KICP in the News, 2019



 
After mapping millions of galaxies, Dark Energy Survey finishes data collection
UChicago News, January 15, 2019
UChicago News

For the past six years, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has been part of an international effort to create an unprecedented survey of distant galaxies and better understand the nature of dark energy - the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe.

After scanning about a quarter of the southern skies over 800 nights, the Dark Energy Survey finished taking data on Jan. 9. It ends as one of the most sensitive and comprehensive surveys of its kind, recording data from more than 300 million distant galaxies.

Fermilab, an affiliate of the University of Chicago, served as lead laboratory on the survey, which included more than 400 scientists and 26 institutions. The findings created the most accurate dark matter map of the universe ever made, shaping our understanding of the cosmos and its evolution. Other discoveries include the most distant supernova ever detected, a bevy of dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our Milky Way, and helping to track the first-ever detection of gravitational waves from neutron stars back to its source.

According to Dark Energy Survey Director Rich Kron, a Fermilab scientist and professor at the University of Chicago, those results - and the scientists who made them possible - are where much of the real accomplishment of the Dark Energy Survey lies.

"The first generations of students and postdoctoral researchers on the Dark Energy Survey are now becoming faculty at research institutions and are involved in upcoming sky surveys," Kron said. "The number of publications and people involved are a true testament to this experiment. Helping to launch so many careers has always been part of the plan, and it's been very successful."

Now the job of analyzing that data takes center stage, providing opportunities for new breakthroughs. The survey has already released a full range of papers based on its first year of data, and scientists are now diving into the rich seam of catalogued images from the first several years of data, looking for clues to the nature of dark energy.

The first step in that process, according to Fermilab scientist Josh Frieman, a professor at UChicago and former director of the Dark Energy Survey, is to find the signal in all the noise.

"We're trying to tease out the signal of dark energy against a background of all sorts of non-cosmological stuff that gets imprinted on the data,' Frieman said. "It's a massive ongoing effort from many different people around the world."

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Joshua A. Frieman; Richard G. Kron
Scientific projects: Dark Energy Survey (DES)

 
Big Brains podcast: "What Ripples in Space-Time Tell Us About the Universe with Daniel Holz"
UChicago News, January 24, 2019
Prof. Daniel Holz, KICP senior member
Prof. Daniel Holz, KICP senior member
UChicago News

UChicago cosmologist discusses discovery of gravitational waves and colliding black holes

All around us in the universe, black holes are smashing into each other with tremendous force. These events are so powerful that they cause ripples in the fabric of space-time - and these ripples, called gravitational waves, travel hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe, eventually passing through the Earth.

Prof. Daniel Holz and fellow scientists at LIGO knew that detecting these waves would take us closer to figuring out many profound mysteries, including the size, age and composition of the universe. They built the most sensitive machine ever constructed, detected the waves and opened up an entirely new window on the universe.

In this time-and-space-bending episode of Big Brains, the UChicago cosmologist talks black holes, testing Einstein's predictions, and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Daniel E. Holz
Scientific projects: Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)

 
What's at the Edge of the Universe?
Gizmodo, February 21, 2019
by Daniel Kolitz, Gizmodo

It is a routine emotion in 2019 to urgently wish, four or five times in a day, to be launched not simply into space but to the very edge of the universe, as far as it is possible to get from the fever dream of bad weather, busted trains and potentially cancerous thigh lesions that constitute life on Earth. But what would be waiting for you, up at the cosmological border? Is it even a border, or is what we're dealing with here more like a kind of inconceivably vast ceiling? Is there even a border/ceiling up there at all? For this week's Giz Asks, we talked with a number of cosmology-oriented physicists to find out.

