{"id":161552,"date":"2023-04-05T02:23:15","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/a-new-measurement-could-change-our-understanding-of-the-universe"},"modified":"2023-04-05T02:23:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:23:15","slug":"a-new-measurement-could-change-our-understanding-of-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/a-new-measurement-could-change-our-understanding-of-the-universe","title":{"rendered":"A new measurement could change our understanding of the universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-measurement-could-change-our-understanding-of-the-universe2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The universe is expanding, but how fast exactly? The answer appears to depend on whether you estimate the cosmic expansion rate\u2014referred to as the Hubble\u2019s constant, or H<sub>0<\/sub>\u2014based on the echo of the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) or you measure H<sub>0<\/sub> directly based on today\u2019s stars and galaxies. This problem, known as the Hubble tension, has puzzled astrophysicists and cosmologists around the world.<\/p>\n<p>A study carried out by the Stellar Standard Candles and Distances research group, led by Richard Anderson at EPFL\u2019s Institute of Physics, adds a new piece to the puzzle. Their research, published in <i>Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics<\/i>, has achieved the most accurate calibration of Cepheid stars\u2014a type of variable star whose luminosity fluctuates over a defined period\u2014for distance measurements to date based on data collected by the European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA\u2019s) Gaia mission. This new calibration further amplifies the Hubble tension.<\/p>\n<p>The Hubble constant (H<sub>0<\/sub>) is named after the astrophysicist who\u2014together with Georges Lema\u00eetre\u2014discovered the phenomenon in the late 1920s. It\u2019s measured in kilometers per second per megaparsec (km\/s\/Mpc), where 1 Mpc is around 3.26 million light years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The universe is expanding, but how fast exactly? The answer appears to depend on whether you estimate the cosmic expansion rate\u2014referred to as the Hubble\u2019s constant, or H0\u2014based on the echo of the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) or you measure H0 directly based on today\u2019s stars and galaxies. This problem, known [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}