Livescience | April 27, 2019 | By Rafi Letzter
The universe is moving too fast and nobody knows why.
Back in the early years of the universe, right after the Big Bang, everything blasted away from everything else. We can still see the light from that blast, by observing very faraway parts of the universe where light takes billions of years to reach our telescopes. And we can measure how fast things were moving in those faraway spots. Based on that speed, we can calculate how fast the universe should be expanding today.
But when astronomers have tried to directly measure how fast the universe is expanding today — a more difficult task, because everything is farther apart now — things seem to be moving faster than those calculations would predict. And a new paper, based on highly detailed observations taken using the Hubble Space Telescope, appears to confirm that finding: Everything is moving about 9 percent too fast. And still, nobody knows why.
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