For decades, scientists have been grappling with what is considered to be the most fundamental question about the cosmos: How fast is our universe expanding?
The rate of expansion influences everything from how galaxies form to how they might one day drift apart.
Determining the expansion rate of the universe, a number called the “Hubble constant,” shapes our entire understanding of the cosmos, its age, and its ultimate fate.
“Hubble tension” expansion conundrum
Unfortunately, though many brilliant minds have dedicated their lives to finding the answer to this riddle, all who have tried thus far have failed, running repeatedly into a brick wall that has come to be known as the “Hubble tension.”
Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has been at the forefront of this debate. “With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility that we have misunderstood the universe,” Riess admitted. READ MORE...