Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe. Next nonsense

[Frannie]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

Edited, posting the entire article is a copyright violation

 

[Augustine_]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

Science has never been easy. Are you upset because it's not easy?

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

LOL!..as if you understand one word in three of what you copied and pasted! have you somehow appointed yourself the Science Troll??

 

[shockedcanadian]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

Sciences doesn't always have one, perfect answer. Discrepancy occurs between measurement instruments, disagreed theories and other various factors. Moreso, a theory today might become debunked, Even a law can be proven inaccurate.

 

[Dekster]

No big thing. The universe is probably twisting.

 

[fncceo]

No big thing. The universe is probably twisting.

Who isn't?

 

[fncceo]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

Hubble's Constant is only constant in fixed time.

 

[beautress]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

LOL!..as if you understand one word in three of what you copied and pasted! have you somehow appointed yourself the Science Troll??

She's a Renaissance Woman, Mr. Fleegle. You might learn something from people's non-political interests.

Here's a good place for you to start: Astronomy Picture of the Day

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

LOL!..as if you understand one word in three of what you copied and pasted! have you somehow appointed yourself the Science Troll??

She's a Renaissance Woman, Mr. Fleegle. You might learn something from people's non-political interests.

Here's a good place for you to start: Astronomy Picture of the Day

***smiles*** were it so....but frannie has little to teach in that regard..I've encountered, her, you say? before...not very bright..just a copy and paste sort of person..who is unable to actually cogently present information.

I should be a bit miffed that you think I'm a science naif..but such is the unkindness of an uncertain universe. The article was informational.

frannie comes across as a science denier ...and seems to be out for the trolling. LOL..now i get it..Renaissance as in...level of proficiency---i agree.

But as always..thanx for the advice.

 

[james bond]

Science has never been easy. Are you upset because it's not easy?

He's upset because he claims 85% of the universe is missing, but doesn't want to admit its dark energy which means its not really missing. Something (dark energy? God?) is continuing to expand the universe..

 

[beautress]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

LOL!..as if you understand one word in three of what you copied and pasted! have you somehow appointed yourself the Science Troll??

She's a Renaissance Woman, Mr. Fleegle. You might learn something from people's non-political interests.

Here's a good place for you to start: Astronomy Picture of the Day

***smiles*** were it so....but frannie has little to teach in that regard..I've encountered, her, you say? before...not very bright..just a copy and paste sort of person..who is unable to actually cogently present information.

I should be a bit miffed that you think I'm a science naif..but such is the unkindness of an uncertain universe. The article was informational.

frannie comes across as a science denier ...and seems to be out for the trolling. LOL..now i get it..Renaissance as in...level of proficiency---i agree.

But as always..thanx for the advice.

Mr. Fleegle, "..unable to actually cogently present information..."​

Oh, she doesn't agree with you?

Mr. Fleegle: "...you think I'm a science naif..."
​

I didn't say that. I am an afficianado of natural science and other science museums, Mr. Fleegle, particularly ornithology, lepidoptera websites, astronomy (no, not astrology), zoological sciences, microbiology, nutritional biochemistry, anatomical biochemistry, and oceanography. In 10 years, I've participated in discussions of all of the above and others as well. No, I'm not interested in everything, just a lot of sciences. In the science of mathematics, I left that to my late husband and my late father, both of whose income was made by teaching others electrical safety, and slide rule calculations. Yes, I snored my way through a lot of mathematical lectures and meetings, but I did my share of mathematics calculating Pythagorean measurements when doing unusual sizes of 45 degree angles. to the tune of about 1500 quilts in my lifetime, and I'm working every week on 2,000+ and trust me, I never have to go to another fabric shore to complete my little goal. My quilts average 1200 pieces each, many of them based on curves and applique as well as straight line piecing (including hexagonal-inspired angles, large and small. Additionally, I've written and published four books employing mathematics in quilting (plane geometry), three of which were Copyrighted by me and my son through the United States Library of Congress.

That said, plese lighten up, I'd be the last person here to call you puerile, sir. You're a little left field, but that's forgivable considering the theatrics Democrats go through with to present a lie as the truth, i.e., "President Trump colluded with Russia, the Hoax." You may not be acquainted with the thespian arts of creating a false narratives to take peoples' minds off their boring or sad reality. If you believed the liar Christine Blasey-Ford, welcome to the world of giving such a good performance only those of us who are acquainted with body language were among the first to contact our Senators and Congressmen how little we appreciated sponsors Senator Feinstein, Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (wink-wink) for knowingly putting this dilly-brained false narrative prophet/college instructor teaching Calfornia youth that it's okay to politicize elections using naratives, and that the truth does not damn matter.

