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NASA Space Earth Math News Science Technology

Universe Is Expanding Faster Than We Thought (gizmodo.com) 146

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Gizmodo: The Hubble Space Telescope has released some new numbers indicating that the rate of expansion of our universe is approximately 45.5 miles per second per megaparsec. It calculated this by measuring the distance between 19 faraway galaxies. Conceptually, the calculations show that space is expanding fast enough to essentially double the distance between our galaxy and our nearest neighbors in about 10 billion years. The new Hubble constant, which is 5 to 9 percent higher than previous estimates, does not match estimated expansion rates from the energetic leftovers of the Big Bang, thus causing a headache for cosmologists. It could mean that Einstein's theory of relativity is incomplete and/or there are processes pushing space apart that we have yet to account for.
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Universe Is Expanding Faster Than We Thought

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  • by JustOK ( 667959 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:14PM (#52237845) Journal
    so, it's going 11?
  • Time (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It could mean that time is a lot different than current physics accounts for.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      And the rent is too damn high.

    • Re:Time (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday June 03, 2016 @02:55AM (#52239917) Homepage

      It could more simply mean that inflation is not some sort of magical one-off event, but a fundamental part of the universe that simply varies in intensity with other parameters, such as density, and thus slows as the universe expands.

      A density-correlated inflationary dilation gravity is part of some theories of black holes - they let you construct a black hole suchly that there is no singularity, no disjoint, eternally-inaccessible region of spacetime, no firewall, or any of those other things that physics finds awkward. In such a regime, infalling matter/energy collapses into a topologically flat environment around the event horizon. When the black hole finally dissolves (an ungodly length of time into the future), it explodes/expands into empty universe around it, with the first part of that explosion/expansion dominated by inflation which quickly weakens as everything moves apart.

      Sound like anything in our past?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I am starting think they don't know what they are talking about.

    • Re:every year... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday June 03, 2016 @03:01AM (#52239941) Homepage

      Physicists gladly admit that there are some serious issues about the universe that they don't understand. Gravity, inflation, black holes... here, there's a full Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on major unsolved problems in physics.

      One of the things that astronomy is most useful for us helping gather data that will help us decipher the nature of what really drives the universe. We know a lot of it. A damned lot. But not everything, and finding those last missing pieces is the source of a vast amount of research across the world. Physicists don't hide their lack of understanding of these sorts of things, they talk about them with every chance they get. These are the things that pay their salaries. These are the things that could earn them the Nobel Prize if they can find and prove a solution.

      • I could lose myself in that page for a week. I had no idea there was that much about physics that couldn't be explained, though I had heard of many of these. I admit though, I am a computer guy, not a physicist.

  • by IHTFISP ( 859375 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:21PM (#52237907)
    Global Warming? ;-P
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Crashmarik ( 635988 )

      That joke soon to be illegal California

      http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]

      • That joke soon to be illegal California

        Not if it's really a joke.

        Senate Bill 1161, or the California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016, would have authorized prosecutors to sue fossil fuel companies, think tanks and others that have “deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change.”

      • by dave420 ( 699308 )

        You're the guy who couldn't figure out the difference between land and sea ice. I don't think you should be entering into this discussion without at least understanding the topic at hand. It's patently clear you are arguing from either a lack of understanding, your wishes, or a combination of both.

        • I don't think

          Absolutely certain that's the first accurate statement I have seen from you chief. You don't think.

          Keep working on it though, you may actually start thinking sooner or later.

  • Headache...or Clue? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:28PM (#52237953) Journal

    The new Hubble constant...does not match estimated expansion rates from the energetic leftovers of the Big Bang, thus causing a headache for cosmologists.

    I thought the real headache for cosmologists was that the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is what powers the accelerating expansion, was ~120 orders of magnitude different from the best calculations. If I have understood it correctly then this new result seems to suggest that the cosmological constant is not in fact a constant. So given that we clearly have absolutely no idea what is driving the expansion of the universe I don't see this new information as a headache but rather as clue which should help solve the puzzle of dark energy.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The cosmological constant definitely needs a re-think. It was a theoretical construct that made the math work. Our understanding of the universe is based largely on one assumption on top of another, on top of another and so on. We tend to think the laws of physics are uniform across the entire universe without a shred of proof that this is actually the case. But uniformity is required to make math work and as long as the math works our assumptions have to be right don't they? And then we add dark energy and

      • by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @09:41PM (#52238641) Journal

        We tend to think the laws of physics are uniform across the entire universe without a shred of proof that this is actually the case.

