About the cosmic expansion rate:
IT IS nearly 100 years since we confirmed that the universe – space-time – is expanding. But we are still struggling with a basic fact: what is the rate of the expansion? Depending on how we measure a crucial number that sets this value, we seem to get different answers. The fallout of this question could drastically change our understanding of the cosmos.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, “We still don’t understand a basic fact about the universe” at New Scientist subscription required
We are also referred back to an earlier article (July 16, 2019), the whole of which is available without a subscription:
What they found was surprising: a value of the Hubble constant right between the CMB measurement and the Cepheid distance ladder. This is more evidence that we really don’t understand what the value of the Hubble constant is, and that we need much more precise studies before we can claim that there must be some new type of exotic physics, Freedman says.
“Honestly I would’ve liked it to come out one way or the other, but it didn’t,” she says. “The mystery heightens.”
Leah Crane, “Mystery of universe’s expansion deepens with new cosmic calculation” at New Scientist
What? We don’t need exotic physics? But then what… ?
Here’s a question: What if the basic fact we “still don’t understand” is that the evidence shows that the universe is fine-tuned and that therefore, fine-tuning is not an illusion that needs explaining away? Would that simplify things? If so, how? Another question (now that we’re here anyway): How much publicly funded cosmology exists simply to promote a naturalist atheist (no fine-tuning) worldview? And what is the science rationale for that?
See also: Rob Sheldon of why string theory’s inflationary cosmos is a degenerate research program Sheldon: The inflationary proposal has always been ad hoc. That is, a huge, faster-than-light expansion of the universe was proposed as a solution to the “flatness” problem, where the universe expands at a rate just sufficient to counter the gravitational attraction, where “just sufficient” means one part in 10^60 power. The inflationary model was invented to solve this fine-tuning problem.