I say, the truth does matter, and no, I do not know all that much about the mathematical sciences except for what I use. I left my college A's in advanced mathematics to the dear professors who appreciated my work in problem solving and moved on to take care of my family's needs when my adolescent daughter didn't show up at home twice in the same week after school, 200 miles away from my university quarters. My daughter never guessed that it was because I loved her more than the opportunities my degree would have given our family, but kids will be kids, and they do unconscionable things to their parents whose only goal was to keep them out of a life of misery and regret and work on the positives. If I had to do it all over again, I'd take her future over mine as the more important of two agendas, even if she connived to make my life a living hell for not allowing her to ruin herself in junior high or high school. Sadly, she turned to alcohol when she left home one day after she turned 18 because her father and I didn't succumb to her never-forgive devices for accountability in meeting very reasonable curfews and accountability for throwing rocks 3 stories up at her retirement-aged English teacher in high school who insisted she do homework timely. breaking a school safety window. Those things happened years ago. She has already retired from a career in police work several years ago and still is not speaking to me or her late father for years prior to his death. Instead of remembering happy times, she only recalled how unfair she thought our house rules were when we didn't back down and crater like cowards. I pray for her and her brother every night and their alternative lifestyles rather than conventional ones. But they made their choices, and it probably won't come home to them until they reach their 60s and have no children to care for them when their husbands pass away, the drooling, gastrointestinal issues, and forgetting starts, because they fly in the wind at vitamin supplements and good diet that turn those issues around, simply because using one's learning to survive and be happy is on neither of their goals and also because their parents encouraged it.

Pass the green tea, please. lol

 

[Frannie]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

LOL!..as if you understand one word in three of what you copied and pasted! have you somehow appointed yourself the Science Troll??

How am I a troll for contributing a real concept to a science forum? If you understood one word of the article you would know that you are in denial of the unknown truth.

 

[Frannie]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

Sciences doesn't always have one, perfect answer. Discrepancy occurs between measurement instruments, disagreed theories and other various factors. Moreso, a theory today might become debunked, Even a law can be proven inaccurate.

Agreed. What bothers me are the TV shows stating current theory as fact and the fools not understanding fact from pretend

 

[TNHarley]

Meh. The science is not settled. We gain more knowledge every day.
Just relax.

 

[Frannie]

Meh. The science is not settled. We gain more knowledge every day.
Just relax.

I am more concerned with the stock market anyway, however.

Science used to just not know, now less is known than when nothing was known. This is illogical, but true

 

[hadit]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

You're complaining about imprecision, not them being totally wrong.

 

[hadit]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

Sciences doesn't always have one, perfect answer. Discrepancy occurs between measurement instruments, disagreed theories and other various factors. Moreso, a theory today might become debunked, Even a law can be proven inaccurate.

Agreed. What bothers me are the TV shows stating current theory as fact and the fools not understanding fact from pretend

Except it's not pretend. It's man attempting to explain his surroundings, and the universe is a strange place to understand.

 

[Frannie]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

You're complaining about imprecision, not them being totally wrong.

So you believe that the universe is a computer simulation

Lol

 

[Frannie]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

Sciences doesn't always have one, perfect answer. Discrepancy occurs between measurement instruments, disagreed theories and other various factors. Moreso, a theory today might become debunked, Even a law can be proven inaccurate.

Agreed. What bothers me are the TV shows stating current theory as fact and the fools not understanding fact from pretend

Except it's not pretend. It's man attempting to explain his surroundings, and the universe is a strange place to understand.

There is nothing strange about the universe, the strange thing is that we do not know what we are

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe

None of the numbers match, why? because as I said no one has even the least clue what they are looking at so every week there is a new universe invented.

There's a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a "crisis."

The problem centers on what's known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists' units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc).

If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.

What is a layperson supposed to make of this situation? And just how important is this difference, which to outsiders looks minor? In order to get to the bottom of the clash, Live Science called in Barry Madore, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and a member of one of the teams undertaking measurements of the Hubble constant.

The trouble starts with Edwin Hubble himself. Back in 1929, he noticed that more-distant galaxies were moving away from Earth faster than their closer-in counterparts. He found a linear relationship between the distance an object was from our planet and the speed at which it was receding.

"That means something spooky is going on," Madore told Live Science. "Why would we be the center of the universe? The answer, which is not intuitive, is that [distant objects are] not moving. There's more and more space being created between everything."

Hubble realized that the universe was expanding, and it seemed to be doing so at a constant rate — hence, the Hubble constant. He measured the value to be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light years (501 km/s/Mpc) — almost 10 times larger than what is currently measured. Over the years, researchers have refined that rate.

Things got weirder in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers noticed that distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther away, than expected, said Madore. This indicated that not only was the universe expanding, but it was also accelerating in its expansion. Astronomers named the cause of this mysterious phenomenon dark energy.

Having accepted that the universe was doing something strange, cosmologists turned to the next obvious task: measuring the acceleration as accurately as possible. By doing this, they hoped to retrace the history and evolution of the cosmos from start to finish.

Madore likened this task to walking into a racetrack and getting a single glimpse of the horses running around the field. From just that bit of information, could somebody deduce where all the horses started and which one of them would win?

That kind of question may sound impossible to answer, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying. For the last 10 years, the Planck satellite has been measuring the cosmic microwave background, a distant echo of the Big Bang, which provides a snapshot of the infant universe 13 billion years ago. Using the observatory's data, cosmologists could ascertain a number for the Hubble constant with an extraordinarily small degree of uncertainty.

"It's beautiful," Madore said. But, "it contradicts what people have been doing for the last 30 years," said Madore.

Over those three decades, astronomers have also been using telescopes to look at distant Cepheids and calculate the Hubble constant. These stars flicker at a constant rate depending on their brightness, so researchers can tell exactly how bright a Cepheid should be based on its pulsations. By looking at how dim the stars actually are, astronomers can calculate a distance to them. But estimates of the Hubble constant using Cepheids don't match the one from Planck.

The discrepancy might look fairly small, but each data point is quite precise and there is no overlap between their uncertainties. The differing sides have pointed fingers at one another, saying that their opponents have included errors throwing off their results, said Madore.

But, he added, each result also depends on large numbers of assumptions. Going back to the horse-race analogy, Madore likened it to trying to figure out the winner while having to infer which horse will get tired first, which will gain a sudden burst of energy at the end, which will slip a bit on the wet patch of grass from yesterday's rain and many other difficult-to-determine variables.

If the Cepheids teams are wrong, that means astronomers have been measuring distances in the universe incorrectly this whole time, Madore said. But if Planck is wrong, then it's possible that new and exotic physics would have to be introduced into cosmologists' models of the universe, he added. These models include different dials, such as the number of types of subatomic particles known as neutrinos in existence, and they are used to interpret the satellite's data of the cosmic microwave background. To reconcile the Planck value for the Hubble constant with existing models, some of the dials would have to be tweaked, Madore said, but most physicists aren’t quite willing to do so yet.

Hoping to provide another data point that could mediate between the two sides, Madore and his colleagues recently looked at the light of red giant stars. These objects reach the same peak brightness at the end of their lives, meaning that, like with the Cepheids, astronomers can look at how dim they appear from Earth to get a good estimate of their distance and, therefore, calculate the Hubble constant.

The results, released in July, provided a number squarely between the two prior measurements: 47,300 mph per million light-years (69.8 km/s/Mpc). And the uncertainty contained enough overlap to potentially agree with Planck's results.

But researchers aren't popping their champagne corks yet, said Madore. "We wanted to make a tie breaker," he said. "But it didn't say this side or that side is right. It said there was a lot more slop than everybody thought before."

Other teams have weighed in. A group called H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LICOW) is looking at distant bright objects in the early universe called quasars whose light has been gravitationally lensed by massive objects in between us and them. By studying these quasars, the group recently came up with an estimate closer to the astronomers' side. Information from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which looks at gravitational waves from crashing neutron stars, could provide another independent data point. But such calculations are still in their early stages, said Madore, and have yet to reach full maturity.

For his part, Madore said he thinks the middle number between Planck and the astronomers' value will eventually prevail, though he wouldn't wager too much on that possibility at the moment. But until some conclusion is found, he would like to see researchers' attitudes toned down a bit.

"A lot of froth has been put on top of this by people who insist they're right," he said. "It's sufficiently important that it needs to be resolved, but it's going to take time."

Well that's a whole lot of words to say, we just don't know...………………..

But you do right?

LOL!..as if you understand one word in three of what you copied and pasted! have you somehow appointed yourself the Science Troll??

