244
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.

This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.

Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] [email protected] 99 points 1 year ago

Yesssss I yearn for new physics

[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The prospect of irregular and unpredictable physics gives me anxiety

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

With the universe is not being locally real, and now this... Oh man. Exciting times for sure.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, discovery is awesome, and this is some crazy shit— it’s just that I prefer that the the rules that govern time and space make sense, lol.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

It makes sense — we just don’t understand it yet 😀

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I predict bubbles warping time but not space, thus distorting the apparent speeds of objects we see through them. Star Trek taught me that anything is possible. 😆

And just imagine the new fields of math such a discovery would create...

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

“I’m just going to round it anyways” - Engineering

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The Intel floating-point math error strikes again.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

With the universe is not being locally real

What do you mean by this?

load more comments (11 replies)
[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

This article https://nautil.us/chaos-makes-the-multiverse-unnecessary-236664/ made me very uncomfortable back when it was published. It takes what you say to the philosophical limit.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Uh, I hate how that article says 'she' for a scientist (just as I would hate if it said 'he'). Say 'they'!

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

As a science bitch I’ve never believed in the Big Bang… I think everything has always been and will always be and it goes on forever in every direction and when I think about that my feet feel weird

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Do you have evidence to support your position? Or is this just wishful thinking?

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

If I remember correctly, that's basically the Einstein - de Sitter universe, one of the early cosmological models. Einstein also didn't like the accelerated growth of the universe, he called the cosmological constant (what's now known as dark energy) a big mistake.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago

The best moments in science are when we say, “wait, this doesn’t work.”

[-] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago

The sound of scientific discovery is less often "Eureka!" than "Huh, that's funny..."

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

That's exactly the opposite of how religion works and the reason why I firmly believe that there should be a clear separation between state and church.

People can believe in whatever delusions they want as long as they don't force them on me.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

But they always do, always, everywhere.

Even France which prides itself on it's secularism is getting pounded. The US is delusional, "In God We Trust" ? Really, fuck that guy...

If you have church, it's always church and state.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Wouldn't that just be forcing your view of separation of church and state on everyone else?

/s

[-] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago

I just want our universe to be cyclic, heat death is depressing

[-] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

Even though I won't be there for it, somehow heat death makes me very sad.

[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

Related, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov is a fantastic, timeless science fiction short story.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Big bang happened once, why not twice?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Well, you can't unmix paint. Entropy unfortunately only goes in one direction.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I feel the same. Even if myself, my kids, earth, even the human race as we know it won't be there anymore, it's kind of sad. Slow inevitable doom. Carpe diem I guess.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Meh. Honestly I’m glad it will all end.

Everything is pointless and nothing matters. Eventually.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

On a cosmic scale, I find it kind of comforting that everything is eventually going to be gone. It makes it more important to enjoy one's time in the now.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The problem with this idea is that everything was already gone before the universe started, and here we are.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Considering we don’t understand dark energy and dark matter. I hold hope that there are other possibilities.

However, all hail the god of entropy. The one thing that dictates and impacts every moment of our existence

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If it makes you feel better, if ideas about multiple universes end up being real, it's possible a sufficiently advanced species might be able to "hop" universes and escape heat death that way

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

This was kind of the whole point of the JWST so it's a good thing!

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I actually had no idea that an irregularly expanding universe was the conflicting theory.

From my armchair astrophysicist perspective, I just assumed it couldn't be a perfect sphere due to the background radiation map.

Obviously scientific method and all, but this is super cool that for realisies it might change some minds.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

The summary is a lie. The crisis isn't over it expanding differently in different places. It's that two measurement methods give different results.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I think it's important to add that those two different methods are on vastly different length scales

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I guess going by CMB radiation isn't that reliable, since the speed of light is a constant, but we don't know squat about dark energy
plus, something as big as the universe, gotta make allowances for the butterfly effect

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Is it because our universe is actually some type of organism and it has growth in different areas more than others?

[-] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The summary is misleading. We have two ways of calculating expansion that, according to our current understanding, should arrive at the same answer, but they're off by about 10%. It's more a question of how we look than where.

Edit: corrected "title" to "summary"

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
244 points (100.0% liked)

Space

7891 readers
8 users here now

News and findings about our cosmos.


Subcommunity of Science


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS