Hubble constant: discrepancy between

high and low redshifts measurements

Olga Lebiga
October 13, 2019

Contents
1 Prologue: courses overview 2
1.1 Applied statistics in astrophysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Exotic stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Distance determinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Introduction 4

3 ΛCDM model 5

4 Methods of Hubble constant measurement 8

4.1 Standard candles: SNIa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2 Strong gravitational lensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.3 CMB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.4 Baryon Acoustic Oscillations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.5 Tension between low and high redshift measurements . . . 16

5 Possible resolutions of the tension 16

5.1 Problems with measurements: Planck . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2 Problems with measurements: local measurements . . . . 18
5.3 Different physics in the Early Universe . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.4 Wrong assumptions in cosmological model . . . . . . . . . 20

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6 Summary and future prospects 21

1 Prologue: courses overview

In the module on methods of modern astrophysics, I studied Applied
statistics in astrophysics, Distance determinations, and Exotic stars. All
courses were interesting enough for me and gave me a much deeper un-
derstanding of the topics to which they were dedicated. Some of them
were more interesting to me personally, some less. In this part, I will
briefly describe what was new for me, what I learned in each of the
courses, what fascinated me and seemed to be the most interesting.

1.1 Applied statistics in astrophysics

The first course I started was statistics. During my bachelor studies,
I have already studied a course in probability theory and statistics. It
was not particularly deep but gave me a basic understanding of the
topic. Therefore, the first half of the course was not as informative
for me as it could, but later we delved into the methods of processing
astrophysical data and it was very informative for me. The lecturer
often gave interesting tasks for homework, for example, at one of the
first lectures we discussed Bayes’ theorem after not everyone was able
to cope with the task of testing drugs. Later we turned to statistical
distributions and briefly touched on correlation analysis. I am familiar
with the latter from courses in plasma physics where it is one of the
most important tools for both solving equations and analyzing spectra,
so I was glad to understand deeper how it works from a mathematical
point of view. But the most interesting and the least familiar topic for
me was data modeling, their parameterization, and approximation. I
learned how to use the Monte Carlo method and the Bayesian likelihood
analysis. In general, the course was quite interesting and difficult, even
taking into account the fact that my bachelor in Ukraine included a
large number of mathematical courses. I also found out about a very
interesting and useful book on statistics in the context of astronomy,

2
and later independently examined some additional chapters on it.

1.2 Exotic stars

In the same semester, I studied a course about exotic stars. I should note
that this was perhaps one of the most interesting courses for me for the
entire master studies because I was initially very interested in the evo-
lution of stars and various compact objects. Also, Professor Strassmeier
is a very good lecturer who is well versed in the subject and who can
interest anyone. We devoted a lot of time to understand how a star is
generally balanced at different stages of its evolution, and for example,
I was delighted by the fact that in a simple model the radius of a star
depends only on its angular momentum, and this model is quite working.
We also evaluated the lifetime of a star before the collapse, and it turned
out that it depends solely on the initial density and temperature. We
also discussed the fact that just before the collapse, the star begins to
lose energy extremely quickly through gravitational waves since it is no
longer spherical. This was a huge discovery for me, since, before this
course, I did not think about exactly how the collapse occurs, especially
for massive stars. We discussed various equations of state of the star
and why the derivation of these equations is one of the most important
problems in astrophysics. So for white dwarfs, the equation of state is
defined, but with neutron stars, everything is already much more com-
plicated, because we still do not understand physics in the depths of a
neutron star. Besides, it is very difficult to obtain the mass-radius ratio
for many stars because the well-known methods for its determination do
not work for any type of stars. In general, for this course, it is difficult
for me to single out any specific topic since it was all very useful and
interesting for me.

1.3 Distance determinations

The course on distance determinations takes two semesters and this is
entirely justified. The first semester is devoted to “close” objects – start-
ing from the distance to the Moon and up to the Local Universe. The