Abigail Vieregg
Assistant Professor at the Kavil Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago

Using telescopes on Earth, we look at light coming from distant places in the universe. The farther away the source of the light is, the longer it takes for that light to get here. So, when you look at far away places, you're looking at what those places were like when the light you saw was created - not at what those places are like today. You can keep looking farther and farther away, corresponding to farther and farther back in time, until you hit a place corresponding to a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. Before that, the universe was so hot and dense (well before there were stars and galaxies!) that any light in the universe just rattled around, and we can't see it with our telescopes today. This place is edge of the "observable universe" - sometimes called the horizon - because we can't see beyond it. As time goes on, this horizon changes. If you could look out from another planet somewhere else in the universe, presumably you would see something very similar to what we see here from Earth: your own horizon, limited by the time that has elapsed since the Big Bang, the speed of light, and the how the universe has expanded.

What does the place that corresponds to Earth's horizon today look like today? We can't know, since we can only view that place as it was just after the Big Bang, not as it is today. However, all the measurements indicate that all of the universe we can see, including the edge of the observable universe, looks approximately like our local universe does today: with stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies and lots of empty space.

We also think that the universe is much much bigger than the part of the universe we happen to be able to see here from Earth today, and there is no "edge" to the universe itself. It is just spacetime, expanding.

"All the measurements indicate that all of the universe we can see, including the edge of the observable universe, looks approximately like our local universe does today: with stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies and lots of empty space."

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Abigail G. Vieregg

 
Edward 'Rocky' Kolb to direct Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
UChicago News, February 27, 2019
Prof. Rocky Kolb <i>Photo by Jason Smith</i>
Prof. Rocky Kolb
Photo by Jason Smith
UChicago News

Cosmologist to lead center dedicated to study of origin and evolution of universe

The University of Chicago has named Edward W. 'Rocky' Kolb as director of its Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, a leading center dedicated to deepening our understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe and the laws that govern it.

Kolb, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, succeeds Michael S. Turner as director, effective April 1. Turner, the Bruce V. & Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, has served in the role since 2010.

"We are thrilled that Rocky Kolb will lead KICP. Kolb, together with current KICP director Michael Turner, helped define a new discipline at the intersection of cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics," said Angela V. Olinto, dean of the Physical Sciences Division. "Kolb's extensive leadership experience will guarantee a brilliant future for KICP."

The institute was created as an interdisciplinary center to bridge astronomy and physics, exploring physics ranging from the subatomic scale to the birth and constitution of the cosmos. It is an international hub for cosmology and has furthered the careers of many young scientists.

At the institute, UChicago researchers tackle questions about the nature of dark energy and dark matter, the first moments of the universe, and nature's highest-energy particles. Members lead some of the most significant international astronomy projects in the field, such as the Dark Energy Survey, an unprecedented survey of distant galaxies to better understand the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe; the South Pole Telescope, which with its third-generation camera will be among the most sensitive instruments observing the cosmic microwave background; and the Giant Magellan Telescope, a giant ground-based telescope under construction in Chile that is expected to produce images that are 10 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Rocky Kolb is an eminent cosmologist, known for his contributions to the study of the very early universe," said Kevin Moses, vice president of science programs at the Kavli Foundation. "He has had a distinguished career at the University of Chicago and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and is a longtime member of KICP. Rocky will continue the strong tradition of leadership at KICP, paving the way for further understanding of our cosmos."

Kolb is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society. He has received numerous honors, including the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, which he shared with Turner for their work to understand the early universe. Kolb has formerly served as dean of the Physical Sciences Division, chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Particle Astrophysics Center.

The University established the Center for Cosmological Physics in 2001 with National Science Foundation support. The center was renamed the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics in 2004 in honor of Fred Kavli, who through the Kavli Foundation provided $7.5 million to endow the institute and support its programs.

UChicago's Kavli Institute works closely with the other Kavli Institutes in astrophysics at Stanford University, Peking University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Cambridge.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Edward W. Kolb; Angela V. Olinto; Michael S. Turner
Scientific projects: Dark Energy Survey (DES); Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)

 
Have Dark Forces Been Messing With the Cosmos?
The New York Times, February 27, 2019
by Dennis Overbye, The New York Times

Axions? Phantom energy? Astrophysicists scramble to patch a hole in the universe, rewriting cosmic history in the process.

