In an important SDSS paper posted today, the BOSS collaboration examines what its BAO measurements from galaxy clustering (at redshifts z < 0.7) and the Lyman-alpha forest (at z = 2-3). mean for the kind of Universe we live in. In many respects, these high-precision measurements give a ringing (astronomy pun alert!) endorsement of standard cosmology, with a flat universe and a cosmological constant. They provide a new and precise measurement of the famed Hubble Constant, with a value (67.3 ± 1.1 km/s/Mpc) that agrees well with predictions from the cosmic microwave background. But a few stray threads still refuse to settle neatly in place: results from the Lyman-alpha forest and galaxies dont quite match up, and the predicted level of dark matter clustering is above most observational estimates. Unlucky rolls of the dice, or hints of new physics? All the details at arxiv.org/abs/1411.1074
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 19:57:38 +0000
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