3
lectures were quite interesting, but the homework was even more inter-
esting. So the method of determining the astronomical unit through the
transit of Venus through the Sun turned out to be much more compli-
cated than I expected because it would seem that this is the most basic
that we can generally determine in astronomy. But not only do these
measurements require accurate synchronization of several observers, but
there are several pitfalls in the methodology for determining according to
already known data. And this is only the first homework! I learned that
for a large number of different types of stars, there are different meth-
ods for determining the distance to them, starting from the classical use
of known luminosity and determining distances using the Hertzsprung-
Russell diagram. Also, in matters of determining distances, I was always
admired by the consistency of many different observations and the mu-
tual cross-checking with the help of the “cosmic distance ladder”. This
helps to achieve amazing accuracy.
The second semester was devoted to the measurement of more “dis-
tant” distances. And I must admit it turned out to be even more in-
teresting than the first because we touched on both standard candles
– type Ia supernovae, cosmological distances, and measurements using
CMB. For me, perhaps, the most interesting were galactic methods, for
example, as the Tully-Fisher relation. Before this, I did not know that
due to the rotation of spiral galaxies from the spectral lines of radiation
are broadened and had no idea that there is a connection between the
rotation of the galaxy and its luminosity. So it is logical that for the final
essay modulo I chose this course. I made an essay about the problem of
tension between local and large-scale measurements of the Hubble con-
stant and I think it is a very important mystery in modern astrophysics,
that may cause long-going consequences.

2 Introduction
Modern cosmology stands on four experimental pillars: expansion of the
Universe, large scale structure, cosmic microwave background (CMB)
and Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). From the theoretical point of view,

4
the foundation of the cosmology is a combination of the General rel-
ativity (GR) and the Standard Model of the particles physics (SM).
However, as we will discuss below, we still do not know what are the
dominant substances in the Universe and we need to make assumptions
here. Therefore, our standard cosmological model – ΛCDM contains
some assumptions that are subject to ongoing research.
Four pillars of cosmology provide a large amount of independent data
to constrain free parameters in ΛCDM and make a cross-check of these
parameters from independent observations. For a long time, these mea-
surement gave consistent results, but in the last few years, the discrep-
ancy for the values of the speed on Universe expansion – Hubble constant
– was found in the local and large-scale measurements. In this essay, we
will try to make an overview of the current situation both from experi-
mental and theoretical points and discuss possible ways of resolution of
this problem.
The plan of our discussion is the following: we start our discussion
with a reminder about standard cosmological model – ΛCDM in the Sec-
tion 3. Next, in Section 4 we discuss the idea of a Hubble constant mea-
surement and particular results of a local measurements such as SN Ia
(Section 4.1) and time decay in strong gravitational lensing (Section 4.2)
measurements, and the large scale measurements as cosmic microwave
background (Section 4.3) and baryon acoustic oscillation (Section 4.4).
We briefly discuss the tension between local and large scale measure-
ments in Section 4.5. In the next Section 5 we discuss different possible
resolutions of the tension, such as systematical error in measurements
(Sections 5.1, 5.2), new physics in the Early Universe (Section 5.3) or
problems with our basic assumptions (Section 5.4). Finally, we make a
summary and discuss prospects in Section 6.

3 ΛCDM model
To the best of our knowledge, the Universe at large enough scales (l &
3 Mpc) is homogeneous and isotropic. Its dynamics can be described by

5
Einstein’s equations [1]
Gµν + Λgµν = 8πGTµν , (1)
that connect geometric of the spacetime (Gµν ) with the energy-momentum
tensor of matter Tµν . It contains free parameter Λ that is called the cos-
mological constant.
The geometry of the homogeneous and isotropic Universe can be
described Friedmann, Lemaitre, Robertson and Walker metric [1]
ds2 = dt2 − a2 (t)(dr2 + Sk2 (r)dΩ2 ), (2)
where function Sk depends on geometry of the space:
√

1


 √ sin( kr), k > 0 (positive curvature);
 k

Sk (r) = r, k = 0 (flat space); (3)

 1 √
 √ sinh( kr), k < 0 (negative curvature).


k
The only unknown function in metric is a scale factor a(t) that controls
dynamics of expansion of the Universe.
To solve Eq. (1) one also needs to know properties of matter that fills
the Universe. In the homogeneous and isotropic Universe, an energy-
momentum tensor can be always written as
 
ρ(t) 0 0 0
 0 p(t) 0 0 
Tµν =  0
, (4)
0 p(t) 0 
0 0 0 p(t)
where ρ(t) and p(t) are energy density of pressure of matter correspond-
ingly. Substituting ansatz (2) and (4) in Einstein’s equations one gets
Friedmann equations
 2
2 ȧ 8πG Λ k
H ≡ = ρ + − 2, (5)
a 3 3 a
ä 4πG Λ
=− (ρ + 3p) + . (6)
a 3 3

