this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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...there are two different ways to measure this cosmic expansion rate, and they don’t agree. One method looks deep into the past by analyzing cosmic microwave background radiation, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. The other studies Cepheid variable stars in nearby galaxies, whose brightness allows astronomers to map more recent expansion.

You’d expect both methods to give the same answer. Instead, they disagree—by a lot. And this mismatch is what scientists call the Hubble tension...Webb’s data agrees with Hubble’s and completely rules out measurement error as the cause of the discrepancy. It’s now harder than ever to explain away the tension as a statistical fluke. This inconsistency suggests something big might be missing from our understanding of the universe - something beyond current theories involving dark matter, dark energy, or even gravity itself. When the same universe appears to expand at different rates depending on how and where you look, it raises the possibility that our entire cosmological model may need rethinking.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This is really exciting stuff, tbh. It's kinda amazing that in a world where the frontiers have been settled, most fields have had a century to a thousand years of refinement, there are still areas of science where we have giant gaps in our knowledge, like scientists first discovering gravity, or the circumference of Earth.

Someone, perhaps someone who is already alive, is going to discover new math or observations that fundamentally change how we see the universe, with far reaching implications on cosmic exploration, travel the birth and death of our universe, and (I'm sure) many commercial applications.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I went to this talk last night https://www.edinburghscience.co.uk/event/the-beauty-of-falling/ - Prof Claudia de Rham of Imperial College London spoke on the latest theories about the structure of the universe. I wish I could pass them on, but sadly my grasp was fleeting. Timey wimey stuff. Something something energetic vacuum! She has written a book: https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9780691237480/the-beauty-of-falling