Universe Expanding Faster Than Scientists Thought: Study Reveals How Fast The Cosmos Is Expanding

Astronomers always believed that the universe is expanding fast. However, their predictions were not nearly accurate, as based on data and the current understanding of the field.

For so long, scientists have been off in their estimates as they recently learned that the universe is expanding nine times faster than expected. While the number does not seem so big, the impact on science certainly is.

Hubble finds Universe may be expanding faster than expected - https://t.co/ItUnClkl7n pic.twitter.com/NWAhXN9LeC

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As noted by Berkeley News, the speed of the expansion of the universe means that the measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation was wrong, or some unknown phenomenon is speeding up the expansion for reasons they can't explain.

Alex Filippenko, a professor of astronomy from UC Berkeley and co-author of the study said, If you really believe our number - and we have shed blood, sweat and tears to get our measurement right and to accurately understand the uncertainties - then it leads to the conclusion that there is a problem with predictions based on measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the leftover glow from the Big Bang."

He said that this could meant he the universe may be playing a trick on us, or our understanding that it is not yet complete.

Nobel laureate Adam Reiss of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University added that the finding may give an important clue in understanding parts of the universe that does not emit light - like dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation.

Reiss was also quoted by Phys.org to have stated that if we know the initial amounts of the things that are present in the universe, then humanity can use this understanding to predict the its expansion. However, if the nine percent discrepancy holds up, then what we learned so far about the vastness of the universe as well as its expansion has not been the right understanding all along, and this changes the size of how we measure the Hubble constant today.