![]() At the time, astronomers didn’t even have the observations to settle the Great Debate about the size of the universe some even argued that the universe did not extend beyond the Milky Way.Įdwin Hubble entered the world of astronomy at this exciting time. In the early 1920s, mathematicians used Einstein’s equations for general relativity to predict that the universe should be expanding, but scientists had not yet proven this through observations. UChicago astronomer Wendy Freedman led a team that made a landmark measurement in 2001, which found a value of 72. The most recent precise measurements of the distances and movements of distant, exploding stars suggest a Hubble constant of 69.8 km/s/Mpc, but other reports have pushed the value as high as 74 km/s/Mpc.Īlthough these differences seem small, even a 2 km/s/Mpc discrepancy between predictions from physics and observations implies there could be something major missing from our current understanding of the universe. Based on the fundamental physics that scientists believe has driven the evolution of the universe, the Hubble constant should be around 68 km/s/Mpc-but this doesn’t match up to observations of the actual stars and galaxies astronomers see around us. However, the true value of the Hubble constant remains up for debate. a star or a galaxy) at a known distance from the Earth, the Hubble constant can be used to predict how fast it should be moving away from us. What are scientists doing to resolve it?įiguring out the true value of the Hubble constant is one of the greatest challenges in modern astronomy and could revolutionize our understanding of the universe-so scientists at the University of Chicago and many other institutions around the world are trying to pin down the number using multiple methods.įor an astronomical object (e.g.What are possible explanations for the discrepancy?.How was the Hubble constant discovered?.
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