{"id":252420,"date":"2025-11-09T04:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/252420\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T04:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:07:09","slug":"new-paper-claims-everyone-is-wrong-universes-expansion-is-slowing-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/252420\/","title":{"rendered":"New Paper Claims Everyone Is Wrong, Universe’s Expansion Is Slowing Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

By observing the brightness of distant dying stars, astronomers have long come to believe<\/a> that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. In fact, that apparent reality is deeply built into cosmological models: a mysterious force that influences the universe on the largest scales, dubbed dark energy<\/a>, is believed to explain the acceleration.<\/p>\n

However, not everybody agrees with this widely accepted scientific consensus. In a controversial new paper<\/a>, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team led by Yonsei University astronomer Young-Wook Lee argues that once we take into consideration the age of these dying stars, the expansion acceleration suddenly disappears.<\/p>\n

In fact, Lee and his colleagues suggest the expansion started to decelerate 1.5 billion years ago, and could even reverse entirely in the future, resulting in a \u201cbig crunch\u201d that effectively turns the concept of a Big Bang on its head, as New Scientist reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a contentious new take on cosmology that\u2019s bound to draw plenty of skepticism from the scientific community. If confirmed, however, it would have colossal implications for our understanding of the universe \u2014 and, ultimately, its fate.<\/p>\n

For decades, scientists have posited that type Ia supernovae, which result from white dwarf stars exploding in a binary system, can stand in as \u201cstandard candles\u201d to allow us to measure the cosmos. That\u2019s because scientists believe they are all equally bright. By using the inverse-square law, scientists have measured the distance to these exploded remnants, resulting in the consensus that the universe\u2019s expansion is accelerating.<\/p>\n

Simply put, the dimmer the supernova appears in observations, the further away it\u2019s believed to be from us.<\/p>\n

However, Lee argues that this conclusion is wrong and that the brightness isn\u2019t actually the same for each of these dying stars. The team argues that once you consider the age of each of these supernovae, the perceived acceleration goes away.<\/p>\n

The team used a sample of 300 galaxies to model the brightness of type Ia supernovae, and found that their dimming arose from \u201cstellar astrophysics effects,\u201d and not just distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur study shows that the universe has already entered a phase of decelerated expansion at the present epoch and that dark energy evolves with time much more rapidly than previously thought,\u201d Lee said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cIf these results are confirmed, it would mark a major paradigm shift in cosmology since the discovery of dark energy 27 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everybody is convinced of the findings. Space Telescope Science Institute physicist Adam Riess, who received the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of dark energy through the measurement of type Ia supernovae in 2011, told New Scientist that it\u2019s not easy to determine the age of these dying stars since there\u2019s a lot we still don\u2019t know about their evolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theory behind this is weak because of a lack of certainty about how the [star] forms,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely interesting,\u201d University of Durham cosmologist Carlos Frenk, who was not involved in the research, told The Guardian<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s very provocative. It may well be wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, \u201cit\u2019s not something that you can dismiss,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019ve put out a paper with tantalising results with very profound conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, researchers are hoping that observations by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile could shed more light on the matter by creating a map of tens of thousands of type Ia supernovae.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the next five years, with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory discovering more than 20,000 new supernova host galaxies, precise age measurements will allow for a far more robust and definitive test of supernova cosmology,\u201d said colead and Yonsei University researcher Chul Chung in the statement.<\/p>\n

More on the expansion of the universe: An Important Force of the Universe Appears to Be Changing, Scientists Find<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By observing the brightness of distant dying stars, astronomers have long come to believe that the expansion of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-252420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}