Events

Events at Physics

<< Fall 2024 Spring 2025 Summer 2025 >>
Subscribe your calendar or receive email announcements of events
Astronomy Colloquium
What JWST Reveals about the Hubble Tension
Date: Thursday, May 1st
Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
Speaker: Adam Riess, Johns Hopkins University
Abstract: The Hubble tension—the persistent discrepancy between local and early-Universe measurements of the Hubble constant—remains one of the most intriguing puzzles in cosmology. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) now offers a fresh perspective on this issue by allowing an independent look at the same type of stars, Cepheids, used in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurements that help define our best local estimate of cosmic expansion. I’ll show how early JWST data, although still limited in size, serves as a powerful crosscheck of the HST-based distance ladder. When comparing results across multiple techniques and research groups, we find strong consistency with the HST measurements, lending confidence to their accuracy. These comparisons suggest that the observed tension is unlikely to stem from systematic errors in HST’s Cepheid distances. Though JWST’s smaller sample size limits its precision for now, it already provides valuable validation of the HST approach. As more data accumulates, JWST will play an increasingly important role in testing and refining our understanding of the expanding Universe—and perhaps help us get to the bottom of the Hubble tension.
Host: Melinda-Soares Furtado
Add this event to your calendar