Scientists from different institutions dedicated to the study of astronomy combined data from the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble to decipher one of the greatest mysteries of the Universe. How fast is the cosmos expanding? The experts were unable to establish a pattern, but they revealed that the measurements made previously were not wrong.
Astronomers did not understand how it was possible that the expansion speed of the Universe changed depending on the region towards which the observatories were pointed. They believed that there were errors in the calculations, since The results were different depending on the measurement method they applied.
After the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope they confirmed that there are no errors in the calculations: The formulas are correct, but the different results make us think that we are misinterpreting the laws of physics, as we know them.
Scientists' calculations, using observations of the Hubble Space Telescope, They managed to measure that the speed is 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec. However, resorting to other methods They found that the speed is 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec.
This difference, which visually may be minimal, when taken to a large scale, poses an important discrepancy.
““They wanted to find a human error,” the site reports. Xataka. But what they found was that they have always been right. So, although they still cannot measure the speed at which the Universe is expandingwhat they think is that possibly the laws of physics that they know are not true, and the entire way of understanding existence could change.
“We could be misunderstanding the universe,” said Adam Riess, a physicist who led research into the expansion of the Universe.
This discrepancy in the expansion speeds of the Universe is called the “Hubble Tension”. It is a formula that seeks to be solved to find out exactly how much the galactic terrain in which we live grows.
Finding the result of this calculation is an important goal in modern cosmology, as it would help improve our understanding of the fundamental physics of the universe and could have significant implications for current and future cosmological theories.