“Measurements of gravitational waves from approximately 50 binary neutron stars over the next decade will definitively resolve an intense debate about how quickly our universe is expanding, according to findings from an international team that includes University College London (UCL) and Flatiron Institute cosmologists.
The cosmos has been expanding for 13.8 billion years. Its present rate of expansion, known as “the Hubble constant,” gives the time elapsed since the Big Bang.
However, the two best methods used to measure the Hubble constant have conflicting results, which suggests that our understanding of the structure and history of the universe—the “standard cosmological model”—may be incorrect.
The study, published today in Physical Review Letters, shows how new independent data from gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron stars called “standard sirens” will break the deadlock between the conflicting measurements once and for all.”
Link to Study: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.03404
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-gravitational-cosmic-conundrum.html