Posted on 01/20/2025 6:10:09 AM PST by Red Badger
The Hubble tension grows: new data shows the Universe’s expansion defies current physics models, suggesting our understanding of cosmology may need a major overhaul. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
New research confirms the Universe is expanding faster than theoretical models predict, intensifying the Hubble tension.
Using precise measurements of the Coma cluster, scientists recalibrated the cosmic distance ladder, suggesting flaws in existing cosmological models.
Expanding Universe: A Startling Discovery
The Universe appears to be expanding faster than expected — faster than theoretical models predict and beyond what our current understanding of physics can explain.
New measurements have confirmed earlier, highly debated results showing this unexpected rate of expansion. The gap between these findings and established models is known as the Hubble tension. Now, research published in Astrophysical Journal Letters offers even stronger evidence that the Universe is growing at a faster pace.
“The tension now turns into a crisis,” said Dan Scolnic, who led the research team.
Intensifying Cosmic Dilemma
Since Edwin Hubble’s 1929 discovery that the Universe is expanding, determining the precise rate of this expansion — called the Hubble constant — has been a cornerstone of cosmological research.
Scolnic, an associate professor of Physics at Duke University, explains it as trying to build the Universe’s growth chart: we know what size it had at the Big Bang, but how did it get to the size it is now? In his analogy, the Universe’s baby picture represents the distant Universe, the primordial seeds of galaxies. The Universe’s current headshot represents the local Universe, which contains the Milky Way and its neighbors. The standard model of cosmology is the growth curve connecting the two. The problem is: things don’t connect.
Universe’s Expansion Rate Widens With New Hubble Data
This illustration shows the three basic steps astronomers use to calculate how fast the universe expands over time, a value called the Hubble constant. All the steps involve building a strong “cosmic distance ladder,” by starting with measuring accurate distances to nearby galaxies and then moving to galaxies farther and farther away. This “ladder” is a series of measurements of different kinds of astronomical objects with an intrinsic brightness that researchers can use to calculate distances. Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Feild (STScI)
The Broken Model of Cosmology
“This is saying, to some respect, that our model of cosmology might be broken,” said Scolnic.
Measuring the Universe requires a cosmic ladder, which is a succession of methods used to measure the distances to celestial objects, with each method, or “rung,” relying on the previous for calibration.
The ladder used by Scolnic was created by a separate team using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is observing more than 100,000 galaxies every night from its vantage point at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Scolnic recognized that this ladder could be anchored closer to Earth with a more precise distance to the Coma Cluster, one of the galaxy clusters nearest to us.
Coma Cluster Dark Energy Camera
Extremely precise measurements of the distance between the Earth and the Coma cluster of galaxies provide new evidence for the Universe’s faster-than-expected rate of expansion. Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA, Image Processing: D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)
Precise Measurements Challenge Established Theories
“The DESI collaboration did the really hard part, their ladder was missing the first rung,” said Scolnic. “I knew how to get it, and I knew that that would give us one of the most precise measurements of the Hubble constant we could get, so when their paper came out, I dropped absolutely everything and worked on this non-stop.”
To get a precise distance to the Coma cluster, Scolnic and his collaborators, with funding from the Templeton foundation, used the light curves from 12 Type Ia supernovae within the cluster. Just like candles lighting a dark path, Type Ia supernovae have a predictable luminosity that correlates to their distance, making them reliable objects for distance calculations.
The team arrived at a distance of about 320 million light-years, nearly in the center of the range of distances reported across 40 years of previous studies — a reassuring sign of its accuracy.
“This measurement isn’t biased by how we think the Hubble tension story will end,” said Scolnic. “This cluster is in our backyard, it has been measured long before anyone knew how important it was going to be.”
Using this high-precision measurement as a first rung, the team calibrated the rest of the cosmic distance ladder. They arrived at a value for the Hubble constant of 76.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec, which essentially means that the local Universe is expanding 76.5 kilometers per second faster every 3.26 million light-years.