Michael Turner, a veteran cosmologist at the University of Chicago and the organizer of a recent airing of the Hubble tensions, said, "Indeed, all of this is going over all of our heads. We are confused and hoping that the confusion will lead to something good!"

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Wendy Freedman; Joshua A. Frieman; Michael S. Turner

 
Lifetime Achievement Award
The Chicago Council on Science and Technology, March 13, 2019
Wendy L. Freedman, John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago
Wendy L. Freedman, John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago
The Chicago Council on Science and Technology

Wendy Freedman is a renowned astronomer who was instrumental in precisely measuring the Hubble constant and determining the age of the universe. Freedman received both her BSc and PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Toronto. In 1984 she accepted a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. In 1987 Freedman became the first woman to join Carnegie's permanent staff, and in 2003 she became its director. She also initiated the Giant Magellan Telescope project and served as chair of its board of directors from the project's inception in 2003 until 2015. In 2014 she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as the John and Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Freedman first rose to prominence leading the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project, which began in the mid-1980s and involved an international group of some 30 astronomers. The team used the Hubble telescope to study Cepheid variable stars in order to estimate intergalactic distances and thus determine the expansion rate of the universe.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Wendy L. Freedman
Scientific projects: Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)

 
How to use gravitational waves to measure the expansion of the universe
UChicago News, April 2, 2019
by Louise Lerner, UChicago News

Prof. Daniel Holz discusses a new way to calculate the Hubble constant, a crucial number that measures the expansion rate of the universe and holds answers to questions about the universe's size, age and history.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Daniel E. Holz
Scientific projects: Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)

 
Astronomers capture historic first image of a black hole
UChicago News, April 10, 2019
The first image ever captured of a black hole. <i>Courtesy of EHT Collaboration</i>
The first image ever captured of a black hole.
Courtesy of EHT Collaboration
UChicago News

South Pole Telescope contributes to observations of black hole in distant galaxy

The Event Horizon Telescope - a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration - was designed to capture images of a black hole. On April 10, in coordinated news conferences across the globe, researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

This breakthrough was announced April 10 in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole sits 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun.

The EHT links telescopes around the globe, including the University of Chicago-run South Pole Telescope, to form an unprecedented Earth-sized "virtual telescope" with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. The EHT is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the universe predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

"The South Pole Telescope's location at the southernmost point of the Earth makes it an important component of the global EHT network," said Prof. John Carlstrom, who directs the telescope. "Although M87 is not visible from the South Pole, it is a crucial player in observing other black holes, such as the massive one at the center of our own galaxy."

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Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom
Scientific projects: South Pole Telescope (SPT)

 
Astronomers Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole
Chicago Tonight (WTTW), April 11, 2019
by Paul Caine, Chicago Tonight (WTTW)

An international team of astronomers has for the very first time captured an image of one of the most exotic and mysterious objects in the universe: a black hole.

Ever since Einstein's theory of relativity first predicted them, black holes have captured the imagination of the public and scientists alike.

A black hole is an object so dense, literally so massive, that the gravity it generates is so strong that light itself cannot escape and even the fabric of space-time breaks down.

"Black holes are one of those things where the public fascination and the scientific fascination completely align," said Daniel Holz, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and part of the LIGO team that in 2016 first detected gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes.

"From a scientific perspective they are also incredibly extreme. The equations are very clean. You end up with this solution. But the solution is so crazy - the idea that there are black holes - that even Einstein said they are probably not real," said Holz.

But real they are and now we have a picture of one.

Carlstrom said that his first reaction on seeing the image of the black hole for the first time was: "Holy Smokes! It really works."

"For the people who have worked in this field for decades it's just disbelief that it is really there," he added.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom; Daniel E. Holz
Scientific projects: Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO); South Pole Telescope (SPT)

 
Scientists invent way to trap mysterious 'dark world' particle at Large Hadron Collider
UChicago News, April 23, 2019
Scientists invent way to trap mysterious dark world particle at Large Hadron Collider
UChicago News

Higgs boson could be tied with dark particle, serve as 'portal to the dark world'

Now that they've identified the Higgs boson, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have set their sights on an even more elusive target.

