Cosmic Expansion Mystery Suggests ‘We Have Misunderstood the Universe’ – Newsweek

New findings into a cosmic puzzle suggest that scientists may have "misunderstood the universe."

Astronomers know that the universe is expanding, but the rate at which it is doing so remains a mystery. This is because data constantly does not match up.

This problem is dubbed the "Hubble tension." It refers to how the Hubble Space Telescope and others are constantly finding different numbers that do not match previous predictions on the expanding universe. Previous predictions were initially found during the European Space Agency's Planck mission.

The mission, from 2009 to 2013, was Europe's first attempt to study the relic radiation from the Big Bang in order to discover more about the origins of our universe. The differences between estimates are about 10 percent apart. If accurate, the higher rate would make the universe about 10 percent younger than originally thought.

The main questions posed by the Hubble Tension puzzle include: Does new physics need to be introduced, or have all the previous measurements been errors? And now, scientists are one step closer to resolving these questions.

The Hubble telescope has been measuring the expansion of the universe for three decades. Now, new research from a partnership between the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope has come up with definitive measurements that prove measurement errors are not at play here.

The differing estimates are due to something else entirely. Exactly what, however, remains a mystery.

"With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe," Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Nobel prize winner for the co-discovery of the universe's increased expansion, said in a statement.

"We've now spanned the whole range of what Hubble observed, and we can rule out a measurement error as the cause of the Hubble Tension with very high confidence."

Webb and Hubble began making paired observations in 2023. Right away, they showed that the Hubble telescope had been accurate in its measurements.

A team led by Riess used methods to measure the distances of Cepheid variable stars in the universe. The measurement techniques are known in astronomy as "the cosmic distance ladder."

These new observations include measurements from five host galaxies, including one named NGC 5468, which lies a distance of 130 million light-years away,

"This spans the full range where we made measurements with Hubble. So, we've gone to the end of the second rung of the cosmic distance ladder," co-author Gagandeep Anand of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates the Webb and Hubble telescopes for NASA, said in a statement.

The new data from the Hubble and Webb bring scientists one step closer to solving the mystery of the Hubble Tension.

"Combining Webb and Hubble gives us the best of both worlds. We find that the Hubble measurements remain reliable as we climb farther along the cosmic distance ladder," said Riess.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about the Hubble Tension? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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Cosmic Expansion Mystery Suggests 'We Have Misunderstood the Universe' - Newsweek