How big is our universe actually, a mystery?

 

This universe has been increasing since the beginning of the Big Bang, but at what degree? The answer to this query may disclose that everything we know about physics may be incorrect.

 

Let's start our discussion by saying that the universe is very massive. When we look in any course, the distance to the most observable regions of the universe is about 46 billion light years away. Its diameter is 540 sextillion miles. But that's truly just one of our best guesses. No one knows how huge the universe is.

 

This is because we can know the voyage of light since the beginning of the universe. Since the universe came into being about 13.8 billion years ago, it has speciously been increasing ever since. But since we cannot decisively regulate the age of the universe, it becomes problematic to measure the distance between the expanses of things we cannot see.

 

Astronomers have tried to use a special property called a 'Hubble constant' to help them in this attempt.

Astronomer Wendy Friedman of the University of Chicago says: The Hubble Constant is a measure of the universe that controls both its size and its age.

 

It helps us to contemplate about the universe in precisely the same way that it can be understood by the example of expanding a balloon. Just as the inflorescence of a balloon fills with air, so do the points on its shallow, so that as the distance between them begins to increase, so do the stars and galaxies are From our point of view, this means that the beyond away a galaxy is from us, the slighter it looks.

Inappropriately, the more astronomers measure these expansion numbers, the more likely it is that our guesses based on our understanding of the universe will be disproved. One technique of measuring it straight gives us a confident value while another measurement, which depends on our understanding of other standards of the universe, gives some dissimilar data. Either these measurements are incorrect or there is something incorrect with our understanding of the method the universe works.

 

But scientists now trust they are close to conclusion an answer, thanks in large part to new experiments and explanations expected at result out what Hubble Constant really is.

 

Rachel Baton, an astronomer at Princeton University, says: 'the engineering task we as cosmologists face is: How do we measure this extent as precisely as possible? To meet this contest, not only do we require obtaining data to measure it, but we also want to further test as many measurements as possible. From my point of view as a scientist, it senses like solving an anonymous, rather than a mystery story in the style of Agatha Christie.

 

Hubble Constant was first measured in 1929 by an astronomer named Edwin Hubble. It was set at 500 kilometers per second per mega second or 310 miles per second per MPC. This means that for every mega-second far away from Earth, the galaxies you see travel at speeds of up to 500 kilometers per hour.

 

The two opposite forces that contest with each other --- one is the force of gravity and the other is the centrifugal force that pursues to get out of orbit --- these two have played a important role since the battle of the initial days of the universe. Is

 

Over the course of a century since Hubble's first approximation of the degree of global expansion, this number has been studied downwards. Today's approximations put it at between 67 and 74 kilometers per second per MPC.

 

One thing to concern about is that the Hubble constant can be dissimilar because it depends on how you measure it.

 

Most Hubble Constant explanations state that there are two ways to measure its value --- one is to see how fast close galaxies are moving away from us while the other is to appearance at the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The first light produced at the time of the Big Bang.

 

We can still see this light today, but because of the distant parts of the universe, the light that is far away from us is dispersed in radio waves. These radio signals, first exposed by accident in the 1960s, provide us with the first vision into the reality of the universe.

 

Two opposing forces --- the force of gravity and the centrifugal force of radiation --- a game of early battle with the universe, which disturbed what is still the temperature in the background of the cosmic microwave Can be seen as a small difference.

 

Using these fences, one can then guess how fast the universe expanded directly after the 'Big Bang' and then on the standard model of cosmology to guess the speed of its expansion today. It can be applied. We have an excellent explanation for how this standard model universe began, what it is made of, and what we see about us today.

But there is a problem. When astronomers try to measure the Hubble constant by observing at how the surrounding galaxies are moving away from us, they determine something different.

 

"If the model is correct, you'd envision that the two values ​​--- and the standards ​​we measure locally from the early observations, would be the same," says Friedman. But they don't.

 

When the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite measured inconsistencies in the CMB, first in 2014 and again in 2018, the worth for the Hubble constant was 67.4 kilometers per second Was per MPC. But that is around 9 percent less than the measurements of astronomers like Friedman when observing at nearby galaxies.

 

Further measurements of CMB in 2020 using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope were taken from Planck's data. "It aids to control if there was a one-two-way problematic with Planck," says Batten. If the CMB's measurements were correct --- it reinforced one of two potentials: either the method of using light from close galaxies was obsolete, or the standard model of cosmology wanted to be changed.

 

The method used by Friedman and his colleagues takes advantage of a unusual type of star called the cepheid variable. Exposed about 100 years ago by astronomer Henrietta Levitt, the star changes its glare in days or weeks and becomes brighter. Levitt exposed that the brighter the star, the lengthier it would take for it to light up, then dim and then shine again. Now astronomers can study them in their bright state to tell precisely how bright a star really is. By measuring how bright it seems to us on Earth and by knowing light as a distance, it delivers a exact way to measure the distances of stars.

 

If the universe is expanding at a quicker rate than we guess, then it is less than the present 13.8 billion years old.

 

Friedman and his team used septic variables in adjacent galaxies to measure the Hubble constant using Hubble Space Telescope data. In 2001, they measured it at 72 kilometers per second per MPC.

 

Since then, the worth of studying native galaxies has been about this point. Using like stars, another team was to use the Hubble Space Telescope in 2019 to reach data at 74 kilometers per second per MPC. Then, just a few months later, another group of astrophysicists set out to get a value of 73 kilometers per second in MPCs. Used a dissimilar method to measure the light coming from.

 

If these measurements are precise, then they propose that the universe may be expanding faster than the degree of expansion that the philosophy of cosmology proposals under the standard model of cosmology. This could mean the model --- and with it our entire determination to label the basic nature of the universe --- and which wants to be reviewed. The answer is indeterminate at the instant, but if it is established, the inferences could be profound.

 

"This growth could tell us that there is somewhat missing in what we supposed was our standard model," says Friedman. We don't know yet why this is trendy, but this is a chance to discover. "

 

If the standard model is improper, it could mean that all the atomic particles or 'normal' matter, 'dark energy' and radiation, in comparative proportions to the models that have been made in our universe, are not all right and if the universe is really expanding faster than we supposed it would, then it is much less than the present accepted 13.8 billion years.

An alternative explanation for the variance in these values ​​is the part of the universe in which we live that is somehow dissimilar from the rest of the universe, and this alteration affects measurement. "It's far from a perfect analogy," says Baton, "but you can think of it this means, even if you go up or down a hill.

 

But astronomers trust that by saying what the Hubble constant is and which measurements are correct, they now seem to be coming to an assumption.

 

"It's astonishing, I think we're working to resolve this problem in a very short period of time, whether it's a year or two or three years," says Friedman. There are a lot of belongings that appear to be happening right now that will recover the correctness that we can measure to get to the bottom of it.

 

An ESA space observatory called Geha was hurled in 2013 and measures the locations of nearly a billion stars, and its measurements are very precise. Scientists are using it to measure the distances of stars using a method called 'parallax'. Just as wheat makes a point in the revolution of the sun to designate changes in place, just as if you close one eye and look at an thing with the other eye, it looks at a slightly different place. Comes. Therefore, by studying substances at different times of the year during its orbit, Geha will allow scientists to work out how fast the stars are moving away from our own solar system.