All around us is dark matter and dark energy - the invisible stuff that binds the galaxy together, but which no one has been able to directly detect. "We know for sure there's a dark world, and there's more energy in it than there is in ours," said LianTao Wang, a University of Chicago professor of physics who studies how to find signals in large particle accelerators like the LHC.

Wang, along with scientists from the University and UChicago-affiliated Fermilab, think they may be able to lead us to its tracks; in a paper published April 3 in Physical Review Letters, they laid out an innovative method for stalking dark matter in the LHC by exploiting a potential particle's slightly slower speed.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Lian-Tao Wang

 
Scientists measure half-life of element that's longer than the age of the universe
UChicago News, May 1, 2019
Scientists measure half-life of element thats longer than the age of the universe
by Louise Lerner, UChicago News

Beneath Italian mountains, UChicago scientists help catch rare decay of xenon-124

Deep under an Italian mountainside, a giant detector filled with tons of liquid xenon has been looking for dark matter - particles of a mysterious substance whose effects we can see in the universe, but which no one has ever directly observed. Along the way, however, the detector caught another scientific unicorn: the decay of atoms of xenon-124 - the rarest process ever observed in the universe.

The results from the XENON1T experiment, co-authored by University of Chicago scientists and published April 25 in the journal Nature, document the longest half-life in the universe - and may be able to help scientists hunt for another mysterious process that is one of particle physics' great mysteries.

"This is the longest lifetime that we have ever directly measured," said Luca Grandi, assistant professor of physics at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study. "Its detection was possible only thanks to the tremendous effort that the collaboration put into making XENON1T an ultra-low background detector. This made the detector ideal for rare event searches such as the detection of dark matter - for which it was designed - as well as other elusive processes."

Grandi is one of the scientists who worked on the XENON1T detector, an extremely sensitive machine tucked nearly a mile below the surface of the Gran Sasso mountains in Italy. The depth and the gigantic water pool in which the detector is immersed protect the detector from false alarms coming from cosmic rays and other phenomena as it searches for evidence of a particle called a "WIMP", one proposed candidate for dark matter.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Luca Grandi
Scientific projects: XENON1T

 
Astronomers May Have Detected Neutron Star Being Consumed by Black Hole
WWCI, May 15, 2019
Astronomers May Have Detected Neutron Star Being Consumed by Black Hole
by Paul Caine, WWCI

Astronomers in the U.S. and Italy believe they may have detected gravitational waves created when a black hole swallowed a neutron star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would be the first evidence that black holes and neutron stars can pair up to form binary systems.

The apparent detection was made on April 26 by the twin LIGO observatories in the U.S. and the Virgo detector in Italy.

Neutron stars are extremely dense stars formed when massive stars collapse.

"A neutron star is kind of the most extreme star that is possible," said Daniel Holz, a University of Chicago astrophysicist who is part of the LIGO team. "When a star starts collapsing the first stop along the way is a white dwarf and that's when electrons inside the star are pushing against each other and that can hold the star up. But if the star is big enough it will continue to collapse and you'd end up with something called a neutron star. And that's when the neutrons are actually pushing against each other. And as far as we know that is it, that's the densest matter that is possible."

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Daniel E. Holz
Scientific projects: Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)

 
New Hubble Constant Measurement Adds to Mystery of Universe's Expansion Rate
hubblesite.org, July 16, 2019
New Hubble Constant Measurement Adds to Mystery of Universes Expansion Rate
hubblesite.org

Red Giant Stars Used as Milepost Markers
In 1924, American astronomer Edwin Hubble announced that he discovered galaxies outside of our Milky Way by using the powerful new Hooker telescope perched above Los Angeles. By measuring the distances to these galaxies, he realized the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be receding from us. This was incontrovertible evidence the universe is uniformly expanding in all directions. This was a big surprise, even to Albert Einstein, who predicted a well-balanced, static universe. The expansion rate is the basis of the Hubble constant. It is a sought-after value because it yields clues to the origin, age, evolution, and future fate of our universe.