She's a Renaissance Woman, Mr. Fleegle. You might learn something from people's non-political interests.

Here's a good place for you to start: Astronomy Picture of the Day

***smiles*** were it so....but frannie has little to teach in that regard..I've encountered, her, you say? before...not very bright..just a copy and paste sort of person..who is unable to actually cogently present information.

I should be a bit miffed that you think I'm a science naif..but such is the unkindness of an uncertain universe. The article was informational.

frannie comes across as a science denier ...and seems to be out for the trolling. LOL..now i get it..Renaissance as in...level of proficiency---i agree.

But as always..thanx for the advice.

Mr. Fleegle, "..unable to actually cogently present information..."​

Oh, she doesn't agree with you?

Mr. Fleegle: "...you think I'm a science naif..."
​

I didn't say that. I am an afficianado of natural science and other science museums, Mr. Fleegle, particularly ornithology, lepidoptera websites, astronomy (no, not astrology), zoological sciences, microbiology, nutritional biochemistry, anatomical biochemistry, and oceanography. In 10 years, I've participated in discussions of all of the above and others as well. No, I'm not interested in everything, just a lot of sciences. In the science of mathematics, I left that to my late husband and my late father, both of whose income was made by teaching others electrical safety, and slide rule calculations. Yes, I snored my way through a lot of mathematical lectures and meetings, but I did my share of mathematics calculating Pythagorean measurements when doing unusual sizes of 45 degree angles. to the tune of about 1500 quilts in my lifetime, and I'm working every week on 2,000+ and trust me, I never have to go to another fabric shore to complete my little goal. My quilts average 1200 pieces each, many of them based on curves and applique as well as straight line piecing (including hexagonal-inspired angles, large and small. Additionally, I've written and published four books employing mathematics in quilting (plane geometry), three of which were Copyrighted by me and my son through the United States Library of Congress.

That said, plese lighten up, I'd be the last person here to call you puerile, sir. You're a little left field, but that's forgivable considering the theatrics Democrats go through with to present a lie as the truth, i.e., "President Trump colluded with Russia, the Hoax." You may not be acquainted with the thespian arts of creating a false narratives to take peoples' minds off their boring or sad reality. If you believed the liar Christine Blasey-Ford, welcome to the world of giving such a good performance only those of us who are acquainted with body language were among the first to contact our Senators and Congressmen how little we appreciated sponsors Senator Feinstein, Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (wink-wink) for knowingly putting this dilly-brained false narrative prophet/college instructor teaching Calfornia youth that it's okay to politicize elections using naratives, and that the truth does not damn matter.

I say, the truth does matter, and no, I do not know all that much about the mathematical sciences except for what I use. I left my college A's in advanced mathematics to the dear professors who appreciated my work in problem solving and moved on to take care of my family's needs when my adolescent daughter didn't show up at home twice in the same week after school, 200 miles away from my university quarters. My daughter never guessed that it was because I loved her more than the opportunities my degree would have given our family, but kids will be kids, and they do unconscionable things to their parents whose only goal was to keep them out of a life of misery and regret and work on the positives. If I had to do it all over again, I'd take her future over mine as the more important of two agendas, even if she connived to make my life a living hell for not allowing her to ruin herself in junior high or high school. Sadly, she turned to alcohol when she left home one day after she turned 18 because her father and I didn't succumb to her never-forgive devices for accountability in meeting very reasonable curfews and accountability for throwing rocks 3 stories up at her retirement-aged English teacher in high school who insisted she do homework timely. breaking a school safety window. Those things happened years ago. She has already retired from a career in police work several years ago and still is not speaking to me or her late father for years prior to his death. Instead of remembering happy times, she only recalled how unfair she thought our house rules were when we didn't back down and crater like cowards. I pray for her and her brother every night and their alternative lifestyles rather than conventional ones. But they made their choices, and it probably won't come home to them until they reach their 60s and have no children to care for them when their husbands pass away, the drooling, gastrointestinal issues, and forgetting starts, because they fly in the wind at vitamin supplements and good diet that turn those issues around, simply because using one's learning to survive and be happy is on neither of their goals and also because their parents encouraged it.

Pass the green tea, please. lol

But of course....

My agreement, or lack of, is not the issue, for me---Rather I suspect the motives of above-mentioned poster.

BTW..do remember that I'm issue driven and neither a Democrat nor Republican.

The antics of politicians both amuse and infuriate me..but they do not captivate me.