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NASA announced on Thursday that its Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has calibrated more than 40 “mile markers” of space and time.
Mile markers help scientists measure the rate of expansion of the universe, and astronomers have found – using data from HST and other telescopes – a mismatch between the rate of expansion measured in the local universe compared to independent observations after the Big Bang.
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The reason for the discrepancy remains unknown, but NASA said HST data supports new physics.
The rate of expansion of the universe is called the “Hubble constant” after Edwin Hubble.
He was the first to calculate the constant from his measurements of the stars in 1929 and could be used to predict how fast an astronomical object would move some distance from Earth.
However, the true value of the Hubble constant remains to be debated, according to the University of Chicago, Hubble’s alma mater.
Cepheids, or stars that periodically enlighten and darken, have long been the gold standard of cosmic mile markers. For longer distances, astronomers use exploding stars called type Ia supernovae.
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In a new paper, a national scientific collaboration called SH0ES (Supernova, H0, on the equation of state of the dark energy) measured 42 of the markers per mile on the Hubble supernova.
“The SH0ES project is designed to unite the universe by comparing the accuracy of the Hubble constant derived from the study of cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the dawn of the universe,” NASA said in a statement.
The results of the project are more than twice as many as the previous sample of space distance markers.
The agency also explained that the rate of expansion of the universe was projected to be slower than what Hubble actually sees, with a lower value for the Hubble constant calculated using the Standard Cosmological Model of the Universe and mission measurements. Planck of the European Space Agency than the Assessment of the SH0ES team.
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Nobel laureate Adam Rees of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the Johns Hopkins University, who runs SH0ES, said that – given the large size of Hubble’s sample of mile markers – there is only one in a million chances of astronomers being wrong.
NASA’s new Webb Space Telescope will expand HST’s work by displaying mile markers over longer distances.
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