In the Dark

Given yesterday’s news from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, among other things suggesting a low value of the Hubble constant of around 67.6 km s^-1 Mpc^-1, it might be fun to run another totally unscientific poll about which of the two Hubble constant camps has the most support in the community. The two camps are:

• A `high’ value H<sub>0</sub> ~ 73.5 ± 1.5 km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup> (as favoured by most stellar distance indicators, i.e. `local’ measurements).
• A `low’ value H<sub>0</sub> ~ 67.5 ± 0.5 km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup> (as favoured by most `cosmological’ estimates, e.g. cosmic microwave background fluctuations).

Of course you might also believe that both are wrong and the `true’ result lies outside both error regions but I’d like to focus on these two possibilities, so the question is posed assuming that one of them is right, which one is that most likely to be. In your opinion. Humble or otherwise.

This entry was posted on July 17, 2020 at 10:20 am and is filed under The Universe and Stuff with tags Cosmology, Hubble constant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.