One of the biggest mysteries of modern-day cosmology is the Hubble constant problem. While it’s not a very familiar issue for the general public, this is a hot topic in the community of cosmology scientists studying the dynamics and evolution of the universe.
But what exactly is cosmology?
According to NASA, “cosmology is the scientific study of the large-scale properties of the universe as a whole. It endeavors to use the scientific method to understand the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the entire Universe”. An article on the official website of the University of New Mexico goes on to explain that “cosmologists study concepts such as dark matter, and dark energy and whether there is one universe or many, sometimes called a multiverse”.
In their studies, cosmologists have come across the Hubble constant problem, which has been puzzling them for quite some time. Their dilemma is actually not hard to understand, but the solution to it has proven difficult to find.
The Hubble constant refers to the rate at which the universe expands today. The Hubble constant problem refers to the fact that there is a significant difference between the rate of expansion obtained by applying the standard model of cosmology and the rate resulting from exact measurements.
In short, the universe is expanding much faster than predicted and scientists have been trying to figure out exactly why that is. However, a new study presents an exciting and intriguing hypothesis. According to their latest findings, researchers claim that the Hubble constant problem could be explained by the existence of an invisible “mirror universe,” which only impacts our universe through gravity. While this premise has been researched ever since the 1990s, this is the first time it has been considered a potential solution to the Hubble constant paradox.
One of the authors of the study, Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The University of New Mexico, stated that “this might seem crazy at face value, but such mirror worlds have a large physics literature in a completely different context since they can help solve an important problem in particle physics. Our work allows us to link, for the first time, this large literature to an important problem in cosmology.”
The complete study, called “Symmetry of Cosmological Observables, a Mirror World Dark Sector, and the Hubble Constant,” has been published in the Physical Review Letters online publication.
