Nasa, through a press release, assured that “something strange is happening” in the known universe, according to data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope; There has even been talk of finding a “new physics” that would be directly intervening in the speed of expansion of the cosmos.
According to the US space agency, “the search for the expansion rate of the universe began in the 1920s with measurements made by astronomers Edwin P. Hubble and Georges Lemaître. In 1998, this led to the discovery of “dark energy”, a mysterious repulsive force that accelerates the expansion of the universe.
However, in recent years, the help of Hubble has led scientists to discover that there is a significant discrepancy between the measured expansion rate in the local universe (currently) and data obtained independently “just following the Big Bang, which predict a different expansion value”; Put simply, the universe has changed its rate of expansion relative to the data left behind by the “super bang.”
Now, although “the cause of this discrepancy remains a mystery”, the truth is that experts know that there is something strange that is happening, since data never before seen by NASA is being recorded.
“The Hubble data, which encompass a variety of cosmic objects that serve as distance markers, support the idea that something strange is going on, possibly related to new physics”, explains the space agency.
“A milestone in space history”
To explain what’s going on (or at least try), Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said he and his team have dedicated themselves to analyze at least 42 supernova landmark markers that Hubble recorded over the last 40 years.
“This is what the Hubble Space Telescope was built for, using the best techniques we know of to do it. This is probably Hubble’s masterpiece, because it would take another 30 years of Hubble’s life to even double this sample size.Riess said.
With this research, scientists have been able to conclude that the new results given by Hubble “more than double” the last sample of cosmic distance markers, which has made it possible to understand a little more accurately the speed of expansion of the universe with the passage weather.
“The Hubble constant is a very special number. It can be used to thread a needle from the past to the present for an end-to-end test of our understanding of the universe. This required a phenomenal amount of detailed work,” said Dr. Licia Verde, cosmologist at ICREA and ICC-University of Barcelona.
Thus, it was determined that the rate of expansion of the universe is slower than what Hubble can see. With the help of a data model provided by the Standard Cosmological Model of the Universe and by the European Space Agency, astronomers predict a lower value for the Hubble constant that places the expansion at 67.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec and a margin of error of 0.5 km/s per megaparsec. However, the Riess team’s estimate offers higher data: 73 km/s per megaparsec.
“Given the large size of the Hubble sample, there is only a one in a million chance that astronomers will be wrong due to an unlucky draw,” Riess explained, which in turn makes it difficult to study the expansion of the universe, as it is still It is difficult to find an “explanation for the disconnection between the expansion rate of the local universe versus the early universe, but the answer might involve additional physics of the universe,” adds Nasa.