6
Here function H(t) is called Hubble parameter.
So, the law of expansion depends on the composition of the Universe.
For matter one can distinguish two different cases: dust or matter, that
means non-relativistic particles and radiation, that means ultrarelativis-
tic particles. The energy density of the dust behaves as ∝ a−3 because of
the increase of volume. The energy density of radiation changes ∝ a−4
because in addition to volume expansion energy of each particle decreases
as ∝ a−1 [1]. Using this knowledge one can rewrite the first Friedmann
equation (5) as
4 3 2
 
a a a
H 2 = H02 ΩR 40 + ΩM 03 + ΩC 02 + ΩΛ , (7)
a a a

where terms in the right-hand side describes radiation, matter, curvature

and Λ-term energy density correspondingly.
For a long time, people thought that the main constituents of the
Universe are matter and curvature. In 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert
Woodrow Wilson discovered a cosmic microwave background (CMB) –
an isotropic emission that has a spectrum very close to the black body
spectrum [2]. Moreover, we know that there are a huge amount of relic
neutrinos flying around us [1], so CMB and relic neutrinos give the den-
sity of radiation with ΩR ∼ 10−5 [1].
In 1998 the accelerated expansion was discovered by two independent
projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project [3] and the High-Z Supernova
Search Team [4]. According to the current measurements of CMB and
baryon acoustic oscillations accelerated expansion can be explained by
introducing Λ-term in Einstein’s equation with ΩΛ = 0.6889±0.0056 [2].
Also, the same measurement strongly constrains curvature term ΩC =
0.0007 ± 0.0019 [2] which means that our Universe is can be considered
as a spatially flat with very high precision.
By definition, the sum of all Omegas is equal to one. So, the rest
of the energy density of the Universe consists of the matter with ΩM =
0.3111±0.005 [2]. An only small part of it consists of observable baryonic
matter, Ωb ≈ 0.049, while the rest of non-relativistic matter consists of
the substance that is called dark matter (DM) with ΩDM ≈ 0.262 [2].

7
Figure 1: Wavelength of each particle in the expanding Universe stretches
with expansion. Image credit: Addison Wesley.

The nature of dark matter is not known and this question is currently a
subject of active research (see, e.g. [5] and references therein). However,
the discussion of this interesting question is far beyond the topic of this
work. Below we will concentrate on the last parameter from the Eq. (7)
– the Hubble constant H0 .

4 Methods of Hubble constant measurement

All measurements of the Hubble constant can be divide into two wide
classes: local measurements that are based on the data from sources that
are not very far (comparing to cosmological scales) from the Milky Way
and the global ones that are based on more distant sources. However,
both classes of methods are usually based on the comparison between
the redshift z and the distance to the source. Let us discuss both of
these quantities.
In the expanding Universe wavelength of each photon stretches with
the expansion of the Universe as λ(t1 )/λ(t2 ) = a(t1 )/a(t2 ) [1], see an
illustration on Fig. 1. So the wavelength of light increases, while energy
of each photon decreases. The redshift z is defined as
Eγ − Eγ,today
z= , (8)
Eγ,today

where Eγ is the energy of the photon at the time of its emission and

8
Eγ,today is the energy of the same photon today. It can be written as

Eγ λγ,today a0
z= −1= −1 ⇒ 1+z = , (9)
Eγ,today λγ a

where a is a scale factor at the time of emission and a0 is a scale factor

today.
The distance d between some source and us we can find using the fact
that we are connected by a light ray. For each part of light’s trajectory
holds
ds2 = 0 ⇒ dt = a(t)dr, (10)
so one can find a distance as
Zt0 Za0
dt da
d =a0 ∆r = a0 = |da = ȧdt| = a0 = (11)
a(t) aȧ
t a
Za0  Zz dz
da  a0
=a0 = from (9): dz = − 2 da = . (12)
 
2
a H(a) a H(z)
a 0

We will use this formula only during the Λ or matter dominated epochs,
so using (7) we can write distance as

Zz
1 dz
d≈ p . (13)
H0 ΩM (1 + z)3 + ΩΛ
0

Using formula (12) one can easily obtain the Hubble’s law. For small
redshift z  1 Hubble parameter H(z) is approximately constant H0 ,
so
z = H0 d . (14)
This is what observed by Edwin Hubble in 1929 [6]. He interpreted
redshift as a result of a Doppler effect, z = v, that is why usually write
Hubble’s law as v = H0 d. However, there is a physical difference between
Doppler effect and redshift caused by the expansion of the Universe:

9
redshift from Doppler effect is defined only by the relative velocity of the
emitter and receiver, while redshift caused by expansion happens during
photon’s free propagation in space and depends on the initial and final
scale factors.

