Astronomy Cast Episode 668: The Crisis in Cosmology

Join Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay for a live episode of Astronomy Cast. We'll record our 30-minute show, and then stay tuned for them to answer questions!

Astronomers have made extremely accurate measurements of the expansion rate of the Universe and come up with different results. And the error bars for the observations don’t overlap, so there’s something strange going on. What’s the answer and how can the Crisis in Cosmology be resolved?

Fraser and Dr. Pamela onscreen: 2:38
Start of show: 10:22

This video was made possible by the following Patreon members:

David
Burry Gowen
Stephen Veit
Jordan Young
Venkatesh Chary
Andrew Poelstra
Brian Cagle
David Truog

THANK YOU! - Fraser and Dr. Pamela

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[mLynx]

39:05 What is meant by "particle physics and relativity do not talk to one another?" Is there potential for collaboration between those scientists regarding the Crisis, or are they completely different topics?

[OscarFelixKlein]

Thanks! An interesting episode. How light is redshifted due to expansion underpins every cosmological observation and calculation, yet there's no way to confirm how that redshift operates independent of measurements of the expansion of the universe. Research into modified versions of redshift due to expansion seem to be a bit on the fringe. Is this a viable pathway to the "new physics" discussed in this episode or should we have lots of confidence that our understanding of the redshift is relatively complete?

[sirlight-ljij]

17:50 I disagree. The way I see it is that parsecs are an outdated measurement unit from when astronomy did not know a bit about what light is and at what speed it travels. And therefore all parsec measurements are legacy code that we should assist in getting rid of, not increasing the dependancy hell

[mikerod]

Great Three Body Problem book discussion. I was surprised by the historical and philosophical messages and footnotes presented to the non-Chinese reader. I haven't seen the Netflick yet. The first book is all you need read to better understand modern Chinese history.

[rhoddryice]

38:17 New physics - time is not as simple as we think it is.

[fractalnomics]

I have thought about this from a different but similar context and may have a solution to this problem.
What if the difference, the tension, is the emissivity of the universe.
If we assume the supernova method is correct, I think it is, the CMB method may be out due to its microwave detector(s). In all other applications of this IR and microwave technology, emissivity is a correction factor for the real temperature of the object. Notwithstanding the CMB is a perfect blackbody, there could still be an emissivity error here too. Correct for the emissivity and the tension goes away. I don't think it will be a large number.

[R.Instro]

Evangelion is SO difficult to explain, but it's really worth the effort to go through one time. In re: Dr. Pamela's comment, the issues explored ARE similar to those seen in Ender's Game, but it is definitely "problematic" in its own unique ways.

[parkey]

But how do they know how big to make their error bars?

[zapfanzapfan]

Sponsored by Coca Cola? 🙂

Someone watching us from Andromeda would not see Neanderthals, they would see Lucy.

[Keithful]

My calculator tells me a megaparsec is approximately 3 million LYs