I am facinated by discoveries that challenge our view of space. The astounding size makes our small existence that much more profound. The opposite equally captures my imagination and that ia the revelations made in the ultra small micro-atomic world are strange on a “cosmic” scale.
Today I came across an article that discusses our limited understanding of the expansion of the universe. There are inconsistencies made far more accute with the James Webb Telescope. These inconsisteencies are called “The Hubble Tension”. The astromener, Edwin Hubble, discovered the expansion of the universes by studing recessional velocities (the further an object is from earth the faster it moves away from us). The article by Sean Cate entitled “James Webb Telescope Makes Eerie Discovery About Universe That Humanity Got ‘Seriously Wrong’” touches on methods used to determine expension velocities. I am impressed by how astronemers use differenct methods to eplore the subtlties of space, time, gravity, light, etc, etc. One of the first method mentioned is the Cepheld Variable Stars, where they examine the pulsations and luminosities of these stars. The article exposes that several different methods are used to explore distant object velocities, eg, gathering details on Supernova’s, Baryon Accoustic Oscillations (distribution patterns of matter), and one of the more “traditional” methods, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. The problem is that these different measurements gives us different results and we first explain that by suggesting that our measurements are not refined enough. The James Webb Telescope is dismantling that eplanation and revealing that these different measurement findings are in fact significant and unexplainable. Even taking into consideration exotic theories like dark energy and dark matter.
You can easily find yourself crawling down the Alice the Wonderland Rabbit Hole without a flashlight.
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