4.1 Standard candles: SNIa

From Eq. (13) follows that to find the Hubble constant one needs to mea-
sure redshift and distance to some object independently. While redshift
can be quite easily measured by analyzing spectroscopic data and find-
ing redshift of some known spectral lines, the measurement of distance
is a more complicated task. For relatively close stars one can use paral-
lax (observing a visible shift of a star while Earth orbits around Sun).
However, this method can be applied only to the nearby stars within our
galaxy.
To measure distance for more remote objects one can method of stan-
dard candles. The idea of the method is as follows: consider that for some
object the luminosity L is known (that is why we call such objects stan-
dard candles). Measuring flux F at the Earth one can find a distance to
the object d from the relation
L
F = . (15)
4πd2
For cosmological distances formula (15) should be modified as [1]
L
F = . (16)
4πd2 (1 + z)2
One factor (1 + z)−1 is present here because every photon is redshifted
during its flight and loose its energy. Another factor (1+z)−1 corresponds
to the fact that the frequency of emission of photons is higher then the
frequency of detection of photons: during free propagation of photons
the distance between them became bigger because of expansion of the
Universe.
The SH0ES project [7] uses the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was used to measure a Hubble constant

10
Figure 2: Measurements of a Hubble constant using SN-Ia [7] in units of
log cz.

with uncertainty 2.4%. The sample of ∼ 600 SN-Ia was calibrated with
19 Cepheid variables observed in the same host galaxies. This results in
the measurement of a Hubble constant

H0 = 73.2 ± 1.7 km/s/Mpc, (17)

see Fig. 2. This result was recently updated in [8, 9] where calibration
of Cepheid variables was improved by parallax measurements of a close
Cepheid variables and additional Cepheid variables were used for SN Ia
calibration. This gives a Hubble constant value

H0 = 74.03 ± 1.42 km/s/Mpc . (18)

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Figure 3: Example of the formation strong lensing image when the source
and lens are off-axes.

4.2 Strong gravitational lensing

If the source of light is located behind the massive object, the image can
have a form of a ring because of strong lensing (Einstein ring). If the
lens is not on the same axes as the source and observer, Einstein rings
get disrupted. For large off-axis displacements it becomes two (or more)
separate images rather than a ring, see Fig. 3. The distance traveled by
the light of different images is not the same in this case. Therefore, if the
source is variable, we may be able to observe time delay between different
images of the same source. The value of this time delay depends on
H0 : the larger value of the Hubble constant corresponds to the smaller
expansion time between two fixed redshifts and this results in smaller
time delay, see Fig. 4. The measurement of a Hubble constant using this
method doesn’t use a distance ladder [10].
Using this idea the ‘’H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL’s Wellspring” (H0LiCOW)
project uses data of strong lenses of quasars to measure time delay from
different components of lensing images. They combined six gravitation-
ally lensed quasars with measured time delays [11], see Fig. 5. The result
of this analysis is
H0 = 73.3+1.7
−1.8 km/s/Mpc , (19)
that is in a good agreement with SN-Ia measurement.

12
Figure 4: An illustration of the method of a Hubble constant measure-
ment using time delay of a strong lens images. The large Hubble constant
value results in a smaller distance traveled by light between fixed red-
shifts and a smaller time delay.

4.3 CMB
Unlike the previous measurements, the Hubble constant measurement
from CMB uses data at large redshifts. To better understand the idea
of the measurement, let us discuss the evolution of the inhomogeneities
in the Early Universe.
Before the recombination, that happened right after the matter-
radiation equality, the plasma in the Early Universe consisted of pho-
tons and charged particles. This plasma had a large value of pressure
1
p ≈ ρ. Because of the large pressure overdensities did not collapse, but
3
∂p
produced sound waves with velocity c2s = ≈ 1/3 [12].
∂ρ
In the Early Universe, we had a large number of small inhomo-
geneities. Each of them gave a sound wave that diverges around with the
same speed cs . At the time of CMB decoupling the front of waves have
radius rs = cs trec called sound horizon. From the CMB observations one
can measure the angular size a sound horizon today θs ∼ 1◦ , that is

13
Figure 5: Hubble constant measurement fron six gravitationally lensed
quasars using time delays of different components of their image [11].

related to the sound horizon as

rs
θs ≈ , (20)
dLSS
where dLSS is a distance to the last scattering surface, where CMB pho-
tons were decoupled after the recombination.
Using the theoretical prediction for the sound horizon, rs = 147.00 ±
0.34 Mpc [13] we are able to deduce the distance to the last scattering
surface and to find a Hubble constant value using Eq. (12). This is an
idea of the measurement of the Hubble constant using CMB data. The
latest result from CMB was produced by Planch collaboration [2],

H0 = 67.4 ± 0.5 km/s/Mpc . (21)

This value has a strong tension with values of the local measurements
by SN-Ia (18) and time delay in strong gravitational lensing (19).

