Is the Universe Younger than We Thought?

Accordingly to this article:
https://medium.com/the-cosmic-compan...t-e8a649a32ec8
"Is the Universe Younger than We Thought?", is the age of the universe,
not 13,8 billion years, but 11 billion years old.
This seems, to me, a rather big shift, specific because it is based on
gravitational lensing.

Nicolaas Vroom

[[Mod. note -- This article is based on this press release
"High value for Hubble constant from two gravitational lenses"
https://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/743539/news20190913
which in turn describes this research paper
"A measurement of the Hubble constant from angular diameter distances
to two gravitational lenses"
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6458/1134
which is nicely synopsized in this commentary
"An expanding controversy"
/An independently calibrated measurement fortifies the debate
around Hubble's constant/
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6458/1076

Figure 6 of the /Science/ research article gives a nice comparison
of some of the recent Hubble-constant measurements, showing that the
choice of cosmological model (at least within the range of models
considered by the authors) makes rather little difference.
-- jt]]

Details at
https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleas.../iau1910/?lang

This one looks like a comet, but observations are just beginning.

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Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
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In article ,
Nicolaas Vroom writes:

Accordingly to this article:
https://medium.com/the-cosmic-compan...ger-than-we-t=
hought-e8a649a32ec8
"Is the Universe Younger than We Thought?", is the age of the universe,
not 13,8 billion years, but 11 billion years old.
This seems, to me, a rather big shift, specific because it is based on
gravitational lensing.

All else being equal, the age of the universe is inversely proportional
to the Hubble constant.

The headline doesn't deserve any prizes. There are many measurements of
the Hubble constant, and the field has a history of discrepant
measurement (i.e. measurements which differ by significantly more than
their formal uncertainties). Recently, the debate has shifted from "50
or 100?" to "67 or 73?" but since the formal uncertainties have also
gone down, one could argue that the "tension" is comparable to that in
the old days. There is more than one measurement supporting 67, and
more than one supporting 73. So, ONE additional measurement doesn't
mean "the textbooks will have to be rewritten" or some such nonsense,
but rather is an additional piece of information which must be taken
into account.

It should be noted that there are many measurements of the Hubble
constant from gravitational lenses. Not all agree. The biggest source
of uncertainty is probably the fact that the result depends on knowing
the mass distribution of the lens galaxy.

For what it's worth, I am co-author on a paper doing this sort of thing:

http://www.astro.multivax.de:8000/he...ons/info/0218=
..html

Our value back then, almost 20 years ago, was 69+13/-19 at 95%
confidence. The first two authors recently revised this after
re-analysing the data, arriving at 72+/-2.6 at 1 sigma, though this
includes a better (published in 2004) lens model as well. The papers
are arXiv:astro-ph/9811282 and arXiv:1802.10088. Both are published in
MNRAS (links to freely accessible versions are at the arXiv references
above). It's tricky to get right. As Shapley said, "No one trusts a
model except the man who wrote it; everyone trusts an observation except
the man who made it." :-)

The above uses just the gravitational-lens system to measure the Hubble
constant. Such measurements have also been made before for the two lens
systems mentioned in the press release. What one actually measures is
basically the distance to the lens. Since the redshift is known, one
knows the distance for this particular redshift; knowing the redshift
and the distance gives the Hubble constant. In the new work, this was
then used to calibrate supernovae of with known redshifts. (Determining
the Hubble constant from the magnitude-redshift relation for supernovae
is also possible, of course (and higher-order effects allow one to
determine the cosmological constant and the density parameter
(independently of the Hubble constant), for which the 2011 Nobel Prize
was awarded), but one needs to know the absolute luminosity, which has
to be calibrated in some way. Since they measure the distance at two
separate redshifts, the cosmology cancels out (at least within the range
of otherwise reasonable models). Their value is 82+/-8, which is
consistent with the current "high" measurements. There are many reasons
to doubt that the universe is only 11 billion years old, so a value of
73 is probably about right.

The MPA press release is more carefully worded: "While the uncertainty
is still relatively large" and notes that the value that that inferred
from the CMB. However, many would say that the anomaly is that the CMB
(in particular the Planck data) seem to indicate a low value.

Figure 6 of the /Science/ research article gives a nice comparison
of some of the recent Hubble-constant measurements, showing that the
choice of cosmological model (at least within the range of models
considered by the authors) makes rather little difference.
-- jt]]

In principle, the cosmological model can make a difference, but these
days we believe that the values of lambda and Omega have been narrowed
down enough that there isn't much room to move; measuring the distance
at two different redshift essentially pins it down.

In article ,
Nicolaas Vroom writes:
Accordingly to this article:
https://medium.com/the-cosmic-compan...t-e8a649a32ec8

which in turn describes this research paper
"A measurement of the Hubble constant from angular diameter distances
to two gravitational lenses"
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6458/1134

The paper is behind a paywall, but the Abstract, which is public,
summarizes the results. Two gravitational lenses at z=0.295 and
0.6304 are used to calibrate SN distances. The derived Hubble-
Lemaitre parameter H_0 is 82+/-8, about 1 sigma larger than other
local determinations and 1.5 sigma larger than the Planck value.

As Phillip wrote, the observations have their uncertainties, but 50
or so lenses would measure H_0 independently of other methods.

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Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
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[[Mod. note -- I've now found the preprint -- it's arXiv:1906.06712.
Sorry for not including that in my original mod.note. -- jt]]

Steve Willner wrote:
which in turn describes this research paper
"A measurement of the Hubble constant from angular diameter distances
to two gravitational lenses"
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6458/1134

The paper is behind a paywall, but the Abstract, which is public,
summarizes the results. [[...]]

