The universe is growing faster than expected, study finds

Using data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the universe is expanding more rapidly than previously thought.

According to a new report in The Astrophysical Journal, the universe is growing 5 to 9 percent faster than most accepted calculations.

“This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don’t emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation,” study author Adam Riess, an astronomer at The Johns Hopkins University, said in a news release.

Using new technologies to determine the age of the universe

The study team was able to lessen the uncertainty of calculations for the universe’s growth to just 2.4 percent by creating new means to enhance the accuracy of measurements to distant galaxies.

By measuring approximately 2,400 Cepheid stars in 19 galaxies and contrasting the detected brightness of both kinds of stars, they precisely assessed their real brightness and computed distances to approximately 300 Type Ia supernovae in far-flung galaxies.

The team contrasted those distances with the growth of space as assessed by the expansion of light from shrinking galaxies. The team used both values to determine how quickly the universe expands as time passes, also known as the Hubble constant.

The new Hubble constant value is 73.2 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This means the distance between objects in the universe will double in 9.8 billion years.

This enhanced standardization does present a problem because it doesn’t exactly match the growth rate calculated for the universe from its trajectory seen right after the Big Bang. Measurements of the afterglow from the Big Bang result in a 5 percent to 9 percent smaller growth rate.

“If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the big bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today,” Riess said. “However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today.”

The team said universe’s quick growth could be explained by dark energy pushing galaxies away from each other with greater strength we thought. The team also speculated that an unknown particle from the early universe may be throwing off the attempts to predict today’s expansion rate based on post-big bang trajectory.

This finding could also be a sign that Einstein’s widely-accepted theory of gravity in incomplete.

“We know so little about the dark parts of the universe, it’s important to measure how they push and pull on space over cosmic history,” said study author Lucas Macri, an astronomer at Texas A&M University.

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Image credit: Michael Goh/NASA APOD

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