For nearly the past century astronomers have worked meticulously to precisely measure the Hubble constant. Before the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, the universe's age was thought to lie between 10 and 20 billion years, based on different estimates of the Hubble constant. Improving this value was one of the biggest justifications for building the Hubble telescope. This paid off in the early 1990s when a team led by Wendy Freedman of the University of Chicago greatly refined the Hubble constant value to a precision of 10%. This was possible because the Hubble telescope is so sharp at finding and measuring Cepheid variable stars as milepost markers - just as Edwin Hubble did 70 years earlier.

But astronomers strive for ever greater precision, and this requires further refining yardsticks for measuring vast intergalactic distances of billions of light-years. Freedman's latest research looks at aging red giant stars in nearby galaxies. They are also milepost markers because they all reach the same peak brightness at a critical stage of their late evolution. This can be used to calculate distances.

Freedman's research is one of several recent studies that point to a nagging discrepancy between the universe's modern expansion rate and predictions based on the universe as it was more than 13 billion years ago, as measured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. This latest measurement offers new evidence suggesting that there may be something fundamentally flawed in the current model of the universe.

Astronomers have made a new measurement of how fast the universe is expanding, using an entirely different kind of star than previous endeavors. The revised measurement, which comes from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, falls in the center of a hotly debated question in astrophysics that may lead to a new interpretation of the universe's fundamental properties.

Scientists have known for almost a century that the universe is expanding, meaning the distance between galaxies across the universe is becoming ever more vast every second. But exactly how fast space is stretching, a value known as the Hubble constant, has remained stubbornly elusive.

Now, University of Chicago professor Wendy Freedman and colleagues have a new measurement for the rate of expansion in the modern universe, suggesting the space between galaxies is stretching faster than scientists would expect. Freedman's is one of several recent studies that point to a nagging discrepancy between modern expansion measurements and predictions based on the universe as it was more than 13 billion years ago, as measured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.

As more research points to a discrepancy between predictions and observations, scientists are considering whether they may need to come up with a new model for the underlying physics of the universe in order to explain it.

"The Hubble constant is the cosmological parameter that sets the absolute scale, size and age of the universe; it is one of the most direct ways we have of quantifying how the universe evolves," said Freedman. "The discrepancy that we saw before has not gone away, but this new evidence suggests that the jury is still out on whether there is an immediate and compelling reason to believe that there is something fundamentally flawed in our current model of the universe."

In a new paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, Freedman and her team announced a new measurement of the Hubble constant using a kind of star known as a red giant. Their new observations, made using Hubble, indicate that the expansion rate for the nearby universe is just under 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/sec/Mpc). One parsec is equivalent to 3.26 light-years distance.

This measurement is slightly smaller than the value of 74 km/sec/Mpc recently reported by the Hubble SH0ES (Supernovae H0 for the Equation of State) team using Cepheid variables, which are stars that pulse at regular intervals that correspond to their peak brightness. This team, led by Adam Riess of the Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, recently reported refining their observations to the highest precision to date for their Cepheid distance measurement technique.

How to Measure Expansion
A central challenge in measuring the universe's expansion rate is that it is very difficult to accurately calculate distances to distant objects.

In 2001, Freedman led a team that used distant stars to make a landmark measurement of the Hubble constant. The Hubble Space Telescope Key Project team measured the value using Cepheid variables as distance markers. Their program concluded that the value of the Hubble constant for our universe was 72 km/sec/Mpc.

But more recently, scientists took a very different approach: building a model based on the rippling structure of light left over from the big bang, which is called the Cosmic Microwave Background. The Planck measurements allow scientists to predict how the early universe would likely have evolved into the expansion rate astronomers can measure today. Scientists calculated a value of 67.4 km/sec/Mpc, in significant disagreement with the rate of 74.0 km/sec/Mpc measured with Cepheid stars.

