Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2026

32 JULY-AUGUST 2026 ASTRO PUBLISHING nearby Universe. The other uses measurements of the cosmic mi- crowave background to predict what the expansion rate would be today under the standard model of cosmology. These two approaches are expected to yield the same result, but they don’t. Measurements based on the nearby Universe consistently indi- cate a higher expansion rate — around 73 kilometers per second per A stronomers have sought to measure the expansion rate of the Universe using two fundamentally different approaches. One method relies on measuring dis- tances to stars and galaxies in the Persistent mismatch in the expansion of the local Universe by NOIRLab Josie Fenske