Just How Fast is the Universe Expanding EXACTLY? ...and how do we know this?

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Deep Astronomy

Miscellaneous


We've known since Edwin Hubble's time that the universe has been expanding.  What we've only recently learned (like, in the past 10 years or so) is that the universe is accelerating as it expands.  Measuring this expansion rate has been problematic and while there are at least two different ways to make the measurement, they don't always agree. This episode features Ed Macauley from the University of Portsmouth UK, and a member of the Dark Energy Survey collaboration.  He and his team have been using a calibrated version of the 'standard candle' method of determining the rate of universal expansion, also known as the Hubble Constant or H0 to get a better answer that agrees with other measurement techniques. You can read Ed's paper on Arxiv.org here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.02376.pdf --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/deepastronomy/support