NASA says ‘something weird is going on’ after Hubble’s new finding on expanding universe

After decades of observation and data collection, scientists have confirmed that the universe is expanding ever since it emerged after the big bang. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble, after whom the Hubble space telescope is named, along with his colleague Georges Lemaître first presented the measurements that proved the cosmic expansion. Thanks to the duo's work, the following generations discovered the existence of 'dark energy' in 1998, an invisible mysterious force causing the universe to stretch. 

This discovery of dark energy was made about eight years after the Hubble telescope was launched in 1990. Ever since Hubble's commissioning, astronomers have conducted three decades of non-stop observation and the data gathered has now resulted in a new discovery. NASA, in its recent report, revealed that 'something weird is going on' as a team of astronomers, led by Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute has found a "discrepancy".

This discrepancy, NASA says is, between the expansion rate as measured in the local universe compared to independent observations from right after the big bang. So far, scientists have measured the rate of the universe's expansion using a unit of measurement called the Hubble Constant.

The universe will double in size in 10 billion years: NASA

Using the set of data stemming from the discrepancy, the astronomers have predicted that the universe will double in size in the next 10 billion years. NASA says that this prediction was made after Riess and his team narrowed down the cosmic expansion rate to a precision of just over 1%. Dr. Hubble had proposed the idea that the farther a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us.

However, in the initial days when Hubble became operational, the cosmic expansion rate was so uncertain that the results showed the universe's age to be eight billion years to 20 billion years as opposed to the current estimation of around 14 billion. Dr. Licia Verde, a cosmologist at ICREA and the ICC-University of Barcelona said as per NASA, "The Hubble constant is a very special number. It can be used to thread a needle from the past to the present for an end-to-end test of our understanding of the universe".