Chapter 4

The expanding Universe

Hubble’s Law
Hubble Law is the expression for the expansion of the Universe in a
simple equation. It states that the apparent recession velocity v of a galaxy from
the observer is proportional to its distance d.
v∝d
v = H 0d
The constant of proportionality Ho is known as the Hubble constant.
The discovery of his Hubble’s law resulted from the study of the spectra
of galaxies. Light from a galaxy contains a mixture of colours, produced by all
the stars within it. Astronomical spectra contain sharp emission lines. These
lines are produced in the gas contained in stars by electrons shifting between
different energy levels. Their wavelengths can be measured accurately.
Hubble was able to identify emission lines in many galaxies. But
comparing their position in the measured spectrum to where the lines should be,
he found they were usually in the wrong place. The lines were always shifted
to the red end of the spectrum (towards longer wavelengths). Hubble
interpreted this as a Doppler shift.
Hubble measured a larger redshift for the more distant galaxies than for
the nearby ones. He assumed that what he was seeing was a Doppler shift, so he
converted the shifting of the spectral lines into a measure of velocity.
The Hubble’s law basically means that galaxies twice as far away from
the observer are moving away twice as quickly. Those three times away move
three times as fast, and so on.
If a graph is plotted with the measured velocities and distances of
galaxies, they lie on a straight line. The slope of this line is Ho.
Hubble’s law is now taken to represent the expansion of the Universe,
But Hubble himself never made this interpretation of his results. Lemaître was
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the first theorist to explain Hubble’s Law in terms of the expansion of the entire
Universe.
The identification of the Hubble Law with the cosmic expansion is one of
the main supporting pillars of the Big Bang theory.
Interpreting the Hubble Law
The galaxies are observed to be moving away from us suggests that we
must be at the centre of the expansion. But this is violating the Copernican
Principle. Any other observer also sees everything moving away. Every point in
the Universe is equivalent as far as the expansion is concerned. It can be proved
mathematically that Hubble’s Law must apply in a homogeneous and isotropic
expanding universe. So the Cosmological Principle holds. It is the only way
such a universe can expand.
It may help to visualize the situation by reducing the three dimensions of
space to the two-dimensional surface of a balloon. When a balloon is blows up,
each dot on the surface of the balloon sees all the other dots moving away as if
it were the centre of expansion.
Hubble had not measured velocities but redshifts. The redshift is given by
 v
the symbol z in cosmology  z =  . z measures the fractional change in
 c
wavelength of an observed line relative to its expected position. So Hubble’s
Law can also be stated as a linear relationship between redshift z and distance d.
It is important also to stress that not everything takes part in the
expansion. Planet stars, and galaxies are bound so strongly by gravitational
forces that they are not expanding with the rest of the Universe. On scales even
larger than galaxies, not all objects are moving away from each other either. For
example, the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is actually approaching the Milky Way
because these two objects are held together by their mutual gravitational
attraction.

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Doppler shift
A moving source of emission tends to produce light of shorter
wavelength if it is approaching the observer and longer wavelength if it is
receding. This is the Doppler effect applies to light.
Usually the effect is very small, but it becomes appreciable if the velocity
of a source is a significant fraction of the velocity of light.
If the source is emitting white light, one cannot see any kind of shift.
Suppose each line were redshifted by an amount x in wavelength, then light
emitted at a wavelength y is observed at wavelength y + x. But still the same
amount of light will be observed at the original wavelength y, because light
originally emitted at wavelength y – x is now shifted there to fill the gap. White
light therefore still looks white, regardless of the Doppler shift. To see an effect,
one has to look at emission lines, which occur at discrete frequencies so that no
such compensation can occur.
As light travels from a source galaxy to the observer it gets stretched by
the expansion of the Universe, eventually arriving with a longer wavelength
than when it started. This interpretation is so simple that it eluded (escaped
from) physicists for many years.

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Scale Factor
The distance d of an object can be measured using light emitted by the
object. Since the Universe is expanding, things are not at the same position now
as they were when light set out from them. Therefore astronomers are forced to
use indirect distance measurements and attempt to correct for the expansion of
the Universe to locate where the object actually is. Thinking about velocities
and distances of sources is complicated. While the redshift is usually thought of
as a Doppler shift, there is another way of picturing this effect. This is much
simpler and actually more accurate.
In the expanding universe, separations between any points increase
uniformly in all directions. Imagine an expanding sheet of graph paper. The
regular grid on the paper at some particular time will look like a blown-up
version of the way it looked at an earlier time. Because of this symmetry one
only needs to know the factor by which the grid has been expanded in order to
recover the past grid from the later one. Likewise, since a homogeneous and
isotropic universe remains so as it expands, one only needs to know an overall
‘scale factor’ to obtain a picture of the past physical conditions from present
data. This factor is called the scale factor and is represented by the symbol a(t).
Its behaviour is governed by the Friedmann equations.
Measurement of Hubble’s constant Ho
The Hubble constant Ho is one of the most important numbers in
cosmology. But it is also an example of one of the failings of the Big Bang
model. The Big Bang cannot predict the value Hubble constant Ho. It is part of
the information imprinted at the beginning of the Universe where our theory
breaks down.
Obtaining the value for Ho using observations is a very complicated task.
Astronomers need two measurements, (i) galaxy’s velocity and (ii) its distnace.

