New Method Reveals Slower Expansion In Our Cosmic Neighborhood

Two studies were recently published in Astronomy & Astrophysics by an international team including David Benisty from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP). Each paper analyzes observational data for a different nearby galaxy group — the Centaurus A group and the M81 group — to determine both their masses and the value of the Hubble constant.

The Hubble constant describes how fast the Universe expands, expressed as a ratio of the recessional velocity to the distance a galaxy has towards us.