🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Buell writes:
>[John Baez writes]
>>The amusing part is that there is one camp of people who are SURE it's
>>close to 50, while the other camp is SURE it's close to 100, and they
>>argue and argue about it, so everyone else opts for about 75 as a round
>>figure.  I can imagine learned expert X saying "the world is round" and
>>learned expert Y saying "the world is flat" and the nonexperts splitting
>>the difference and saying "it's round on one side and flat on the
>>other."
>
>Recently those who think it the Hubble constant is 50 have come up to
>around 60 km/s/Mpc and those who think it is 100 have come down to
>around 90 km/s/Mpc. Maybe in a few years all the Hubble constant
>people will converge on 75 km/s/Mpc.

The combatants won't compromise because each side accuses the other
of gross systematic error.  Some people compromise (and some people
use either 50 or 100, possibly depending on who their department
chair is) but a lot of people use the awful construction

H_0 = 100 h km/s/Mpc , where 0.5 ~< h ~< 1.0

which accounts for all the little h^-1 's I see in astro papers
(unless it was something I drank).

Actually most of the "100" camp generally seems to go for a value
in the 80-90 range, and I heard a well-known astronomer say, "The
theorists may not like it, but H_0 will wind up around 80."  On the
other hand Sandage recently announced a value of 45, so so much for
compromise.

Ben Weiner

P.S.  He meant the theorists wouldn't like it because of the problem
with stellar ages.