After thousands of years, we’re getting more consistent age estimates.
The clash between the night sky and the infinite universe became known as Olber’s paradox, named after Heinrich Olber, an astronomer who popularized it in 1826. An early version of the modern solution came, of all people, from the poet Edgar Allan Poe. We experience night, he speculated in his prose poem Eureka in 1848, because the universe is not eternal. There was a beginning, and not enough time has elapsed since then for the stars to fully light up the sky.
The universe was expanding, and Hubble clocked its expansion rate at 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, a constant that now bears his name. With the expansion of the universe in hand, astronomers had a powerful new tool to look back in time and gauge when the cosmos started to grow.
But measuring the distances to far-flung galaxies is messy business. A cleaner method arrived in 1965, when researchers detected a faint crackling of microwaves coming from every direction in space. Cosmologists had already predicted that such a signal should exist, since light emitted just hundreds of thousands of years after the universe’s birth would have been stretched by the expansion of space into lengthier microwaves.
“The most important thing accomplished by the ultimate discovery of the [CMB] in 1965 was to force us all to take seriously the idea that1990 to present: Refining the calculation The CMB let cosmologists get a sense of how big the universe was at an early point in time, which helped them calculate its size and expansion today. Scolnic likens the process to noting that a child’s arm appears one foot long in a baby picture, and then estimating the height and growth speed of the corresponding adolescent. This method gave researchers a new way to measure the universe’s current expansion rate.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
Similar News:Vous pouvez également lire des articles d'actualité similaires à celui-ci que nous avons collectés auprès d'autres sources d'information.
Hubble Space Telescope Spots Overlapping Spiral GalaxiesTwo overlapping spiral galaxies are pictured in this splendid image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The two galaxies, which lie more than a billion light-years from Earth, have the uninspiring names SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461. Although they appear to collide in this image, the alignment of the t
Lire la suite »
Webb Space Telescope shows Jupiter like Hubble never didNASA calls the JWST, Hubble Space Telescope's successor, and has equipped it with larger mirrors and equipment that lets us see space in better resolution.
Lire la suite »
Hubble Space Telescope captures stunning photo of a galaxy with a strange shapeSamantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News. When not writing or reading about science, Samantha enjoys traveling to new places and taking photos! You can follow her on Twitter Sam_Ashley13.
Lire la suite »
John Darnielle Is Listening: New Album, New Book, New ThoughtsA long and candid chat with the Mountain Goats’ frontman, on everything from the new album to TikTok.
Lire la suite »
Stars sparkle in various colors in this week's Hubble image | Digital TrendsClose out your week with a soothing view of the wonders of space, as provided by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Lire la suite »
New prime minister: Seven big questions for the new leaderFrom the cost of living to the NHS, BBC correspondents examine the issues awaiting in Downing Street.
Lire la suite »