WENDY FREEDMAN is staring down the universe. For 40 years, she has been digging into the largest secrets and techniques of the cosmos, patiently whittling down uncertainties to search out the worth of a quantity that defines the expansion of the universe, determines its age and seals its final destiny.
Freedman, who works at the University of Chicago, research the Hubble fixed, a quantity that represents how briskly the expansion of the universe is accelerating. We have recognized about this escalating expansion since 1929, when US astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the extra distant an object was, the sooner it appeared to be transferring away from us.
That is when issues bought tough. Pinning down the numbers requires correct measurements of astronomical distances. In Hubble’s period, astronomical photos have been taken by shining gentle by a telescope onto a photographic plate. Calculating distances from these photos was tough and imprecise.
In the Nineteen Eighties, as Freedman was ending her PhD, digital pictures was on the point of revolutionise astronomy as an entire, and measurements of the Hubble fixed specifically. “That’s really what spurred me,” says Freedman. In the many years since, her work has been key to the growth of the Hubble pressure – the perplexing approach that the two primary methods of measuring the Hubble fixed give us totally different values.
Now, after Freedman has spent many years specializing in this downside, one thing curious is going on. Her latest outcomes counsel there could also be no downside in spite of everything. If that is the case, it would render pointless many years of work exploring new physics that would clarify the discrepancy. Luckily, Freedman isn’t afraid of somewhat controversy.
The Hubble fixed …