy, a scientific collaboration that explores the expansion rate of the universe. His team publishes a paper in The Astrophysical Journal that provides the latest information on the Hubble constant since the expansion rate 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.
Several groups of astronomers using the Hubble telescope have come up with 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 special number,” he said. “It can be used to thread a needle from the past into the present to test a comprehensive understanding of our universe. It required a huge amount of detailed work.” This was stated by a cosmologist from the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies and the Institute of Cosmology of the University of Barcelona Lecia Verdi.
But the actual rate of expansion expected from the universe is slower than the rate 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 made by the European Space Agency. Planck. work from 2009 to 2013.
The Planck Observatory, another space-based observatory, was used to measure the cosmic microwave background, or residual radiation from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Planck’s scientists achieved the Hubble constant of 67.5 plus or minus 0.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec.
This presents an exciting challenge for cosmologists who were once determined to measure the Hubble constant and are now wondering what additional physical data could help them unravel the new mystery of the universe.
“I don’t really care about the specific value of the scale, but I like to use it to understand the universe,” Reese said.
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