James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

BigThink | New JWST data confirms, worsens the Hubble tension

This galaxy, NGC 5584, is one of only a few dozen galaxies that are close enough to measure individual Cepheid variable stars within it, yet also have been home to a recently measured (in 2007) type Ia supernova. By observing Cepheid stars in this (and other) galaxies, JWST has just reduced some of the largest uncertainties affecting the distance ladder method, increasing the significance of the Hubble tension even further. How fast is the Universe expanding? Two major methods disagree. New JWST data, just released, strengthens this Hubble tension even further. The two major methods for measuring the cosmic expansion rate are fundamentally incompatible, with the early relic method yielding 67 km/s/Mpc and the distance ladder method revealing 73 km/s/Mpc. Many had hoped, with a new observatory and unprecedented data, that JWST would reveal errors in the distance ladder method, relieving this so-called "Hubble tension." But now that the JWST data is in, it just confirms earlier results to even greater precision and with smaller errors. The "Hubble tension" problem has just gotten worse. Read more at BigThink (click below).