![]() ![]() ![]() “A simple answer could be that our measurements are off, that’s always possible,” says Tucker. The original Hubble constant – 70.4 kilometres per second per megaparsec – had been calculated using a different method that relied on measurements of the afterglow from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. This means that the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years. They then used the parallax shift to calculate the Universe’s expansion rate, also known as the Hubble constant, and found it to be 73.2 kilometres per second per megaparsec (one megaparsec is equal to 3.26 million light years) with a very low uncertainty of just 2.4 per cent. This method is known as the cosmic distance ladder. The researchers, led by Nobel Laureate Dr Adam Reiss from the Space Telescope Science Institute and the John Hopkins University in the US, measured the movements of around 2,400 Cepheid stars and about 300 Type Ia supernovae over two and a half years. “It was a way to validate previous other measurements and make sure everything is in agreement - but it’s not.” Measurements could be off “What the project was to do was to measure accurately what our universe is doing right now, and if our model of the universe works and agrees with everything we should get what we expect,” ANU researcher Dr Brad Tucker tells SBS Science. The study was published today in Astrophysical Journal. We know that everything in our universe has been spreading out since the Big Bang, but a new study shows this expansion is happening faster than previously thought, and we don’t yet know why.Īn international team of researchers, including astrophysicists from Australian National University, used the Hubble Space telescope to study star movements and discovered that the universe is expanding around five to nine per cent faster than early in its life.
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