Bridge Diagram Showing Different Measurements of the Hubble Constant An artist’s impression showing the different measurements of the Hubble constant by different missions and methods. Special thanks to Adam Riess, who invented the original version of this illustratioon. Key: CMB (cosmic microwave background), WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe), BAO (Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation), BB (Big Bang) nucleosynthesis, DES (Dark Energy Survey), Lambda CDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter), TRGB (Tip of the red-giant branch). Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva
This value matches existing measurements of the expansion rate of the local Universe. However, like all of those measurements, it conflicts with measurements of the Hubble constant using predictions from the distant Universe. In other words: it matches the Universe’s expansion rate as other teams have recently measured it, but not as our current understanding of physics predicts it. The longstanding question is: is the flaw in the measurements or in the models?
Scolnic’s team’s new results adds tremendous support to the emerging picture that the root of the Hubble tension lies in the models.
“Over the last decade or so, there’s been a lot of re-analysis from the community to see if my team’s original results were correct,” said Scolnic, whose research has consistently challenged the Hubble constant predicted using the standard model of physics. “Ultimately, even though we’re swapping out so many of the pieces, we all still get a very similar number. So, for me, this is as good of a confirmation as it’s ever gotten.”
Challenging the Models of Cosmology
“We’re at a point where we’re pressing really hard against the models we’ve been using for two and a half decades, and we’re seeing that things aren’t matching up,” said Scolnic. “This may be reshaping how we think about the Universe, and it’s exciting! There are still surprises left in cosmology, and who knows what discoveries will come next?”
Reference:
“The Hubble Tension in Our Own Backyard: DESI and the Nearness of the Coma Cluster”
by Daniel Scolnic, Adam G. Riess, Yukei S. Murakami, Erik R. Peterson, Dillon Brout, Maria Acevedo, Bastien Carreres, David O. Jones, Khaled Said, Cullan Howlett and Gagandeep S. Anand, 15 January 2025, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ada0bd
Scolnic, D., Riess, A.G., Murakami, Y.S., Peterson, E.R., Brout, D., Acevedo, M., Carreres, B., Jones, D.O., Said, K., Howlett, C. and Anand, G.S., 2025. The Hubble Tension in our own Backyard: DESI and the Nearness of the Coma Cluster. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 979, L9. DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ada0bd
This work was conducted with funding from the Templeton Foundation, the Department of Energy, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation and NASA.
It has always been okay.
“The beginning of knowledge is to admit that you know nothing.” - Socrates......................
That is a real, very real, condition on Free Republic where folks can’t grasp the reality of the fact that they don’t know what they don’t know.
As the ‘mass’ of the universe gets further and further away from the ‘center’ of the Big Bang, it’s attraction to other parts of the mass gets weaker and weaker.
Gravity gets ‘diluted’, as it were.
So the farther the masses on the leading edge of the Universe get, there is less gravity holding them back............
The assumption that the center of the universe is known is invalid.
No, nothing in the physical world is infinite, nothing. In God's world, infinities are everywhere, but nowhere in our sandbox.
One of the conjectures about cosmic expansion is that it is 3D space expanding into a 4D space, analogous to the surface of a balloon expanding when blown up.
In this conjecture, there is no observable center. Also, what we see at the edge of the observable universe is just the remnants of the big bang.
He who refuses to look can never see
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The Universe Is Expanding | 00:45
CNoboro | 119 subscribers | 381,945 views | February 2, 2007
Here’s a hint. When they have to insert not one but TWO placeholders to try to explain away observations that do not match the theoretical models (Dark Matter and Dark Energy), it means they don’t understand things very well.
I have a radical new theory. Maybe Dark Matter and Dark Energy don’t exist. We just haven’t figured it all out WRT the laws of physics. If your theory is correct, it doesn’t get holes punched in it constantly. This marks failure/lack of understanding #3.
I know. I should have ended my comment with /sarc.
My theory doesn’t require Dark Matter, Dark Energy or Dark Chocolate...........
I have long theorized that the universe is NOT expanding. It is contracting.
Contracting into a giant black hole.
Think about it. Galaxies further "down" the black hole from us appear to be moving faster than us; Galaxies not as far from us "down" the hole appear to be moving faster because we are further "down" the hole, thus traveling faster away from them.
The "event horizon" for this huge black hole is what we call the "big bang." Only problem is: I don't have enough understanding of Einstein's mathematical equations of Gravitation to prove or disprove my conjecture.
Sounds Cabalistic, doesn’t it, but a great analogy.
I like the dark chocolate idea...
Those old Cabbalists had the right ideas...............
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