In the two years since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided stunning new observations of the expansion of the universe that may upend our understanding of the Standard Model of the Universe. The new discovery, provided by the James Webb Telescope, deepens the paradox known as the Hubble Tension, a dispute over the rate of expansion of the universe.
About a century ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble first discovered the balloon-like expansion of the universe and the accelerating tendency of all galaxies to move away from each other. This discovery led to our best current understanding of the origin of the universe—the Big Bang theory.
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But over the past decade, measurements of the universe’s expansion rate (the Hubble constant, H0) have varied significantly depending on where you look. Now, on the second anniversary of its launch, the James Webb Telescope has solidified this discrepancy with stunningly precise new observational data that threaten to upend the Standard Model of cosmology.
New physical theories need to revise or even replace this 40-year-old theory, which is currently a topic of discussion among many astronomers and physicists.
Adam Reese, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, led the new measurements from the James Webb Telescope. Rees is the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1998, he discovered the mysterious force that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe-dark energy.
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Can detect 100 times dark matter and is more sensitive to infrared light
The Keenan-Bugger-Cowie Supervoid is a massive, sparse region of galaxies that spans about 2 billion light-years. Scientists who support the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) theory believe that because our galaxy is at the center of this void, this may affect our measurements of the expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble constant). (Photo/University of Bonn)
This discovery forced cosmologists to rethink. According to Ofer Lahav, professor of astronomy at University College London, most people currently agree that the current composition of the universe is 5% ordinary atomic matter, 25% cold dark matter, and 70% dark energy. However, our knowledge of the latter two remains very limited.
What makes cosmologists even more troublesome is that according to different astrophysics methods, the universe seems to be expanding at different speeds. This contradiction is called the “Hubble tension”. Those looking at the early universe show that it expanded much faster than the Lambda-CDM model predicts.
Hubble Space Telescope observations of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reveal an impossibly high expansion rate, as high as 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec compared to Planck measurements.
So when the James Webb Telescope launches in December 2021, it will hopefully resolve this discrepancy. With a mirror diameter nearly three times that of the Hubble Telescope, the James Webb Telescope can detect 100 times fainter objects that the Hubble Telescope cannot see, and is far more sensitive than the Hubble Telescope in the infrared spectrum.
Although it currently appears that the Hubble tension may be intractable, cosmologists are still searching for answers. Upcoming cosmic microwave background experiments, such as the CMB-S4 project in Antarctica and the Simons Observatory in Chile, are looking for extremely precise measurement clues in the radiation of the early universe. Others will focus on dark matter maps produced by the European Space Agency’s Euclidean Space Telescope, or dark energy surveys by future Dark Energy Spectrometers.
However, these new findings pose unprecedented challenges to the Standard Model of cosmology, and cosmologists are working hard to understand this mystery.
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First image source: Getty Images cc By4.0
Image source: University of Bonn cc By4.0
Reference source:
1.James Webb Space Telescope: Origins, design and mission objectivesLifeScience
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