STARSET_MirrorThe Hubble constant: a mystery that keeps getting bigger
Astronomers have reached a fundamental impasse in their understanding of the universe: they cannot agree how fast it is flying apart. And unless a reasonable explanation can be found for their differing estimates, they may be forced to completely rethink their ideas about time and space. Only new physics can now account for the cosmic conundrum they have uncovered, many believe.
天文学家在对宇宙的理解上已经陷入了一个根本的僵局：他们无法就宇宙分裂的速度达成一致。除非能为他们的不同估计找到一个合理的解释，否则他们可能会被迫彻底重新思考他们对时间和空间的看法。许多人相信，只有新的物理学理论才能解释他们所揭示的宇宙难题。
“Five years ago, no one in cosmology was really worried about the question of how fast the universe was expanding. We took it for granted,” says astrophysicist Daniel Mortlock of Imperial College London. “Now we are having to do a great deal of head scratching – and a lot of research.”
“五年前，宇宙学界没有人真的担心宇宙膨胀有多快的问题。我们认为这是理所当然的，”伦敦帝国理工学院的天体物理学家丹尼尔·莫洛克说。“现在，我们必须做大量的令人挠头的工作，并进行大量的研究。”
This view is backed by the US astrophysicist and Nobel prize winner Adam Riess, of Johns Hopkins University. “I think this issue has become a big deal. We were getting better and betterat understanding the universe and yet the closer we have been looking, the more we have found there are all these mysterious components.”
这一观点得到了美国天体物理学家、约翰·霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins University）的诺贝尔奖获得者亚当·里斯（Adam Riess）的支持。“我认为这个问题已经成为一个大问题。我们对宇宙的了解越来越深入，但我们越看越近，就越发现这些成分的神秘。”
Over the decades, these surprises have included the discovery of dark matter – believed to be made up of as yet undetected particles – whose extra gravitational pull explains why galaxies do not fly apart. In addition, astronomers have also discovered the existence of dark energy, which is accelerating the rate at which the cosmos is expanding.
几十年来，这些令人惊讶的发现包括暗物质的发现，据信暗物质是由尚未被探测到的粒子组成的，其额外的引力解释了星系为什么不会飞散。此外，天文学家还发现了暗能量的存在，暗能量正加速宇宙膨胀的速度。
Read more at The Guardian
翻译：STARSET Mirror翻译组