14
Figure 6: The baryon acoustic oscillations in the power spectrum of each
of the BOSS data releases, DR9, DR10, and DR11 [14].

4.4 Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

Another large scale measurement of the Hubble constant is a Baryon
Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). The same oscillations that were in CMB
are also imprinted in the density of the baryons and can be observed
in the distribution of galaxies at cosmological scales, which is known as
baryon acoustic oscillations, see Fig. 6.
Calibrating distances to galaxies using the SN Ia data, one can find
the Hubble constant value, assuming the value of the sound horizon rs
at the time of recombination [15]. The result is [16]

H0 = 67.4+1.1
−1.2 km/s/Mpc ., (22)

and it is in a good agreement with the value of the Hubble constant

measured by CMB 21.

15
Figure 7: The current experimental situation with measurement of a
Hubble constant from local measurements (on the right) and from large
scale measurements (on the left) [11].

4.5 Tension between low and high redshift measure-

ments
The summary of the current measurement of the Hubble constant is
shown in Fig. 7. The local measurements of the Hubble constant tend to
larger values than the large scale ones. Formally speaking, the difference
between combined local measurements and Planck results is 5.3σ, while
statistical difference with BAO is 4.1σ [11]. This is a serious tension that
should be closely investigated.

5 Possible resolutions of the tension

There are two main possibilities: either there are some systematic prob-
lems with our measurements or we need to change something in our
standard cosmological model. In this section, we will try to critically
discuss different possibilities.

16
Figure 8: Values of the Hubble constant depending for high and low
multipoles [2]. Here T T are temperature-temperature correlations,
T E are temperature-polarization correlations and EE are polarization-
polarization correlations in CMB.

5.1 Problems with measurements: Planck

It is known that WMAP results were consistent with local measurement,
while new measurements by Planck showed the difference [17]. And there
are several questions to the self-consistency of Planck data. From the
analysis made by Planck collaboration itself we see that the data on
temperature-temperature correlations for low multipoles ` < 802 tends
to higher Hubble constant value, while data on higher multipoles pulls
Hubble constant to the small values [2], see Fig. 8. Polarization data
has a similar tendency while using of lensing data makes Hubble value
bigger for high multipoles.
The question with the self-consistency is quite complicated and, prob-
ably, will be resolved only with some new measurements. However, it
seems that even taking into account this problem the value given by
Planck is significantly smaller than the local measurement. Also, we
need to keep in mind that BAO measurement is independent of Planck
measurement, so there is significant evidence of low Hubble constant
value from the large scale measurements.

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5.2 Problems with measurements: local measure-
ments

Figure 9: Complete distance ladder used for local measurements.

Cepheid variables calibration using parallax (lower left), Cepheid and
SN Ia-based distances (middle panel) and SNand redshift-based distances
provides the measurement of the Hubble constant [7].

The SN Ia measurements are based on the distance ladder. The cur-

rent precision of the cross-calibration is quite high, see Fig. 9. Taking this
into account, the current level of the systematic error is about 1.5% [9].
The cross-calibration becomes better and better because of new data
available each year and there no any serious critics in the literature of

18
this method of measurements. Also, the local value of the Hubble con-
stant measured using time delays in strong gravitational lensing gives a
consistent result, but it does not use a distance ladder. So again we can
tell about a quite solid measurement of the local Hubble constant that
conflicts with large scale measurements.

5.3 Different physics in the Early Universe

Figure 10: Reinterpretation of the measurements of the Hubble constant

depending on the sound horizon value [13]. Black and gray areas corre-
spond to local Hubble constant value from SN Ia measurement [7], purple
are is a reinterpretation of Planck measurement.

