Astronomers can’t agree on how fast the universe is expanding. New approaches are aiming to break the impasse

By Alex Hall, Royal Society University Research Fellow, School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh

It is almost 100 years since scientists discovered the universe is expanding. In the decades that followed, the accuracy of the measurements, and interpretations and implications of this discovery, were a source of fierce debate. We now know the universe emerged dramatically from a highly compressed state in an event known as the Big Bang.

Measurements of the present-day expansion rate, known as the Hubble constant or H₀ (pronounced H-naught), have improved considerably since those early days.…

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