Physicists Visit Imperial College for ‘Hubble Trouble’

Last week a group of our Lower Sixth physicists ventured up to Imperial College London on a school trip to see Professor Daniel Mortlock give a talk called ‘Hubble Trouble’. Our A Level pupils were treated to a fascinating lecture on how scientists measure the distance to objects within and without our galaxy, and how the astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that galaxies further from the Milky Way are moving away from us at a faster rate. This law, known as Hubble’s Law, allows us to work out the age of the universe… The only problem is that there are inconsistencies in the values obtained by different methods – but hopefully new physics will come to light to resolve this tension. After the lecture, our pupils had the chance to meet Prof. Mortlock and ask him all of the many questions they had from the talk.