Record measurement of universe suggests 'something is fishy' - FRANCE 24 English

The broad caller survey published successful The Astrophysical Journal further confirmed that determination is simply a important discrepancy betwixt 2 antithetic ways to estimation the velocity astatine which the beingness is expanding.

The survey said that astir 5 percent of the beingness is made up of what we mightiness deliberation of arsenic mean matter, portion the remainder is acheronian substance and acheronian vigor -- some of which stay shrouded successful mystery.

Dark energy, a hypothetical unit causing the beingness to grow astatine an ever-increasing rate, makes up 66.2 percent of the cosmos, according to the survey published successful The Astrophysical Journal.

The remaining 33.8 percent is simply a operation of substance and acheronian matter, which is besides chartless but whitethorn dwell of immoderate as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle.

To get astatine the astir precise limits yet enactment connected what our beingness is made up of, an planetary squad of researchers observed exploding stars called supernovae.

They analysed the airy from 1,550 antithetic supernovae, ranging from adjacent to location to much than 10 cardinal lights twelvemonth away, backmost erstwhile the beingness was a 4th of its existent age.

"We tin comparison them and spot however the beingness is behaving and evolving implicit time," said Dillon Brout of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and pb writer of the study, called Pantheon+.

Two decades of analysis

The survey updated the information from the Pantheon task a mates of years ago, stamping retired imaginable problems and nailing down much precise calculations.

"This latest Pantheon+ investigation is simply a culmination of much than 2 decades' worthy of diligent efforts by observers and theorists worldwide successful deciphering the essence of the cosmos," US astrophysicist Adam Reiss, 2011's physics Nobel winner, said successful a statement.

It was by observing supernovae backmost successful the precocious 1990s that Reiss and different scientists discovered the beingness was not lone expanding but besides doing truthful astatine an expanding rate, meaning galaxies are racing distant from each other.

"It was similar if you threw a shot up, and alternatively of the shot coming down, it changeable up and kept accelerating," Brout said of the astonishment of that discovery.

Pantheon+ besides pooled information with the SH0ES supernova collaboration to find what is believed to beryllium the astir close measurement for however rapidly the beingness is expanding.

They estimated the beingness is presently expanding 73.4 kilometres a 2nd each megaparsec, oregon 3.26 cardinal airy years. That works retired to beryllium astir 255,000 kilometres (160,000 miles) per hour, according to a Harvard-Smithsonian statement.

But there's a problem.

- The Hubble hostility -

Measuring cosmic microwave inheritance radiation, which tin look overmuch farther backmost successful clip to astir 300,000 years aft the Big Bang, suggests the beingness is expanding astatine a importantly slower complaint -- astir 67 kilometres per megaparsec.

This discrepancy has been called the Hubble tension, aft US astronomer Edwin Hubble.

The Pantheon+ results person raised the certainty of the Hubble hostility supra what is known arsenic the 5 sigma threshold, which means the discrepancy "can nary longer beryllium attributed to luck", Brout said.

"It surely indicates that perchance thing is fishy with our knowing of the universe," Brout told AFP.

Some possible, unverified theories for the discrepancy could see different benignant of acheronian vigor successful the precise aboriginal universe, primordial magnetic fields, oregon adjacent that the Milky Way sits successful a cosmic void, perchance slowing it down.

But for now, Brout said that "we, arsenic scientists thrive connected not knowing everything.

"There's inactive perchance a large gyration successful our understanding, coming perchance successful our lifetimes," helium added.

© 2022 AFP