The universe is expanding faster than it used to, meaning it's about a billion years younger than we thought, a new study by a Nobel Prize winner says. And that's sending a shudder through the world of physics, making astronomers re-think some of their most basic concepts.
At issue is a number called the Hubble constant, a calculation for how fast the universe is expanding. Some scientists call it the most important number in cosmology, the study of the origin and development of the universe.
"It's looking more and more like we're going to need something new to explain this," said Riess, who won the 2011 Nobel in physics. Riess observed 70 Cepheid stars -- stars that pulse at a well-observed rate -- calculated their distance and rate, and then compared them with a certain type of supernovae that are used as measuring sticks. It took about two years for the Hubble telescope to make these measurements, but eventually Riess calculated an expansion rate of 74.
That team then fed those calculations into the standard model that astronomers use for the universe -- based on Einstein's general relativity, among other things -- factored in the known acceleration of the universe and came up with the smaller expansion rate. The end result: a 13.8-billion-year-old universe.
If that's the case, astrophysicists need to make adjustments in Einstein's general relativity theory.
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