Scientists have a new, more accurate, measurement of the expansion of the universe thanks to decades worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The new analysis of data from the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope continues the observatory’s longstanding quest to better understand how quickly the universe expands, and how much that expansion is accelerating.
The number astronomers use to measure this expansion is called the Hubble Constant (not after the telescope but after astronomer Edwin Hubble who first measured it in 1929). The Hubble Constant is a tough one to pin down given that different observatories looking at different zones of the universe have delivered different answers. But a new study expresses confidence that Hubble’s most recent effort is precise for the expansion it sees, although there is still a difference from other observatories.
