Nobel Prize Winner Adam Riess: The Hubble Tension is Getting WORSE!

Chat with Nobel Prize winner Adam Riess about his team's newest measurements of the 'most important number in cosmology' the Hubble Constant. Using the Hubble Space Telescope for what it was meant to do, Adam's team continues to make ultra-precise measurements. We'll also explore the Hubble Tension, the future of Hubble now that the James Webb Space Telescope has deployed, and other cosmic conundrums. Adam is a brilliant teacher and a wonderful raconteur. Don't miss your chance to chat with a brilliant scientist about the most important topic in cosmology today! From the team: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-005 From CNN: Measuring the expansion rate of the universe was one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s main goals when it was launched in 1990. Over the past 30 years, the space observatory has helped scientists discover and refine that accelerating rate – as well as uncover a mysterious wrinkle that only brand-new physics may solve. Hubble has observed more than 40 galaxies that include pulsating stars as well as exploding stars called supernovae to measure even greater cosmic distances. Both of these phenomena help astronomers to mark astronomical distances like mile markers, which have pointed to the expansion rate. In the quest to understand how quickly our universe expands, astronomers already made one unexpected discovery in 1998: “dark energy.” This phenomenon acts as a mysterious repulsive force that accelerates the expansion rate. And there is another twist: an unexplained difference between the expansion rate of the local universe versus that of the distant universe right after the big bang. Scientists don’t understand the discrepancy but acknowledge that it’s weird and could require new physics. “You are getting the most precise measure of the expansion rate for the universe from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers,” said Nobel Laureate Adam Riess at the Space Telescope Science Institute and a distinguished professor at the Johns Hopkins University in Ba