Einstein versus the James Webb Telescope: How Little We Know about the Universe & The Beauty Inherent in the Mystery

In this new fandangled, topsy-turvy, upside-down, inside-out world in which previously unthinkable, totally gobsmacking realities hit us relentlessly in the face, including but not limited to the US aligning with Russia, Iran and North Korea on the question of Ukraine, the head of the FBI threatening to dismantle the agency, the appointment of Robert Kennedy Jr, an outspoken anti-vaxxer, to head up US Health and Human Services, as well as the fact that currently, we do not have a budget in South Africa owing to political derailment and, I’m guessing, a certain degree of idleness, we may find ourselves, on occasion, gasping for air and begging to be left in peace.

I sometimes find myself thinking, though, that in the narrow-focus of ever-more turbulent current affairs and the ever-more harassing news cycle, we often lose sight of the more fundamental questions that give meaning to our lives. It is not, in fact, the politics of Germany, nor that of Mexico, or Canada that make us tick as human beings, nor even our own government’s budget. It is our sense of ourselves and our place in the universe that truly gives us purpose. And we have, over a protracted period of time, radically overestimated our knowledge of ourselves and our universe, and vastly underestimated the mystery inherent in it.

In October 1923, using a telescope in California, Edwin Hubble was studying a nebula near to our Milky Way, the Andromeda nebula, when he spotted something quite unique. It turned out to be a Cepheid, a special kind of star that brightens and dims periodically, and which can be used to measure distances in space. Hubble, after years, realised that the nebula was much further away than the Milky Way is to earth, so far away, in fact, that he concluded that it must be a galaxy in its own right. He subsequently began to classify all the known nebulae at the time, leading him to deduce that there must exist millions of galaxies beyond our own. These galaxies, he discovered, were moving away from earth at velocities that increased in proportion to their distance from us. The universe, in other words, was expanding.

Determining the rate of expansion of the universe, now known as the Hubble constant, has been a subject of cosmological obsession ever since, and in January 2025, scientists calculated a new estimate, the most accurate to date. Disconcertingly, however, this calculation has created a crisis in theoretical physics, rather than achieving clarity.

During the mid-20^th century, scientists estimated the Hubble constant somewhere between 50 to 100 km per second per megaparsec, a megaparsec being a specific measurement of 3.26 million light-years. Obtaining a more accurate result for the Hubble constant was impossible at this time, however, as ground-based telescopes only allowed cosmologists to observe Cepheids in nearby galaxies. This changed in the 1990s, thanks to the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits earth beyond our atmosphere.

With far more data, calculations could be performed using a method known as the cosmological distance ladder, known also as the late universe model. This involves a sequence of calculations, such that the distance between the earth and nearby galaxies forms the first rung of the ladder and becomes the base for determining the distance between earth and galaxies further away. Using this model, the Hubble constant estimation in the late 1990s was 73 km/s/Mpc.

A completely distinct method exists, however, for measuring the rate of expansion of the universe. This method is based on a model of the “early” universe, which relies on observations of the cosmic microwave background, or the afterglow radiation that remains from the Big Bang. Combining Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity with estimates of the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, cosmologists have been able to model the expansion of the universe from its initial state to its current state.

Using the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite in 2009, cosmologists calculated the rate of expansion of the universe to be slower than the estimate provided by the late universe model, at 67km/s/Mpc.

This difference, known as “the Hubble tension” was potentially statistically significant. What was a cosmological irritation, however, became a theoretical canyon in January this year.

In December 2024, researchers used data collected from the James Webb Space Telescope, which is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, and confirmed the value calculated by the late universe model. This eliminated the possibility of instrument error in obtaining the late universe measurement.

Then, in January of this year, the case for the late universe model was further strengthened when the Hubble constant measurement was obtained using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which builds its own cosmic distance ladder from scratch. The calibration of its calculations was significantly improved when scientists used it to measure the distance between earth and the Coma Cluster. Obtaining a highly accurate measurement for the first rung of the ladder significantly improved the accuracy of calculations of distances between earth and galaxies much further away, putting the Hubble constant at 76.5km/s/Mpc.

The significance of this development cannot be overstated as it suggests that the universe is expanding faster than can be explained by Einstein’s general theory of relativity and by theoretical physics in general. Adam Riess, a Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledged “that our understanding of the universe may be incomplete”.

In times of uncertainty, we, as humans, naturally seek out the familiar, clinging to the things we know to be trueto restore some semblance of order and control in our lives. Yet, in an era defined by extreme geopolitical volatility, where our future as a global society feels more unpredictable than ever, it is all too easy to forget just how little we actually know about ourselves as a species, and about the world we live in.

Despite our apparent advancements and the hubris of the human condition, we have yet to unravel profound mysteries such as the connection between the brain and the mind, the origins of language acquisition and the nature of consciousness. We have yet to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, to accept the Incompleteness of Mathematics, to find the location of Universal Grammar in our brains, and now, even Einstein’s general theory of relativity, upon which our understanding of the universe has been built, is in doubt. It is astonishing to realise that in many ways, in 2025, our understanding of the world is as limited as it was in 1915. Yet, perhaps, in these chaotic times, that is precisely where the beauty resides, in the mystery.

By David Buckham

David Buckham is founder and CEO of Johannesburg-based international management consultancy Monocle Solutions and author of 6 published books.