        Actually we have quite a lot of proof of that. Stars has the same spectra which show absorbtion and emission lines consistent with elements here on earth. Supernovae occur in other galaxies in apparently the same way that they do in ours. The nucleosynthesis of the Big Bang seems to work really well etc. There is considerable evidence that the laws of physics are apparently the same everywhere and, if they are not, then fundamental laws such as conservation of energy and momentum will not be correct since these rely on the symmetry of the laws of physics with respect to time and position respectively.

        Just because something we originally thought of as constant is perhaps not does not mean that the laws of physics must be different elsewhere all it means is that the laws of physics are not quite what we thought they were, or at least what we have is incomplete.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          That's all fine and dandy if we are measuring it right, but there seems to be at least a smidgen of confirmation bias - the candles keep getting blown out. Wow, that galaxy is ten times bigger than we thought it was (we think) because it was hiding behind all this gas (we think) and it's much further away (we think) and so on. Quicker, no slower, no steady state, up a bit, left a bit, take away the number you first thought of etc...

          • That's all fine and dandy if we are measuring it right, but there seems to be at least a smidgen of confirmation bias

            But there is plenty of evidence that we are not doing that as well! One of the biggest mysteries in physics at the moment is the nature of Dark Matter. The evidence of this comes from the rotation curves of stars orbiting galaxies as well as the cosmic microwave background radiation: both disagree with what we expect to see from the physics we know. Previous examples of new physics which was first spotted from astrophysical observation are neutrino oscillations (discovered by trying to explain the apparent

      • by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) on Friday June 03, 2016 @01:05AM (#52239571) Journal

        Today's understanding of the universe will probably be ridiculed in the future and get compared to when everyone accepted that the world was flat or that the Sun orbited the Earth.

        The relativity of wrong [tufts.edu] - Issac Asimov's reply to that old canard.

    • by EEPROMS ( 889169 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:56PM (#52238115)
      I think the issue here is space is far weirder than humanity can grasp as this time in its development especially considering humanity still hasn't grasped how complex inter-dimensional forces can be. What humanity views as dark mater may be in fact the result of dimensional space interaction causing one part of the standard dimensional space time bubble time to be slightly out of sync with another.
      • by EEPROMS ( 889169 )
        "at this time"
      • What humanity views as dark mater may be in fact the result of dimensional space interaction causing one part of the standard dimensional space time bubble time to be slightly out of sync with another.

        ...or perhaps there is just a particle we have not yet found. I can't disprove what you suggest but neither can I disprove that the Universe is not a simulation (as suggested by some US TV personality who used to be a scientist) and that Dark Matter is just a bug in the code. There are an infinite number of possible explanations for Dark Matter many of which will be fantastically preposterous.

        Occam's razor suggests that we start with the simplest ideas first. In this case that's solutions which require

      • by doug141 ( 863552 )

        Or, as NASA said today, dark matter may be black holes.(http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-scientist-suggests-possible-link-between-primordial-black-holes-and-dark-matter). If I were an astrophysicist, I might know why the author didn't just pull out a calculator and figure out how many 30 solar mass black holes would likely be near us (assuming uniform distribution) to account for average observed galactic rotational speed anomaly, and if the kepler telescope (or another) could be used to look f

      • Or perhaps that a cyclical big bang / big crunch is responsible for all of this. Think of a balloon inflating and deflating but as it does, it interacts with "stuff" along the way that latches on or stretches resulting in stretch marks that are re-stretched / interacted with afterwards. Who knows, maybe these stretch marks is what we think is dark energy pulling stuff around, weakened areas of the universe that expands faster than others since it has already expanded before which too much force.
    • The Hubble constant which is talked about here is the rate of change of the scale factor, divided by the scale factor (H = 1/a da/dt or d/dt (log a). You can think about it as the velocity of log(a) if you like. The matter contribution means that the universe is expanding.

      The cosmological constant contributes to the acceleration of expansion (dH/dt ~ (rho+P) ) where rho is the energy density, and P the pressure. For a pure cosmological constant, rho=P and so this is zero. Follow the calculus through and y

  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:29PM (#52237959)
    we move too fast.
    • Damn! I'd always put our lack of tangible evidence of visitors from other planets as proof of intelligent life in outer space
  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:29PM (#52237969)

    The next time a cosmologist starts to pontificate about the inevitable _________ death of the universe. Best to catch the older ones, so you can play just how many irrefutable endings to the universe there have been.

