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] 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Isn’t this what has been attributed as evidence supporting the timescape model? It’s an alternative explanation for dark energy, in which it argues time is not the same in all places of universe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

I don't think this is considered evidence supporting Timescape yet, but it could be and it is being investigated.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Every time they call the telescope just "James Webb" I wonder why they care what a comedy special (of comedians nobody knows about) director thinks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Ick! What is this glass almanac thing? Try phys.org

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The hologram explanation is looking more attractive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

This sounds interesting? Where did you read this?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

It's one of the theories of the existence of the universe. At first, it was dismissed as science fantasy, but some have begun to take it seriously as it explains a lot of the unexplained. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-our-universe-a-hologram-physicists-debate-famous-idea-on-its-25th-anniversary1/

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

For more info:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

But this is a part of String Theory and that has quite a few issues. Still very interesting!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Maybe when they were coding the CMB, the simulation designers made a slight error in factoring in the effects of universal expansion. Maybe they even realized the error, but thought, "who is going to build a billion dollar telescope and have it spend years investigating the details of the skybox?"

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