December 23, 2024

Bridging the Cosmic Divide: Pioneering Measurement of Universe’s Expansion Reshapes Longstanding Debate

This image reveals the big galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5 +223, whose light took control of 5 billion years to reach us. The huge mass of the cluster is bending the light from more far-off objects. The light from these objects has actually been magnified and distorted due to gravitational lensing. The very same result is creating multiple pictures of the very same far-off items. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Rodney (John Hopkins University, USA) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (University of California Los Angeles, USA), P. Kelly (University of California Berkeley, USA) and the GLASS group; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields group; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH group; and Z. Levay (STScI).
University of Minnesota-led research could assist more accurately identify the Universes age.
A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team utilized a first-of-its-kind strategy to determine the growth rate of deep space, providing insight that might help more properly determine the Universes age and assistance physicists and astronomers better understand the universes.
Thanks to information from a magnified, multiply-imaged supernova, a team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities scientists has actually successfully utilized a first-of-its-kind technique to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. Their information supply insight into a longstanding debate in the field and could help researchers more accurately determine the Universes age and better understand the universes.

This image reveals the huge galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5 +223, whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us. The big mass of the cluster is flexing the light from more remote things. The exact same result is producing multiple images of the exact same remote things. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Rodney (John Hopkins University, USA) and the FrontierSN group; T. Treu (University of California Los Angeles, USA), P. Kelly (University of California Berkeley, USA) and the GLASS team; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields team; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH group; and Z. Levay (STScI).
” If new, independent measurements confirm this disagreement in between the 2 measurements of the Hubble continuous, it would end up being a crack in the armor of our understanding of the cosmos,” said Patrick Kelly, lead author of both documents and an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy.

The work is divided into two documents, respectively published in Science, one of the worlds leading peer-reviewed academic journals, and The Astrophysical Journal, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of astrophysics and astronomy.
In astronomy, there are two precise measurements of the expansion of deep space, also called the “Hubble consistent.” One is computed from nearby observations of supernovae, and the 2nd utilizes the “cosmic microwave background,” or radiation that started to stream freely through deep space quickly after the Big Bang..
However, these 2 measurements vary by about 10 percent, which has actually triggered prevalent debate amongst astronomers and physicists. If both measurements are accurate, that means scientists present theory about the makeup of the universe is insufficient.
” If brand-new, independent measurements verify this difference in between the 2 measurements of the Hubble continuous, it would become a rift in the armor of our understanding of the cosmos,” said Patrick Kelly, lead author of both documents and an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy. “The big question is if there is a possible concern with one or both of the measurements. Our research study addresses that by utilizing an independent, entirely different way to determine the growth rate of the Universe.”.
The University of Minnesota-led group had the ability to calculate this value utilizing information from a supernova found by Kelly in 2014– the first-ever example of a multiply-imaged supernova, indicating that the telescope captured four different pictures of the exact same cosmic event. After the discovery, groups worldwide predicted that the supernova would reappear at a brand-new position in 2015, and the University of Minnesota team discovered this additional image.
These multiple images appeared since the supernova was gravitationally lensed by a galaxy cluster, a phenomenon in which mass from the cluster magnifies and bends light. By utilizing the time delays in between the looks of the 2014 and 2015 images, the researchers had the ability to determine the Hubble Constant using a theory established in 1964 by Norwegian astronomer Sjur Refsdal that had previously been impossible to put into practice.
The scientists findings do not absolutely settle the argument, Kelly stated, however they do offer more insight into the problem and bring physicists closer to acquiring the most precise measurement of the Universes age.
” Our measurement remains in much better agreement with the worth from the cosmic microwave background, although– provided the unpredictabilities– it does not rule out the measurement from the regional range ladder,” Kelly stated. “If observations of future supernovae that are also gravitationally lensed by clusters yield a similar result, then it would identify an issue with the existing supernova worth, or our understanding of galaxy-cluster dark matter.”.
Using the exact same information, the scientists discovered that some current designs of galaxy-cluster dark matter were able to describe their observations of the supernovae. This allowed them to determine the most accurate models for the locations of dark matter in the galaxy cluster, a question that has long pestered astronomers.
Referrals:.
” Constraints on the Hubble constant from Supernova Refsdals reappearance” by Patrick L. Kelly, Steven Rodney, Tommaso Treu, Masamune Oguri, Wenlei Chen, Adi Zitrin, Simon Birrer, Vivien Bonvin, Luc Dessart, Jose M. Diego, Alexei V. Filippenko, Ryan J. Foley, Daniel Gilman, Jens Hjorth, Mathilde Jauzac, Kaisey Mandel, Martin Millon, Justin Pierel, Keren Sharon, Stephen Thorp, Liliya Williams, Tom Broadhurst, Alan Dressler, Or Graur, Saurabh Jha, Curtis McCully, Marc Postman, Kasper Borello Schmidt, Brad E. Tucker and Anja von der Linden, 11 May 2023, Science.DOI: 10.1126/ science.abh1322.
” The Magnificent Five Images of Supernova Refsdal: Time Delay and Magnification Measurements” by Patrick L. Kelly, Steven Rodney, Tommaso Treu, Simon Birrer, Vivien Bonvin, Luc Dessart, Ryan J. Foley, Alexei V. Filippenko, Daniel Gilman, Saurabh Jha, Jens Hjorth, Kaisey Mandel, Martin Millon, Justin Pierel, Stephen Thorp, Adi Zitrin, Tom Broadhurst, Wenlei Chen, Jose M. Diego, Alan Dressler, Or Graur, Mathilde Jauzac, Matthew A. Malkan, Curtis McCully, Masamune Oguri, Marc Postman, Kasper Borello Schmidt, Keren Sharon, Brad E. Tucker, Anja von der Linden and Joachim Wambsganss, 11 May 2023, The Astrophysical Journal.DOI: 10.3847/ 1538-4357/ ac4ccb.
This research study was moneyed mostly by NASA through the Space Telescope Science Institute and the National Science Foundation.
In addition to Kelly, the team consisted of scientists from the University of Minnesotas Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics; the University of South Carolina; the University of California, Los Angeles; Stanford University; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne; Sorbonne University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Toronto; Rutgers University; the University of Copenhagen; the University of Cambridge; the Kavli Institute for Cosmology; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; University of the Basque Country; the University of Cantabria; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (the Spanish National Research Council); the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science; the University of Portsmouth; Durham University; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Tokyo; the Space Telescope Science Institute; the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam; the University of Michigan; Australian National University; Stony Brook University; Heidelberg University; and Chiba University.