A Cosmological Crisis Update, Nokia’s Quantum Research, & Good Batteries

This week’s science bits from SWTG

Cosmological Tension “Now a Crisis,” Physicist Says

Image: The Coma Cluster. Credits: Nielander/Wikipedia

For almost a decade now, physicists have scratched their heads over the “Hubble tension,” which is a discrepancy between different measurement results of the Hubble constant (the current expansion rate of the universe). The problem is that local measurements (from galaxies and clusters in our vicinity) give a significantly larger value than measurements from the early universe (using the cosmic microwave background).

Last year, new results from the group around Wendy Freedman (which I talked about here) suggested that using new data from the James Webb telescope much alleviated the tension. However, a new analysis from the group of Dan Scolnic now shows that the tension is alive and kicking. His group has made the most precise measurement ever of our distance to the Coma Cluster. This measurement serves as a calibration for the local measurements and reaffirms the Hubble tension. Though I guess it creates a new Scolnic-Freedman tension…

In the accompanying press release, Scolnic says “The tension now turns into a crisis.” Paper here.

Nokia Works on Topological Quantum Computing, Announces Announcements

Image: Probably some part of the cooling system🤷. Credits: Nokia

Nokia recently revealed in a blog post that they have been working for several years on topological quantum computing and expect to have the first results available later this year. Topological quantum computers use qubits whose quantum properties are protected by geometrical conservation laws. This makes them very robust to noise. Topological qubits are more difficult to create, but would also be much easier to scale. Microsoft and Google have been looking into this as well.

Electric Car Batteries Degrade Slower Than Expected

A “man bites dog” story in journalism is an event that turns the status quo upside down. We don’t get these often in science and technology, but today, I have one: Researchers have found that electric vehicle batteries have an almost 40% longer lifetime if they replicate realistic driving and charging patterns rather than extrapolating from standard laboratory tests. While this result might be somewhat overly optimistic, it is partly backed up by earlier studies that found that batteries degrade slower in practice than in tests. The researchers speculate that people use high-powered DC chargers less than assumed and that this preserves battery quality. Paper here. Summary here.