The Hubble constant value from the large scale measurements de-
pends on the theoretical knowledge of the sound horizon rs in the Early
Universe, see Sections 4.3 and 4.4. Roughly speaking, from the CMB
and BAO experimental data one can determine a product rs H0 , so
we need to assume a sound horizon, see Fig. 10. To make measure-
ments of H0 consistent it is enough to change the sound horizon from
rs = 147.00 ± 0.34 Mpc to rs = 136.7 ± 4.1 Mpc [13].
There are different possibilities of how to change rs , but, for example,
it can be done increasing the number of effective degrees of freedom [2].
The number of effective degrees of freedom Neff is a parameterization of

19
Figure 11: Best fit to ΛCDM model for different values of effective num-
ber of degrees of freedom Neff [2].

the energy density of the relativistic particles in SM neutrinos and new

particles,
ρrad = ργ + Neff ρν , (23)
where ργ and ρν are energy densities of photons and one SM neutrino
specie respectively. In the standard cosmology Neff = 3.045 [18]. It is a
little bit larger than intuitive value 3, because of the spectral distortions
in the neutrino spectrum that they obtain during freeze-out. Larger
value of Neff that is possible in the presence of new light particles gives
higher Hubble rate in the Early Universe and, as a result, smaller rs , see
Fig. 11. We see that half on the energy density of one neutrino specie is
enough to eliminate the tension.

5.4 Wrong assumptions in cosmological model

If the previous explanations are not correct, probably there are problems
in our basic assumptions. Incomplete sky coverage can reduce the sig-
nificance of the tension. For example, reanalyzing the data up to 2018
from it was shown that 3.8σ tension can be reduced to 2.4σ for isotropic

20
data-sets, and 1.8σ for the anisotropic ones [19].
Even more interesting assumption is that we live in large overdensity,
so our local H0 value is bigger than in the Universe around. To check
this assumption we need to extend our local measurements, that are
currently utilize data with z < 0.5, to larger redshifts.

6 Summary and future prospects

Hubble constant H0 is a parameter of the standard cosmological model
that describes the rate of expansion of the Universe today. It can be
measured using the data from the local part of the Universe (measure-
ment using SN Ia and time delays from the different images in strong
gravitational lensing) or extracting from the large scale measurement of
our Universe as cosmic microwave background (CMB) or baryon acoustic
oscillations (BAO). The values of Hubble constant obtained with these
two types of measurements are in great tension, see Fig. 7.
In 2016, when the tension was not so striking, the main hypothesis
was unknown systematic uncertainty in Planck or SN Ia data [17]. Dur-
ing the recent years there were a lot of efforts to explore and reduce sys-
tematic errors in the various methods. But the growing tension between
early and late-Universe probes of H0 has only continued to heighten.
If this tension stays unresolved, it may force the rejection of the flat
ΛCDM model in favor of new physics, which would dramatically alter
our understanding of the Universe.
The possible explanation is a new physics in the Early Universe, that
causes a smaller sound horizon. This can be obtained by introducing
new relativistic particles in the Early Universe. Another possibility is
some changes in basic assumptions like dynamical dark energy [20], or
hypothesis that we live in a large overdensity.
We can hope that this question will be resolved in the future with
new experimental data to come. Soon, it is expected to improve the
local H0 measurement using SN Ia to 1% precision [21]. This will be
possible because of the Gaia mission, that will deliver an order of mag-
nitude increase in parallaxes of Galactic Cepheids. Also there expected

21
∼ 2.5x larger Cepheid/SN calibrator sample and the Foundation Super-
nova Survey is expected to observe up to 800 additional SN Ia on the
Pan-STARRS telescope [22].
Local measurements of the Hubble constant can be extended using
Extragalactic Background Light (EBL): photons that are accumulated
in the intergalactic space. Very high energy photons with Eγ & 30 GeV
can interact with EBL photons and produce an electron-positron pair.
This results in the attenuation of the γ-ray signal for larger energies.
The amount of attenuation along the line of sight depends on the ex-
pansion rate and matter content of the Universe. Current analysis from
Fermi and HESS that utilized data up to redshift z = 3 gives H0 =
68.0+4.2
−4.1 km/s/Mpc [23] that is consistent with both local and large scale
measurement. In the near future, the CTA telescope will start to work
and significantly update this measurement [24]. We can hope that the
new data from intermediate scales will shed more light on this intriguing
question.

References
[1] V. A. Rubakov and D. S. Gorbunov, Introduction to the theory of
the early universe: hot big bang theory. World Scientific, 2018.
[2] Planck Collaboration, N. Aghanim et al., Planck 2018 results. VI.
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