The James Webb Telescope has made a chilling discovery about the universe that confirms humanity got something 'seriously wrong'

A discovery has been made that has the potential to change everything we know about the universe.

That's right, and it's all thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

If you don't know what it is, the James Webb Space Telescope is a more advanced version of the legendary 1990 Hubble Telescope, which was launched into space in December 2021.

According to his predictions, the James Webb Space Telescope has made many discoveries in space, which could indicate the existence of life outside our small planet.

It also found that potential planets could form right before our eyes after disks and dust collect around two stars.

The James Webb Space Telescope made a shocking discovery (Getty Image)

The telescope has captured many high-resolution images of galaxies, as well as forming stars and even early-stage black holes (which is more scary than cool).

But the James Webb Space Telescope has also made a shocking discovery, which one physicist described as a “crisis” in the way we understand the universe.

Astronomers have used information from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to confirm a physics problem that continues to puzzle them.

What is Hubble tension?

The issue they need help with is that scientists have come up with different estimates of the expansion rate of the universe.

This is called Hubble tension, and it has the potential to turn the world of cosmology upside down forever.

Have we misunderstood the universe? (Getty Stock Image)

How do we know how fast the universe is expanding?

There are two ways to find the Hubble constant, which is the value that describes the expansion rate of the universe.

The first way is mainly through remnants of the Big Bang, which are small fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.

From 2009 to 2013, astronomers discovered that this number was approximately 46,200 miles per hour per million light-years, or about 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/sm).

The second way is to use pulsars, also known as Cepheid variables.

Astronomers use the outer layers of dying stars, which flash like broken street lights in the distance.

By measuring their brightness, these Cepheid stars can be constrained to a “cosmic distance scale,” which allows us to look further into the past of the universe.

Through this, the exact number that reveals the speed of the expansion of the universe can be determined.

Estimates of the expansion rate of the universe conflict with each other

Using the second method, Adam Ries, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, and his colleagues estimated that the expansion rate of the universe is actually about 74 kilometers per second/megaparsec, much higher than the previously thought 67 kilometers per second. /MPC.

This could make the universe 10% younger than we initially thought.

Scientists called it the “crisis” (Getty Image)

The world of cosmology was thrown into a state of uncertainty after this discovery.

Nobel Prize-winning astronomer David Gross described it as a “crisis” at a 2019 conference.

What did the James Webb Space Telescope discover?

Initially, this discovery was thought to be a measurement error through confusion between Cepheid stars and regular stars in Hubble's lens, but the more accurate James Webb Space Telescope refuted these claims and confirmed the new discovery.

On February 6, a study was conducted Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, which highlights that our understanding of the universe could be very wrong.

“With measurement errors eliminated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility that we have misunderstood the universe,” said lead author Reiss.

Reiss observed another 1,000 Cepheid stars in five separate galaxies 130 million light-years from Earth, confirming their findings about the Hubble Constant.

“We have now covered the full range of what Hubble observed, and we can rule out measurement error as the cause of Hubble jitter with very high confidence,” he explained.

“Combining Webb and Hubble gives us the best of both worlds. We find that Hubble's measurements remain reliable as we climb further on the cosmic distance ladder.”