In a moderator's note, I wrote
[[Mod. note -- I've now found the preprint -- it's arXiv:1906.06712.
Sorry for not including that in my original mod.note. -- jt]]

Oops, /dev/brain parity error. The preprint is 1909.06712
repeat 1909.06712. Sorry for the mixup. -- Jonathan

In article ,
"Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
writes:

The preprint is 1909.06712

Two additional preprints are at
https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04869 and
https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06306
These report direct measurements of gravitational lens distances
rather than a recalibration of the standard distance ladder.

The lead author Shajib of 06306 spoke here today and showed an
updated version of Fig 12 of the 04869 preprint. The upshot is that
the discrepancy between the local and the CMB measurements of H_0 is
between 4 and 5.7 sigma, depending on how conservative one wants to
be about assumptions. The impression I got is that either there's a
systematic error somewhere or there's new physics. The local H_0 is
based on two independent methods -- distance ladder and lensing -- so
big systematic errors in local H_0 seem unlikely. The CMB H_0 is
based on Planck with WMAP having given an H_0 value more consistent
with the local one. "New physics" could be something as simple as
time-varying dark energy, but for now it's too soon to say much.

One other note from the talk: it takes an expert modeler about 8 months
to a year to model a single lens system. Shajib and others are trying
to automate the modeling, but until that's done, measuring a large
sample of lenses will be labor-intensive. Even then, it will be
cpu-intensive. Shahib mentioned 1 million cpu-hours for his model of
DES J0408-53545354, and about 40 lenses are needed to give the desired
precision of local H_0.

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

On 19/10/15 10:17 PM, Steve Willner wrote:
In article ,
"Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
writes:

The preprint is 1909.06712

Two additional preprints are at
https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04869 and
https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06306
...
...
One other note from the talk: it takes an expert modeler about 8 months
to a year to model a single lens system. Shajib and others are trying
to automate the modeling,

You obviously do not mean that they do it by pencil and paper at this
moment. So why is modeling labor-intensive? Isn't it just putting a
point mass in front of the observed object, which only requires fitting
the precise position and distance of the point mass using the observed
image? (And if so, is the actual imaging with the point mass in some
place the difficult part?) Or is the problem that the lensing object
may be more extended than a point mass? (Or is it something worse!?)

--
Jos

[[Mod. note -- In these cases the lensing object is a galaxy (definitely
not a point mass!). For precise results a nontrivial model of the
galaxy's mass distribution (here parameterized by the (anisotropic)
velocity dispersion of stars in the lensing galaxy's central region)
is needed, which is the tricky (& hence labor-intensive) part.
-- jt]]

In article , I wrote:
The upshot is that the discrepancy between the local and the CMB
measurements of H_0 is between 4 and 5.7 sigma, depending on how
conservative one wants to be about assumptions.

We had another colloquium on the subject yesterday. Video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1496gv8KCo

The points I took away a 1. both the local ("direct") measurements
and the distant ("indirect") measurements are made by two
_independent_ methods, which agree in each case. That is, the two
direct methods (SNe, lensing) agree with each other, and the two
indirect methods (CMB, something complicated) agree with each other,
but the direct and indirect measurements disagree.

2. contrary to what I wrote earlier, even a non-physical change of
dark energy with time (say an abrupt increase at some fine-tuned
epoch) cannot fix the disagreement.

3. while there have been several suggestion for new physics to fix
the problem, none of them so far seems to work without disagreeing
with other data.

What fun!

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
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On 19/11/02 9:50 AM, Steve Willner wrote:
...
... 1. both the local ("direct") measurements
and the distant ("indirect") measurements are made by two
_independent_ methods, which agree in each case. That is, the two
direct methods (SNe, lensing) agree with each other, and the two
indirect methods (CMB, something complicated) agree with each other,
but the direct and indirect measurements disagree.

2. contrary to what I wrote earlier, even a non-physical change of
dark energy with time (say an abrupt increase at some fine-tuned
epoch) cannot fix the disagreement.

Indeed someone asks this question at http://youtu.be/K1496gv8KCo?t=3785
(at about z=10^(10) in the video, I believe..) and the answer given is
that it cannot be an abrupt change, "it must be smooth". The presenter's
answer seems to invoke (partly) other observations that rule it out. (So
change in dark energy might fix it but create new disagreements, which
would bring it in category 3, below.. Or would the discrepancy already
be in matching the data actually discussed here?)

3. while there have been several suggestion for new physics to fix
the problem, none of them so far seems to work without disagreeing
with other data.

What fun!

Yes! So why are only 20 people attending?!

--
Jos

On 11/2/19 3:50:25 AM, Steve Willner wrote:
In article , I wrote:
The upshot is that the discrepancy between the local and the CMB
measurements of H_0 is between 4 and 5.7 sigma, depending on how
conservative one wants to be about assumptions.


3. while there have been several suggestion for new physics to fix
the problem, none of them so far seems to work without disagreeing
with other data.

What fun!


In the question and answer period
One person asked if the triple point of hydrogen may provide
insight to the problem of discrepancy between the local
and the CMB measurements of H_0.
The triple point of hydrogen is at 13.81 K 7.042 kPa.
Silvia Galli didn't provide an answer
other than many things are possible.

The questioning person's name was not given.
Can anyone provide some insight
into what the triple point of hydrogen
has anything to do with discrepancy between
the local and the CMB measurements of H_0?

Richard Saam