The Argument of Space’s Expansion by Wesley Henshaw
Recently, there have been new developments in heated debates about the Hubble Constant. Created by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s, the Hubble Constant refers to his finding that the universe is moving away from Earth at a rate proportional to distance. In other words, the farther away a galaxy is, the more it is accelerating away from Earth (or wherever you’re observing the universe’s movement from). His original estimate was 342,000 mph per million light-years, but modern scientists say this was 10 times too high.
That brings us to the current argument, what is the value of this constant? There have been two schools of thought for the longest time, one that determined the constant by looking at something called the cosmic microwave background (or CMB) and one that looked at something called Cepheid variables. These two already disagreed on what the Hubble constant is, but now a third idea has come about. This measure involves the ideas of the fabric of space-time, specifically by using the fact that quasars, black-hole-powered entities, are so massive that light gets warped around them. By looking at the time delay from various quasars, this new school of thought calculated its own Hubble constant that was closer to the Cepheid variable than the CMB measurement, but still different. Overall, the issue is still that no one knows how fast space is expanding and no one wants to admit they’re wrong, so no one can agree on anything. Some suggest that researchers might have to create new physics to explain this issue.
Questions:
Why might it matter how fast the universe is expanding? What does this tell us about our universe?
How does this display math and science’s relationship?
What might the ramifications be of introducing “new physics?”
https://www.livescience.com/hubble-constant-crisis-deepens.html (original article)
https://www.livescience.com/hubble-constant.html (picture and more info)
It does matter how fast the universe is expanding for many reasons. One reason is that it could help us calculate how far we have to travel to get to certain places. Figuring this out could also help us discover the approximate age of the universe.
ReplyDelete-Spencer Hyatt
I find it interesting that quasars are so massive that light is warping around them. It would help us all know how far celestial bodies are
ReplyDelete-Jessica DeMoor
When doing such large-scale calculations, such as the distance from the Earth to a different galaxy, it's vital to take the expansion of the universe into your calculations. If you don't factor it in, the trajectory of drones or ships would be completely off. This is why knowing the rate of the universe's expansion is so important.
ReplyDelete- Dorian Kavadlo
That's very fascinating, considering that eventually (hopefully) humans will be planning interstellar travel. As our scale gets larger, we'll need to do higher level calculations.
Delete- Wesley Henshaw
I think the change of physics in order to get this information will disrupt everything that we've ever known or been thought about space\math
ReplyDelete-raven barrett
jahanvi
ReplyDeleteI think that math and science have always been connected because if you need to find any distance in physics or any equation in chemistry you need to know/use math. its logical that math and science have a deep relationship.
Even though the universe is expanding, I think scientists should work on further researching the celestial bodies near us rather than branching out and knowing surface knowledge on a wide variety of topics. The objects in space closer to us are much more likely to interfere with our daily lives, so this should be science's main focus before attempting to calculate something we just don't know yet.
ReplyDelete-alyssa cearley
I found the fact that planets might be actually moving very interesting because I always questioned my self if the space it self is stationary or not.
ReplyDelete-Gyeom Kim
I think it matters that the universe is expanding because it is important to understand where we come from, answer the big questions.
ReplyDelete-David Carrasco
I had never heard that space is constantly moving away before this. It is a very interesting concept. I think the next questions we should ask are: why is space moving?, has it always been moving?, and will it ever stop moving? -Maddie Hoffmeyer
ReplyDeletei feel that it is very important for us to know how fast the universe is expanding, small changes in our universe can either affect us for the better or the worse. Ways we could get our answers in through science and math combined therefore we can test if these things can be calculated through knowledge we already have or new knowledge.
ReplyDelete-nyah
I find it very interesting that our universe expands, I am also scared for that reason. I have no idea what could happen if the universe expands to much but it is scary.
ReplyDelete~Trevor
I think it displays a great relationship between math and science because it shows how we can use the math from what we observe and measure to form scientific reasoning for how the universe works.
ReplyDelete-Nate