Investigating Cosmic Discordance

Abstract

Abstract We show that a combined analysis of cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectra obtained by the Planck satellite and luminosity distance data simultaneously excludes a flat universe and a cosmological constant at 99% confidence level. These results hold separately when combining Planck with three different data sets: the two determinations of the Hubble constant from Riess et al. and Freedman et al., and the Pantheon catalog of high-redshift Type Ia supernovae. We conclude that either the Lambda cold dark matter model needs to be replaced by a different paradigm, or else there are significant but still undetected systematics. Our result calls for new observations and stimulates the investigation of alternative theoretical models and solutions.