The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most powerful instruments known to the world when measuring galaxies. Hubble is currently engaged in an enormous amount of work – determining how fast our universe is expanding. Now, new discoveries suggest that the universe is not expanding at a steady rate. The US space agency NASA points out that something “different” is happening in the universe based on Hubble’s data, because of the discrepancies in the rate of expansion of the universe around us and observations made after the Big Bang.
When the measurements of Edwin B. Hubble and Georges Lemitre suggested that the galaxies outside of us were not static, the study of how the universe expanded and began ten decades before 1920, NASA explains in a blog post that in fact, these galaxies are moving away from us .
Hubble said these galaxies move at random, increasing speeds. The farther a galaxy traveled from Earth, the faster it receded. Scientists have been trying to understand this phenomenon and measure the rate of this expansion. However, with Hubble’s data now available, the said expansion seems to be even faster than the models predicted.
Observations indicate that it is 73 (plus or minus 1) kilometers per megaporce, instead of the expected 67.5 (plus or minus 0.5) kilometers per second.
Scientists are currently studying the strange phenomenon of “milepost markets” in space and time. These can be used to monitor the rate of expansion of the universe as distant galaxies move further away from us. NASA says Hubble has measured more than 40 milepost markers since the telescope was launched in 1990.
While new data has kicked off a new assessment of our understanding of the expansion of the universe, scientists are now awaiting data from the new James Webb Space Telescope, which will allow us to look deeper into the matter.
“The Web Space Telescope will extend Hubble’s work by showing these cosmic milepost markers at a greater distance or at a sharper resolution than Hubble can see,” NASA said.
