The Broken Cosmic Distance Ladder
An episode of the Gresham College Lectures podcast, hosted by Gresham College, titled "The Broken Cosmic Distance Ladder" was published on February 4, 2022 and runs 58 minutes.
February 4, 2022 ·58m · Gresham College Lectures
Summary
Measuring distances to astronomical objects outside our Galaxy is a surprisingly hard challenge: it wasn't until 1923 that Edwin Hubble obtained proof that Andromeda is indeed a galaxy in its own right. Today, astronomers extend distance measurements in the cosmos to the edge of the visible Universe, building up a 'cosmic distance ladder' made of several rungs. This talk will explore a major conundrum of contemporary astronomy: as observations have become more precise, the distance ladder a...
Episode Description
Measuring distances to astronomical objects outside our Galaxy is a surprisingly hard challenge: it wasn't until 1923 that Edwin Hubble obtained proof that Andromeda is indeed a galaxy in its own right. Today, astronomers extend distance measurements in the cosmos to the edge of the visible Universe, building up a 'cosmic distance ladder' made of several rungs.
This talk will explore a major conundrum of contemporary astronomy: as observations have become more precise, the distance ladder appears today to be broken.
A lecture by Roberto Trotta
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/cosmic-distance
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.
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