'Serious gap' in cosmic expansion rate hints at new physics

[muriel_volestrangler]

Prof Riess, who is based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, was one of three scientists who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating.
...
Appropriately, Prof Riess has been using the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument on the Hubble telescope (installed during the last servicing mission to the iconic observatory) to help refine his measurements of the constant.

"The answer we get is 73.24. This is not very different to what people have gotten before measuring the Hubble constant. What is different is that the uncertainty has gotten quite a bit smaller," he said here at the 231st American Astronomical Society meeting in National Harbor, just outside Washington DC.
...
The Hubble Constant obtained using these data is 66.9 kilometres per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec is 3.26 million light-years, so it follows that cosmic expansion increases by 66.9km/second for every 3.26 million light-years we look further out into space).

The gap between the two is now at a confidence level of about 3.4 sigma. The sigma level describes the probability that a particular finding is not down to chance. For example, three sigma is often described as the equivalent of repeatedly tossing a coin and getting nine heads in a row.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42630399

[TreasonousBastard]

1. It still leaves the unsatisfying answers to just what it's expanding into...

I know the standard answer is that it has no edge, so it's just expanding and there's no "outside", but that is still highly unsatisfying.

The standard answer also is merely using our three-dimensional view of things, and kind of assumes higher dimensions would clear it all up.

Our 3D space is curved, but in 4D, would it look straight?

[WhiteTara]

2. If all is mind, then

it will expand into what ever we create.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. That premise means nothing.

[WhiteTara]

4. Or, you don't understand the premise

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Explain it

Simply, because apparently I'm simple.

[WhiteTara]

6. David

This is something to be whipped out as a one liner and right now I have an appointment and must go. I'll be back later and we can pick this up. Fascinating precept and the basis of Buddhism.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. I'm more comfortable with Western terms, like solipsism...

the idea that essentially all knowledge comes from the self. In its most radical form, there is nothing but your own mind, and the universe is simply a product of your imagination.

Nobody really believes that, of course, but it does help set up the conversation in epistemology courses-- arguing against it isn't really that easy and becomes an interesting project.

Buddha or Einstein, though, or even Kant, we're kidding ourselves if we think we can fully understand the limits of an infinite universe.

It's fun to try, though.

[WhiteTara]

8. In Buddhism, it is not just knowledge

that comes from mind, but all things come from the mind.

Yes, all sentient beings created this universe (through I believe - consensus reality)...and we have spent eons bringing us to this place. The Buddhists speak about beginners mind. No, we can not understand the universe and all the dimensions or the three times, so we live each moment being present rather than living in our story line.

The Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra is all about this. This is a treatise on the nature and paradox of emptiness.

“…form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.”