New synthesis of astronomical measurements shows Hubble tension is real (noirlab.edu)

by anigbrowl 14 comments 75 points
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14 comments

[−] bgoated01 33d ago

> “This isn’t just a new value of the Hubble constant,” the collaboration notes, “it’s a community-built framework that brings decades of independent distance measurements together, transparently and accessibly.”

Don't love that I can't read sentences like this without wondering if an LLM was involved.

[−] SoftTalker 33d ago
Yeah it's sort of an LLM smell but honestly the models learned that pattern because it's common in the training data. People write that way because it sounds like they're revealing something profound.
[−] monkpit 33d ago
LLM inference does not just regurgitate the training corpus; RLHF is almost certainly to blame for this. There’s probably some Google n-gram graph to prove it.
[−] cindyllm 33d ago
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[−] Shitty-kitty 33d ago
Nobody seriously doubts the "tension" anymore. The analysis is good.

The question is are there systemic errors. Chief among them is whether our ability to infer the distance to objects billions of light years away is truly as good as we think it is.

[−] DevelopingElk 33d ago
According to the article “This work effectively rules out explanations of the Hubble tension that rely on a single overlooked error in local distance measurements". So any systemic errors would need to affect multiple measurement types.
[−] Shitty-kitty 33d ago
Definitely a good first step if their research holds up. Given the huge implications thou, it is unlikely to sway opinions much.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

[−] cindyllm 33d ago
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[−] samus 33d ago
We don't just use one single method to infer distances. TA is about that there are multiple methods, and that the framework is open for new ones. What is more likely at fault is the underlying model of how the cosmos developed, which is highly likely to be incomplete or misguided.
[−] Shitty-kitty 33d ago
Actually is quite the opposite. If the difference in expansion between the early and late universe is real than the reigning cosmological model lambda-CDM will at least have to be revised, or be replaced with a model that made that prediction (there are several of them)
[−] samus 33d ago
I was referring to that model :-)
[−] userbinator 33d ago
That stuck out at me too, along with the em-dashes above.
[−] jiggawatts 34d ago
[−] smitty1e 34d ago
Went to Spanish.
[−] jiggawatts 33d ago
That explains why the original link is broken, the language selector on the whole site must be broken!