So, it has a certain importance to measure the redshift of the galaxies around us: evidently a null or little redshift was a clue to a static universe, otherwise we live in a dynamic universe, as you can see from the image present in the historical Hubble article(2): In order to measure the Hubble constant we use two different strategies: measuring the curvature of a cosmic triangle in the cosmic backgorund radiation or using the signal from the cepheid variable stars. In the first case we have a value of $67.4 \, (km/s) / Mpc$, where $Mpc$ is megaparsec, and from cepheid stars we have $74 \, (km/s) / Mpc$, so we can see that there is a little problem with one of the most important constant of the universe.
In a paper that will be published on Astrophysical Journal, Wendy Freedman et al. performed a new precise measure that is indipendent from Cepheid stars. Using the red giant stars they found a value that is compatible with cmb: $69.8 \pm 0.8 \pm 1.7 \, (km/s) / Mpc$. Despite this result, Freedman says:
The Hubble constant is the cosmological parameter that sets the absolute scale, size and age of the universe; it is one of the most direct ways we have of quantifying how the universe evolves. The discrepancy that we saw before has not gone away, but this new evidence suggests that the jury is still out on whether there is an immediate and compelling reason to believe that there is something fundamentally flawed in our current model of the universe.
- Lemaître, G., Un Univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extra-galactiques (1927); english version (1931) ↩
- Hubble, E. (1929). A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15 (3), 168-173 doi:10.1073/pnas.15.3.168 (scan) ↩↩
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