"One of the most difficult thing about being inside our own Universe is that we only get one perspective - from our location, here on Earth - to measure it from. We are stuck within our Solar System, as are all of our measuring tools and instruments, which in turn is stuck within the Milky Way, the Local Group, and our corner of the local Universe."
"We are stuck living in the now: 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang has occurred. If we want to understand what this Universe is, including what it's made of, where it came from, and how it came to be the way it is today, this is the only perspective, location, and time at which we're capable of making observations from. Despite how powerful it is, it's also extraordinarily limiting."
Observation constraints arise from a single vantage point inside the Solar System, Milky Way, and local Universe, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Scientists combine every measurement technique, independent observation, theoretical tool, and high-quality data to infer cosmic properties. Determining the Universe's expansion rate yields conflicting results: early-universe 'relic' methods (CMB, BAO) give ~67 km/s/Mpc, while local distance-ladder methods give ~73 km/s/Mpc. This discrepancy, the Hubble tension, represents a major unresolved problem in cosmology. A new JWST program plans to use multiply-lensed supernova observations as a novel approach that could provide fresh insight into the expansion rate.
Read at Big Think
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]