Researchers have found that the universe is expanding at a completely different rate than previously thought, a groundbreaking discovery that could undermine our current understanding of the cosmos.
in a new paper published in the astrophysics journalAn international team of researchers studied the light emitted by 1,550 different supernovae, some close to our own Milky Way galaxy and others located in the farthest reaches of the universe, millions of light-years away, to study the composition and rate of expansion of the universe.
In doing so, their Pantheon+ analysis includes some of the most comprehensive measurements ever made.
“With these Pantheon+ results,” Dillon Brout, co-author and researcher at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, saying the Harvard Gazette“We are able to put the most precise constraints on the dynamics and history of the universe to date.”
Excitingly, their findings corroborate some existing theories about Dark affaira mysterious but abundant substance that scientists have yet to directly observe or measure; and dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy that behaves like the opposite of gravity.
His research posits that the entire universe is made up of roughly two-thirds dark energy and one-third matter, the latter of which is made up primarily of dark matter.
“We’ve reviewed the data,” continued Brout, “and can now say with more confidence than ever how the universe has evolved over the eons and that the best current theories about dark energy and dark matter hold up.”
But at the same time, the study fails to remedy one of the biggest discrepancies in the field of astronomy: the Hubble strain, or the apparent mismatch between previous, locally measured estimates of the universe’s expansion rate and the measurement derived from the cosmic microwave backgroundelectromagnetic remnants of the earliest known stages of the universe.
The new research suggests that the universe is expanding at about 160,000 miles per hour, while previous measurements that take the cosmic microwave background into account concluded that it was expanding much slower than that.
And while Pantheon+ may have confirmed the discrepancy, it didn’t exactly provide any answers.
“We thought it might be possible to find clues to a novel solution to these problems in our data set,” said Brout. Harvard Gazette“But instead we found that our data rules out many of these options and that the deep discrepancies remain as stubborn as ever.”
“Certainly indicates,” the researcher saying Agence France-Presse“that potentially something is fishy with our understanding of the universe.”
Clearly, Pantheon+ has opened more doors than it has closed. But that, in a way, is the beauty of scientific process — the research done by Brout and his team could yet lay the groundwork for a number of future discoveries.
“We as scientists thrive on not understanding everything,” continued Brout. AFP. “There is still potentially a huge revolution in our understanding, potentially in our lifetimes.”
READ MORE: The most accurate accounting yet of dark energy and dark matter [The Harvard Gazette]
More on astronomers getting things wrong: Scientists Baffled That James Webb Is Seeing Things That Shouldn’t Be There