Astronomers have looked for anything that might be causing the mismatch. "Naturally, questions arise as to whether the discrepancy is coming from some aspect that astronomers don't yet understand about the stars we're measuring, or whether our cosmological model of the universe is still incomplete," Freedman said. "Or maybe both need to be improved upon."

Freedman's team sought to check their results by establishing a new and entirely independent path to the Hubble constant using an entirely different kind of star.

Certain stars end their lives as a very luminous kind of star called a red giant, a stage of evolution that our own Sun will experience billions of years from now. At a certain point, the star undergoes a catastrophic event called a helium flash, in which the temperature rises to about 100 million degrees and the structure of the star is rearranged, which ultimately dramatically decreases its luminosity. Astronomers can measure the apparent brightness of the red giant stars at this stage in different galaxies, and they can use this as a way to tell their distance.

The Hubble constant is calculated by comparing distance values to the apparent recessional velocity of the target galaxies - that is, how fast galaxies seem to be moving away. The team's calculations give a Hubble constant of 69.8 km/sec/Mpc - straddling the values derived by the Planck and Riess teams.

"Our initial thought was that if there's a problem to be resolved between the Cepheids and the Cosmic Microwave Background, then the red giant method can be the tie-breaker," said Freedman.

But the results do not appear to strongly favor one answer over the other say the researchers, although they align more closely with the Planck results.

NASA's upcoming mission, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, will enable astronomers to better explore the value of the Hubble constant across cosmic time. WFIRST, with its Hubble-like resolution and 100 times greater view of the sky, will provide a wealth of new Type Ia supernovae, Cepheid variables, and red giant stars to fundamentally improve distance measurements to galaxies near and far.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

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Related Links:
KICP Members: Wendy L. Freedman
KICP Students: Taylor Hoyt

 
New measure of Hubble constant adds to mystery about universe's expansion rate
UChicago News, July 16, 2019
New measure of Hubble constant adds to mystery about universes expansion rate
by Louise Lerner, UChicago News

Prof. Wendy Freedman leads study of red giant stars for new measurement of disputed constant
University of Chicago scientists have made a new measurement of how fast the universe is expanding - using an entirely different kind of star than previous endeavors. That value falls in the center of a hotly debated question in astrophysics that may call for an entirely new model of the universe.

Scientists have known for almost a century that the universe is expanding, but the exact number for how fast it's going has remained stubbornly elusive. In 2001, Prof. Wendy Freedman led a team that used distant stars to make a landmark measurement of this number, called the Hubble constant - but it disagrees with another major measurement, and the tension between the two numbers has persisted even as each side makes more and more accurate readings.

In a new paper to be published shortly in the Astrophysical Journal, Freedman and her team announced a new measurement of the Hubble constant using a kind of star known as a red giant. Their observations, made with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, indicate that the expansion rate for our corner of the universe is just under 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec - slightly smaller than their previous measurement, but not alleviating the tension.

"The Hubble constant is the cosmological parameter that sets the absolute scale, size and age of the universe; it is one of the most direct ways we have of quantifying how the universe evolves," said Freedman, the John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a world-renowned astronomer. "The discrepancy that we saw before has not gone away, but this new evidence suggests that the jury is still out on whether there is an immediate and compelling reason to believe that there is something fundamentally flawed in our current model of the universe."

A number behind the theory of the universe
The Hubble constant, named after pioneering astronomer and UChicago alum Edwin Hubble, underpins everything in the universe - from our estimate of when the Big Bang happened to how much dark matter exists. It helps scientists sketch out a theory of the history and structure of the universe; and conversely, if there are fault lines in that theory, an accurate measurement of the Hubble constant might lead them to it.

