My thoughts on what the Hubble tension really is, based on George Efstathiou’s “To H0 or not to H0?“, arXiv:2103.08723.
After being “away” a few weeks where I used this blog as a conference diary (see TMCC2021 and A (Hubble) Tension Headache), the usual arXiv posts return, covering primordial black holes as (not) dark matter, difficulties in constructing working and realistic early dark energy models, and biases to parameter constraints from the effect of baryonic feedback on the gravitational lensing of the CMB. Enjoy the read!
End of the week wrap-up, which discusses how early dark energy runs into trouble when confronted against large-scale structure full-shape galaxy power spectrum data (with a social injustice metaphor related to bad practices when trying to solve the H0 tension), the puzzling origin of GW190814, and a good ambulance chasing paper which turns XENON1T into a machine to set precise constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions.
This week’s entry is dedicated to the H0 tension and attempts to solve the latter through early dark energy (possibly going beyond General Relativity), as well as to how a mysterious phenomenon known as skyquakes could be connected to an exotic model of dark matter known as axion quark nuggets. I hope this post will provide you a bit of entertainment (hopefully at home) in this time of uncertainty due to COVID-19.
Here is the second entry of my “Top arXiv papers of the week” column. The usual warnings I already pointed out in the first entry hold here too, in other words your mileage may vary. With these caveats in mind, hope you enjoy!
