Science Snapshots: The Universe is Expanding Faster Than We Can Explain

By Capt. Stephen Peacock December 11, 2024

I'm still on quasi-baby leave from Peckerwood Publishing House (MANOR! - you, probably), but I saw this article and just had to weigh in on how our universe is expanding faster than a celeb coming off Ozempic and we don't know why.

I saw this article about how the Webb telescope has confirmed what previously was wondered to be something Hubble was making up: the universe is expanding faster than expected. Not-at-all-made-up image of Hubble celebrating to follow:

The James Webb Space Telescope, hereafter referred to as Webb because I'm lazy, has collected two years worth of data confirming the universe is expanding 8% faster than what astrophysicists think they know about the beginning and evolution of our universe. Apparently this has a name, called the Hubble Tension. But Webb is backing up his older brother now.

But Cappy, you might say. Expanding? What?

If you're not already familiar, the prevailing theory of how our universe started is called the Big Bang. Essentially, a very*10100 high mass and high temperature singular point and expanded out, that expansion being the start of our universe. We came up with this because as we work backwards from now to as far as we can see, 13.8 billion years give or take, and everything moved back to a single point. There are multiple Big Bang theories and to be perfectly honest, I don't understand most of it. Here's a doodle that might help.

From Wikipedia

The idea that the universe is expanding was first introduced in 1922 by Alexander Friedmann. It was supported with first evidence in 1929 by Edwin Hubble, who observed galaxies were moving away from Earth at a rate proportional to their distance from us. Independently, Georges Lemaître proposed that the universe emerged from a "primeval atom" in 1931, which leads to our modern ideas of the Big Bang. Note also that Georges Lemaître was a Catholic priest, so take that "Earth is 6,000 years old and the center of the universe" fanatics.

Interestingly, any time prior to the Big Bang it appears our current laws of physics (specifically, general relativity aka Einstein's theories) do not apply, so the birth of the universe is considered the time when the laws of physics do apply. Space is weird.

All that said, the Hubble telescope showed that the universe is expanding faster than these Big Bang models predict, and Webb backs it up, giving evidence that this isn't a measurement error. And we have no idea why.

Hypotheses being pursued include dark matter, dark energy, and dark radiation. I won't be getting into this, because I haven't had enough years to wrap my brain around it. Essentially, the universe behaves as if there is a lot more stuff in it than we can see, hence hypothesizing that there are "dark" versions of the stuff. Matter we see comprises 5% of the universe. Dark matter is thought to comprise 27%, dark energy 69%. Cynical me thinks this may just be something physicists made up instead of reworking how general relativity explains the universe or rethinking their idea of how gravity works. However, 100 years on from Einstein's general relativity we detected gravitational waves, so I'll reserve judgment for now.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting and now you had to read about it too. I can try to answer questions in the comments, but like I said - I'm like Zoidberg operating on a human here.

Have a nice Webb picture. And I'll leave you with a PSA that a scientific theory has lots of evidence to support it, and is much different than the colloquial use of theory, which is closer to the scientific use of hypothesis - an idea that can be tested and proven/disproven.