  • by l2718 ( 514756 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:40PM (#52238037)

    I wish slashdot headlines weren't so definite. This is a single paper adding incrementally to our knowledge; it is not a survey article describing the joint understanding of all cosmologists.

    For example, reading the paper, the galaxies hosting the supernovae in the sample had Cepheid--calibrated distances [wikipedia.org], in other words these are reasonably close objects (hence the reference to the local Hubble constant). While the paper discusses the possible effect of local motions of these 19 (!) galaxies, I don't think this discussion is sufficient. These proper motions are a more likely effect than issues with the CMB.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The Universe is just trying to get away faster from the people who shop at Walmart. Have you seen them?

  • ...the next singularity which is in the direction of maximum outward toward a single point. (think N-dimensional torus with a zero diameter doughnut hole)
    • That sounds like it will eventually hurt.

      When you're under a blackhole's event horizon, all directions lead to the singularity. If big enough, you can survive in one for a time.

      But eventually you're spaghetti. What if we're just in a really big black hole, and everything distant from us is just closer on that path to destruction? This could simply be what that looks like in a normal black hole of sufficient size.

  • by dfsmith ( 960400 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @07:48PM (#52238077) Homepage Journal
    Hmm. 45.5miles/s/Mparsec is 2.373e-18Hz; or F-63 for those people with 72-octave pianos.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    "Miles per second per megaparsec" is quite a surprising unit choice. Either use international unit system, or something else, but the mix is odd.

    What about "miles per second per peta-yards?"

  • Incomplete theory? Just fill in any gaps with God. Problem solved.
  • our universe is a big tent that supports all kinds of diversity!
  • A quick calculation says that's about 0.45 nanometres/sec over a distance of about 191,000 miles.

    So....how accurately can the distance to the moon be measured these days?

    • by TMB ( 70166 )

      The Earth-Moon system is bound, so not useful to measure the Hubble constant. By definition, a bound system is one in which gravity has overcome cosmological expansion.

  • And God Said "Let there be ligh... Dammit, the dratted kids turned the record player up to 78 speed again!"

  • The Great Simulator [slashdot.org] didn't bother to implement garbage collection.

  • And we've just leveled up. What else could it be?
  • Misguiding. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Friday June 03, 2016 @04:01AM (#52240133) Homepage Journal

    "double the distance between our galaxy and our nearest neighbors in about 10 billion years." - except we won't, because the two galaxies are gravitationally bound and the bond overcomes space expansion.

    It only works between superclusters of galaxies.

    The analogy of "dots on expanding balloon" is inaccurate. It's more like blotches of dried, hard glue - each blotch being a supercluster. The space expands in between them, they drift apart, but each blotch remains roughly the same size.

  • ... those galaxies are just running away from Justin Bieber.

  • ... Or perhaps there's something else causing the redshift of spectral lines we use to estimate the speed of remote galaxies. Seems like a much simpler explanation than dark energy and all the other epicyclic add-ons we're accruing.

  • the interpretations of QM-influenced infinite universe models. (modified QRE-based. One example: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... [sciencedirect.com] )

    My own personal interpretation of the model is that gravitational thinning between galactic clusters can encourage energetic decay (as-in particle decay) in thin regions between galaxies in order to create new galaxies. Once enough hydrogen has formed to create new stellar mega-nurseries stars form rapidly in proximity, drawing in more void-hydrogen and thus creating more st

  • What about the space at atomic scales? Is that expanding? Given the (shitty) units of 45 miles/s per mega-parsec; that is 2.4E-18 m/s/m. That rate is about 1/1000 diameter of a hydrogen nucleus per second. Or it would take 2000 years to double the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Is that actually happening; seems not?
  • I wonder....wouldn't both exhibit a similar effect?

  • Well, 45.5 miles/s/Mpc means that at a distance of ~4.1 Gpc the expansion speed exceeds c (~186000 miles/s). But the observable Universe has a diameter of ~28 Gpc. What am I missing here?

    • Think about when the light at the edge of your calculation was emitted, and where that place is now. The definition of the observable universe goes roughly as follows:

      Consider a photon emitted from a point at the big bang (really CMB, but we can substitute with a small change) that gets to us today. How far away is an object that was at rest (with respect to the homogeneous cosmological spatial slice) at that position now?

      It isn't as simple as multiplying up these numbers, as the Hubble parameter changes ov

      • Hope that helps!

        A great deal actually. Thanks! I always get tripped-up trying to think about the expansion of the Universe. I imagine it's not really as hard as I manage to make it. *sigh*

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • are we all just shrinking?

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.

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