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 By measuring galaxy’s redshift its velocity can be determined. But the
measurement of the distance is more difficult to perform. Various methods are
used for distance measurements.
The methods known as primary distance indicators are given below:
(i) The distances to relatively nearby stars can be measured using the
trigonometric parallax of a star. Trigonometric parallax is the change in the
star’s position on the sky in the course of a year due to the Earth’s motion
around the Sun. The astrometric satellite Hipparchos was able to obtain
parallax measurements for thousands of stars in our galaxy. But parallax angles
smaller than 0.01 arc seconds are very difficult to measure from the Earth. This
is due to the effects of the atmosphere. This limits the distance measurement
using parallax method to about 100 pc
(ii) Another important method is using Cepheid variables. A Cepheid variable is
a type of variable star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and
temperature. It changes in brightness, with a well-defined stable period and
amplitude. Cepheid stars obey a relationship between the period of variation P
 1

and their absolute luminosity L  L ∝ log P 3  . The measurement of P for a
 
distant Cepheid thus allows one to estimate its L. Then its distance can be
measured by knowing the brightness. If b is brightness of a star measured from
L
the Earth and if its distance from the Earth is d, then b = . So by knowing
4π d 2
L and b, d can be measured.
Cepheid variable stars are so bright that they can be seen in galaxies
outside our own. So they extend the distance measurement scale to around 4
Mpc. Errors in the Cepheid distance measurement are due to interstellar
absorption and galactic rotation. Also there is confusion between Cepheids and
another type of variable star, called the W Virginis variables,

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(iii) Tully-Fisher relation and Faber-Jackson relation are also used for
measurement of luminosity L and thus for the calculation of distance. By these
methods, measurement is possible up to 10 Mpc.
The secondary distance indicators include H II regions (large clouds of
ionized hydrogen surrounding very hot stars) and globular clusters.
Ionised hydrogen (H II) is a hydrogen atom that has lost its electron and
is now positively charged. It is easily detected at optical wavelengths as it
releases a photon of wavelength 656.3 nm when it recaptures an electron and
returns to its neutral state. The diameter of the brightest H II regions is related
to galaxy’s absolute magnitude. By knowing the absolute magnitude, the
distance can be measured.
A globular cluster (GC) is a spherical collection of stars that bound
together by gravity. There is a higher concentration of stars towards their
centers. Globular clusters contain about 104 − 107 stars. Globular clusters are
found in all galaxies. Globular clusters (GCs) follow a well-defined relation
between their absolute magnitudes and stellar velocity dispersions.
With such relative indicators, calibrated using the primary methods, one
can extend the distance measurement up to 100 Mpc.
The tertiary distance indicators include brightest cluster galaxies and
supernovae.
Clusters of galaxies can contain up to about a thousand galaxies. Clusters
of galaxies are formed by cannibalizing other galaxies. With the brightest
galaxies one can measure distances of several hundred Mpc.
Supernovae are stars that explode. They produce luminosity roughly
equal to that of an entire galaxy. These stars are therefore easily seen in distant
galaxies.
Many other indirect distance estimates have also been explored, such as
correlations between various intrinsic properties of galaxies.

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 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measured distances to stars in distant
galaxies in order to measure Hubble’s constant.
When Hubble announced the discovery of law, the value of Ho he
obtained was about 500 km s-1Mpc-1. This is about eight times larger than
current estimates. This is because Hubble made a mistake in identifying a kind
of star to use as a distance indicator. The latest accepted value of Ho is in the
range 60 to 70 km s-1Mpc-1.
The effect of galactic rotation in the Milky Way, telescope aperture
variations, absorption and obscuration in the Milky Way and observational
biases of various kinds are some of the reasons that we are not yet in a position
to determine Ho with any great precision.
The age of the Universe
If the expansion of the Universe proceeded at a constant rate then it is
very simple matter to relate the Hubble constant to the age of the Universe. All
the galaxies are now rushing apart. But in the beginning they must have all
been in the same place. The age of the Universe is then the time elapsed since
big bang. Then the age of the Universe is the inverse of the Hubble constant.
From Hubble's law v = H 0 d
distance distance
velocity = ,∴ time =
time velocity
distance d 1
Using Hubble's law, = =
velocity v H 0
This time is the age of the Universe.
1
∴ age of the Universe =
H0
Using current value of Ho, the age of the Universe is around 15 billion
years. This calculation is based on the idea that Universe is expanding at
constant rate. But according to the Friedmann models, the expansion is always
slowing down. Whether the Universe is open, flat, or closed, this is applicable.

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The expansion is decelerated by an amount depending on how much matter
there is in the Universe. We don’t really know exactly how much deceleration is
there. This means that the Hubble time, 1/Ho, always exceeds the actual time
elapsed since the Big Bang (to). That is the age of the Universe is less than the
value we just calculated. Applying this correction, the age of a flat universe
should be about 10 billion years.

An independent method for estimating the age of the Universe is to date

objects within it. But dating astronomical objects is not easy. One can estimate
ages of terrestrial rocks using the radioactive decay of long-lived isotopes, such
as uranium-235. The limitation of such approaches is that they can only be used
to date material within the Solar System. Lunar and meteoritic rocks are older
than terrestrial material. But they may have formed very recently. So dating
method is not useful in the cosmological age calculation.
The most useful method for measuring the age of the Universe is less
direct. All the stars in globular star clusters are thought to have formed at the
same time. Also the fact that they are generally of very low mass suggests that
they are quite old. So a collection of these stars can be used to the age of the
Universe. Since one must allow some time since the Big Bang to form the
clusters in the first place, this method is also not accurate. By the study of
globular clusters, the age of the Universe is about 14 billion years.