A ground-breaking discovery has been made that could change the way we think about the universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched into space in December 2021, acting as a more advanced version of the legendary Hubble telescope, which was launched in 1990.
Ever since JWST was propelled into space, it has made numerous huge discoveries, including advances in the search for life beyond our planet.
The revolutionary telescope has captured several high resolution images of galaxies, stars being formed, early stage black holes and more.
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Aside from cool, sharper photos, JWST has also recently made a significant contribution to physics, seemingly disproving what the Hubble telescope found all those years ago.
Now, astronomers have used both the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to confirm one of the outstanding problems in physics.
That is, that the universe actually appears to be expanding at varying speeds, depending on where we choose to look.
This is called the Hubble tension, and could potentially upend the world of cosmology for good.
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JWST last year confirmed the initial measurements carried out by Hubble in 2019, solidifying the theory.
On 6 February, the study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, highlighting that our understanding of the universe could be very, very wrong.
Lead study author Adam Riess, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University stated: "With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe."
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Reiss, alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt, won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering dark energy in 2011, which is the little-known force that is behind the universe's continued expansion.
There are two ways to figure out the Hubble constant - a value that describes the universe's expansion rate.
The first way is basically through the Big Bang's leftovers, which are tiny fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.
From 2009 to 2013, astronomers figured out that this figure was roughly 46,200 mph per million light years, or about 67 kilometres per second per megaparsec (km/s/sMpc).
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The second way is to use pulsating stars, also known as Cepheid variables.
Astronomers use the outer layers of dying stars, which flicker like broken street lights sin the distance.
By measuring its brightness, these Cepheid stars can be chained into a 'cosmic distance ladder', which allows us to look further into the past of the universe.
Using this, an exact number can be pinpointed that reveals the speed of the universe's expansion.
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By using the second method, Reiss and his colleagues found that the universe's expansion rate is actually about 74 km/s/Mpc, a value much higher than the previously thought 67 km/s/Mpc.
The world of Cosmology has been catapulted into uncertainty following this discovery.
Nobel Prize winning astronomer David Gross called it a 'crisis' at a 2019 conference.
Initially, the discovery was thought to be a measurement error by confusing Cepheid stars with regular stars in the Hubble's lens, but the much more accurate JWST disproved these claims, confirming the new discovery.
Reiss observed 1,000 other Cepheid stars in five separate galaxies as far away as 130 million lightyears from Earth, further confirming their findings on the Hubble constant.
He explained: "We've now spanned the whole range of what Hubble observed, and we can rule out a measurement error as the cause of the Hubble Tension with very high confidence,
"Combining Webb and Hubble gives us the best of both worlds. We find that the Hubble measurements remain reliable as we climb farther along the cosmic distance ladder," the astronomer revealed.
Topics: News, Science, Space, James Webb Space Telescope
Joshua Nair