"The Hubble constant...is one of the most direct ways we have of quantifying how the universe evolves."
- Prof. Wendy Freedman

Twenty years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project team, which Freedman led, announced it had measured the value using distant stars called Cepheids, which pulse at regular intervals. Their program concluded that the value of the Hubble constant for our universe was 72. As astronomers have refined their analyses and gathered new data, this number has remained fairly stable, at about 73.

But more recently, scientists took a very different approach: building a model based on the rippling structure of light left over from the earliest moments of the Big Bang, which is called the Cosmic Microwave Background. If they ran a model forward in time, extrapolating from the first few moments of the universe, they reached a value of 67. That disagreement is significant - nearly 10 percent - and it has continued to solidify over time.

Both camps have looked for anything that might be causing the mismatch. "Naturally, questions arise as to whether the discrepancy is coming from some aspect that astronomers don't yet understand about the stars we're measuring, or whether our cosmological model of the universe is still incomplete," Freedman said. "Or maybe both need to be improved upon."

Mapping the stars
A central part of the challenge in measuring the universe is that it is very difficult to accurately calculate distances to distant objects. Freedman's team originally looked at two types of stars that have reliable characteristics which allow astronomers to use them in combination as cosmological measuring sticks: Type Ia supernovae, which explode at a uniform brightness; and Cepheid variables, stars which pulse at regular intervals that can be matched to their peak brightnesses. But it's still possible that there is something about Cepheids that scientists don't yet fully understand, which could be introducing errors.

Freedman's team sought to check their results by establishing a new and entirely independent path to the Hubble constant using an entirely different kind of star.

Certain stars end their lives as a very luminous kind of star called a red giant. At a certain point, the star undergoes a catastrophic event called a helium flash, in which the temperature rises to about 100 million degrees and the structure of the star is rearranged, which ultimately dramatically decreases its luminosity. (This will one day happen to our own sun, which will also become a red giant). Astronomers can see the point where all the luminosities of the stars drop off, and they can use this as a way to tell distance.

"Our initial thought was that if there's a problem to be resolved between the Cepheids and the Cosmic Microwave Background, then the red giant method can be the tie-breaker," said Freedman.

"The principle is simple," Freedman said. "Imagine that you are standing near a street light that you know is 10 feet away. At regular intervals down the street you can seen more street lights, which get progressively dimmer the further away that they are. Knowing how far away and how bright the lamp is beside you, and then measuring how much fainter the more distant lamps appear to be, allows you to estimate the distances to each of the other lamps all down the road."

Freedman's team put this into action using sensitive cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, searching for their new cosmic lampposts. By comparing the apparent luminosities of the distant red giants with nearby ones that we've measured with other methods, and pairing these readings with those from Type Ia supernovae, Freedman and her team were able to determine how far away each of the host galaxies were.

The next step is straightforward: How fast that galaxy is moving away from us is the product of its distance times the Hubble constant. Luckily, a galaxy's velocity is simple to measure - the light coming from galaxies shifts depending on how fast the galaxy is moving away from us.

Their calculations gave a Hubble constant of 69.8 - straddling the two previously determined numbers.

"The red giant method is independent of the Cepheids and is incredibly precise. The stars used are of lower mass, have different evolutionary histories and are located in different regions of distant galaxies," said Taylor Hoyt, a University of Chicago graduate student and co-author on the paper.

But the results do not appear to strongly favor one answer over the other.

"We are working at the frontier of what is currently known about cosmology," Freedman concluded. "These results suggest that we do not have the final answer yet. The burden of proof is high when claims of new physics hang in the balance, but that's what makes it exciting," she said. "Either way the conflict resolves, it is important. We either confirm our standard model of cosmology, or we learn something new about the universe."

The other University of Chicago co-author was Dylan Hatt, PhD'18. Carnegie scientist Barry Madore also has a visiting appointment at UChicago. Other co-authors included scientists with the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Princeton University, Seoul National University, Penn State, Florida Atlantic University and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics-Potsdam.

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KICP Members: Wendy L. Freedman
KICP Students: Taylor Hoyt